Bonds breaks a gender barrier on International Women’s Day

Is the world ready for a transgender woman to model underwear? Business Insider Australia, yesterday:

Australian intimates retailer Bonds gave tribute to all types of women in its latest ad campaign, Intimately, which was launched the week before International Women’s Day. The company’s campaign features women of diverse size and background, including body positive advocate Shanaya Peters, who recently modelled for Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty label, and transgender model Andreja Pejic.

An unusual take from Julia Szabo, The Student Life, Wednesday:

Everyone has at least one holiday that makes their skin crawl. For me, it’s International Women’s Day.

Kyle Smith takes the risk of receiving feminists’ blowback, National Review, Wednesday:

Social media have been buzzing this week with anger and anguish about the gender breakdown of critics of the new movie Captain Marvel. Most are men. There is an excellent reason for this: most movie critics are men. And there is an excellent reason for that: men are much more willing publicly to express opinions than women. There is a natural experiment on the matter, which is the letters pages of newspapers. Anyone can write a letter to the editor; there are no barriers to entry. The vast majority of those who do so are male.

Another risk taker, in Andrew Clennell’s political judgment, The Australian, yesterday:

As bulldozers began ripping up turf at one of Sydney’s most famous­ sporting arenas yesterday, the usually risk-averse Gladys Berejiklian became a crash-or-crash-through premier.

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam in a 1972 TV interview:

When you are faced with an impasse, you’ve got to crash through or you’ve got to crash. I’ve crashed through a few impasses.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus describes a big strike as a protest, The Australian, yesterday:

(McManus) expected “at least” 250,000 workers to join the protests, which she insisted were political and not designed to have an impact on employers.

Economist Judith Sloan, The Australian, yesterday:

Sally McManus is not the sharpest pencil in the pack. Whatever she learnt at university, it doesn’t seem to have been about economics or common sense … This week, the ACTU put out a ridiculous pamphlet Inequality in Australia: an Economic, Social and Political Disaster Summary … it’s full of fake news.

Australian Bureau of Statistics:

Trade union membership has declined since 1992 … the proportion of those who were trade union members in their main job has fallen from 40 per cent to 15 per cent.

Some perspective from the Statista website:

The Chinese Communist Party reached 82.6 million members in 2011, making it the world’s largest political party … 6.13 per cent of the population. The number of CCP organisations at grassroots level exceeded 4 million, and has been established in nearly all government institutions.

Melbourne artist Suzie Blake, publicity flyer, Monday:

The bridge between heaven and earth is reimagined in the form of greed and waste. My work asks, what is the environmental cost of bloated man-made structures? And what is the role of feminism within such structures? Also, whose empowerment does the current iteration of the feminist movement serve? One cannot ignore the inherent irony in Western women proclaiming their feminist or pro-women stance via an item of clothing made by one of the 85 per cent female garment manufacturers living in dire circumstances.