Professor Janice Reid, the UWS Vice Chancellor launched the UWS Women's Network in 2007 to provide opportunities for women staff and interested community members to meet , network, learn and develop their careers.

Climate change, soaring petrol and food prices, one in seven Australian children living in poverty and catastrophic levels of violence in some indigenous communities. These are just some current issues of national importance that most Australians would see as legitimate topics for debate.

Their strength is waning, but there is still a depressingly large number of powerful men in the west, spread across a range of denominations, spewing raw hate and naked prejudice at gay people. All in the name of Christ.

OK, I admit it. I cry easily. My eldest's grade 6 graduation ceremony provoked a flood. Even k.d. lang's version of Hallelujah can do it. When the face of the little fella in the Worksafe Victoria ad lights up because his Dad is safe and home, I break down in sobs.

For a friend of mine, adolescence was no time of innocence. It was the worst and most confusing time of her life; made all the worse by the insistence of the adults she knew that the pain would be useful later.

What is unforgiveable? Are there some acts that cross the moral line in the sand dividing the venal from the inescapably evil? Are there some things, and some people, we cannot forgive?

The government has ordered yet another inquiry into a paid leave scheme for working Australian parents. This one, by the Productivity Commission, follows two similar ones by HREOC and a Senate Committee in 2002. What is left to examine, for heaven's sake! It's a leave scheme, not the first signs of life on Mars.

What does independent research, shield laws and whistleblower legislation have in common, and why should we give a rats?

My speciality area of ethics is reproductive technologies. What this means is that I spend much of my working life face-to-face with the suspicions that religious men, political leaders and journalists have about female morality.

Madonna turns 50 this year. Like every wheeze and fart in the entertainer's life, this one is attracting comment. From some, it sounds like this. "50? She looks 30! If she really was a taboo-breaker, she wouldn't have smooth skin and pert breasts. She'd be strutting her stuff on the cover of Vanity Fair with a wrinkled décolletage and baggy arms hanging out."

Last year, a girl at my son's school primary school - let's call her Susan - had a headache. The next day she collapsed and since then has been in a wheelchair from spinal damage caused by a benign tumour.

You may not have heard of it, but my guess is, you will soon. Climate engineering-or global climate control-may soon be a fact of life.

It's always about the money. Or is it?

In this chapter, written with Cait Calcutt (p. 41-70), Leslie analyses, and seeks to draw lessons for contemporary Australian pro-choice activists, of significant legislative changes to abortion laws in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in 1998. The chapter is part of a larger collection undertaken in phase one of the Johannesburg Initiative, an international project aimed at building capacity amongst pro-choice advocates.

A recent newspaper report pitted McDonald's and Birrell's explanations for Australia's below-replacement fertility against each other. In this article, Cannold presents data from qualitative research into the experience and understandings of 35 childless women aged 28 to 42.