Lilly Ledbetter, equal pay champion who inspired Fair Pay Act, dies aged 86

Ledbetter sued employer Goodyear in 1998 after finding out she was paid $6,500 less than lowest-paid male supervisor

Lilly Ledbetter, an equal pay advocate whose lawsuit against her employer inspired the Fair Pay Act of 2009, died Saturday in Alabama at age 86.

Ledbetter died of respiratory failure, according to a statement from her family provided to the Alabama news organization Al.com.

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Lincoln venue apologises for treatment of male gig-goers at Last Dinner Party concert

Men who attended planned concert alone tell how they were searched and asked ‘condescending questions’ by security

A venue in Lincoln has apologised for the treatment of some male attendees at a planned concert by the Last Dinner Party – which the band ultimately cancelled shortly before show time due to illness.

On X, one man wrote that on arriving at the Engine Shed, he was “funnelled into a dark corner with other men, told I might be a pervert cus I’m alone and then taken into a room alone with a security guard where I was interrogated and searched. Feel sick.” In subsequent comments, he said he had been asked what his favourite song by the British group was.

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‘Not all men, but a lot of them’: will Gisele Pelicot rape trial finally change France’s attitude to sexual abuse?

The horrifying details of the case that shook the country, and the local mayor’s reaction, show a refusal to confront abuse

As the horror of how Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife, Gisèle, and allowed at least 83 men to rape her continued to unfold in a French courtroom last week, it was hard to see how the case “could have been worse” as one local official suggested.

Louis Bonnet, mayor of Mazan, the southern French town of 6,000 ­people where the Pelicots and a ­number of the alleged rapists lived, who added that “no one was killed”, later apologised and admitted his words were not “entirely appropriate”.

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Afghan women meet in Albania in ‘act of defiance’ against Taliban crackdown

Organisers of international summit hope to create pressure to reverse laws including a ban on women speaking in public

More than 130 Afghan women have gathered in Albania at an All Afghan Women summit, in an attempt to develop a united voice representing the women and girls of Afghanistan in the fight against the ongoing assault on human rights by the Taliban.

Some women who attempted to reach the summit from inside Afghanistan were prevented from travelling, pulled off flights in Pakistan or stopped at borders. Other women have travelled from countries including Iran, Canada, the UK and the US where they are living as refugees.

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Religious groups ‘spending billions to counter gender-equality education’

Report reveals how US Christians, Catholic schools and Islamists fight sex education, LGBTQ+ and equal rights

Extreme religious groups and political parties are targeting schools around the world as part of a coordinated and well-funded attack on gender equality, according to a new report.

Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the Overseas Development Institute.

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Questions on gender and sex variations ‘too complex’ for census, social services minister Amanda Rishworth says

It’s the third explanation government ministers have given since last Sunday, while Coalition senator Andrew Bragg says questions are ‘reasonable’

The social services minister has offered up the latest explanation for why proposed questions on gender and sex variations were dumped from the next census, claiming they were too complicated.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Amanda Rishworth gave a new reason for why new questions had been ditched from the census planning, saying the government had been shown “questions that were very complex in the census”.

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Australia news live: winter heat record set in South Australia; NZ suspends import of all Australian tomatoes

South Australia has notched up its hottest winter day on record. Follow the day’s news live

David Anderson says it was ‘the right time for me’ to resign from ABC

The ABC managing director, David Anderson, is speaking with ABC RN after yesterday’s announcement of his resignation.

And I think the right time for the ABC. It is something I had thought about now for months, and went away on leave, spoke to [ABC chair] Kim [Williams] a lot. Kim tried to get me to change my mind. [I] came back from leave with it, certain in my mind that I was making the right decision.

We’ve got a long lead time for the board to find a new managing director, and I’ve been asked to and I agreed to stay on until that person starts, which could very well be April next year.

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Male UK university students are ‘less macho’ when sharing flats with women

Researchers have found the competitiveness of men living in mixed flats on UK campuses significantly decreased

Living with female flatmates at university makes male students less “macho”, new research from Essex University and Australia’s University of Technology Sydney has found.

The study, which followed a cohort of students at a UK university living in campus halls of residence over a one-year period, revealed that men living in mixed flats with female flatmates exhibited a significant decrease in competitiveness. There was no effect on women.

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NHS plans review of adult gender services following Cass criticisms

Workers in adult gender clinics allege ‘chaotic’ administration and ‘out of control’ waiting lists

The NHS has set out plans for a review into the safety of adult gender services, in response to detailed concerns raised by the author of the Cass report on gender care for children and young people.

Dr Hilary Cass, the leading consultant paediatrician, listed 16 separate points of concern about the quality of treatment being offered to adults with gender dysphoria in a strongly worded letter to NHS England.

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One in five Australians improvised period products due to cost barriers, survey finds

Report finds period poverty is spread across income brackets but affects more Indigenous people and people with disability

About three in five people with periods have struggled to afford menstrual products and one in four have worn a tampon or pad for more than four hours in the past year due to cost, an Australian survey of more than 153,000 people has found.

In its second triennial report on period poverty, charity Share the Dignity found that periods were still having a substantial impact on the ability of women, girls and gender-diverse people who menstruate to study, work and play sport without interruption, due to cost, pain and stigma.

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Review dismisses claims youth suicides rose after NHS curbed puberty blockers

UK government adviser’s report says claims not supported by data and could prompt under-18s to take own life

A government-ordered review has dismissed claims that suicide rates in young people with gender dysphoria have risen sharply since the NHS restricted access to puberty-blocking drugs.

A report by the government’s adviser on suicide prevention also found that the claims – made by the campaign group the Good Law Project – were not supported by data and could prompt children under the age of 18 to take their own life.

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India’s supreme court to rule on new penal code permitting marital rape

Rights groups protesting at Modi government’s view that criminalising sexual assault violates ‘sanctity’ of marriage

Campaigners angry that marital rape is not to be criminalised under India’s long-awaited new penal code have been promised a ruling on the issue by the supreme court next month.

Human rights organisations, including the All India Democratic Women’s Association, have been petitioning India’s supreme court to make it a criminal offence. The court has in turn asked the government for a response.

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JK Rowling agrees to meeting with Labour about gender transition policy

Author responds after shadow chancellor says party would be ‘really happy’ to ‘give her assurances’

JK Rowling has agreed to a meeting with Labour after Rachel Reeves said the party would be “really happy” to “give her assurances” over its plans to change the process through which people can legally change gender.

Speaking in Scotland, Reeves said protection for women-only spaces would “absolutely stay”, adding: “We’re not going to be changing anything around biological sex … We’re really happy to talk to JK Rowling to give her assurances about that.”

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Gender pay gap in Australian public service more than 13%, study finds

It compares with 21.7% in the private sector which WGEA report says is due to more flexible working practice and more full-time work

For every dollar a male federal public servant makes, his female counterpart makes 86c, data reported for the first time by the government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) reveals.

An analysis of data reported by 116 commonwealth public sector employers found the public sector’s gender pay gap was 13.5% in 2022, which was roughly two-thirds that of the private sector’s pay gap (21.7%).

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Trial of jailed Iranian Nobel laureate Mohammadi opens in her absence

Peace prize winner and women’s rights activist is refusing to attend hearings in Tehran

A new trial against the jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi opened on Saturday in her absence, said a lawyer for the women’s rights activist who has refused to attend hearings.

Mohammadi, 52, has been jailed since November 2021 over several past convictions relating to her advocacy against the obligatory hijab for women and capital punishment in Iran.

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Border force apologises for failing to prevent ‘misconduct’ after reports found bullying and harassment

Exclusive: Apology issued to staff includes pledge ‘to foster a safe, inclusive, empowered, accountable and supportive workplace’

The Australian Border Force has apologised to its staff for failing to “prevent workplace misconduct from occurring” after two damning reports found sexual discrimination and harassment rife in the ABF.

The ABF’s senior leadership issued the apology in May, after Australian Human Rights Commission reports into the culture of the marine unit and the broader ABF found bullying and harassment “are normalised” in some sections of the workforce.

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Tories will allow bars on trans women, says Kemi Badenoch

Conservatives would change law so trans people could be excluded from single-sex spaces, if party wins election

Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives will change the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of sex and allow organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.

The party will make clear that the protected characteristic of sex means biological sex, enabling those who wish to bar male-bodied people from organisations or activities to do so.

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Julia Gillard says progress on gender equality is ‘really glacial’

Former Australian prime minister issues warning that young men’s thinking on the issue is going backward

Former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has said global progress on gender equality is “really glacial and slow” as she warned that it is going backwards among young people.

Gillard cited recent polling by King’s College London’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, which showed that 51% of respondents believe that men are doing too much to support gender equality, while 46% think that men are now discriminated against.

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German star at Cannes condemns ‘madness’ of protective culture for UK child actors

Cast member of Palme d’Or contender shot in Kent says the high number of chaperones and intimacy coordinators on set was over the top

Is Britain leading the way in protecting young people and children from the potential traumas of working on a film set, or has it all gone far too far? Two of the most prominent European stars attending the Cannes film festival, both with high-profile premieres, have very different views.

Franz Rogowski, the acclaimed German actor who plays a key role in Bird, British director Andrea Arnold’s contender for the top Palme d’Or prize, said this weekend that the proliferation of chaperones and intimacy coordinators that had been required on the shoot on location in Kent qualified as well-intended “madness”.

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Hospital surgical teams with more women improve patient recovery, study finds

Researchers say that a critical mass of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons in operative teams can reduce postoperative complications

Hospital surgical teams that include more female doctors improve patient outcomes, lower the risk of serious complications and could in turn reduce healthcare costs, according to the world’s largest study of its kind.

Studies show diversity is important in business, finance, tech, education and the law not only for equity but for output. However, evidence supporting the value of sex diversity in healthcare teams has been limited.

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