Womankind November 2017

When I travel by plane I’m always disturbed by turbulence, as if the presence of turbulence means something is wrong. When the plane is gliding along with no jolts it feels safe, while wind currents feel ominous. But turbulence is simply the result of strong winds or vertically rising air, or wake turbulence from another plane. We do not exist in a vacuum. The onset of turbulence on a plane’s flight has much in common with the onset of disturbances in an otherwise plain-sailing life. A death or breakup, illness, money worries, bankruptcy, an argument with a friend, a feeling of injustice, these too generate turbulence. And when they occur, we regard them with contempt as if they just should not happen. “No one deserves such a thing.” “What a…

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Antonia Case: Antonia Case is Editor-in-Chief of Womankind and Editorial Director of New Philosopher. In 2014 she was awarded the AAP Media Professionals’ Award for excellence in the presentation of philosophy in the media, and was shortlisted for Editor of the Year in the 2016 Stack Awards. Jane Goodall: Jane Goodall is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and its youth program Roots & Shoots. Lucy Treloar: Lucy Treloar’s novel Salt Creek won Debut Indie Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary award. Lucy also won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific). Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore: Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore writes for…

The percentage of adults reading literary novels, short stories, poems, and plays has plummeted to a three-decade low. More people today are likely to watch a movie, or dance performance, or even attend a live book reading, than sit down with a cup of tea and read a novel, according to the NEA’s Annual Arts Basic Survey (AABS), based on data from the US Census Bureau. In fact, in the survey the only activity that people did less than reading literature was attending art classes. While literary fiction is down, adult non-fiction sales are on the rise, particularly in the categories of crafts, hobbies, and self-help, which rose 6.9 per cent from 2015 according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 80 per cent of print sales in the US. Back…

Bad habits are like a bad dose of the ‘flu: they spread from one person to the next. And the more severe the habit, the more eager the feeder of the habit is to wish to offload it on to others, much like a mutating germ. It’s why angry people spread anger, gluttons overfeed those around them, the drug-addicted organise events so habits can be passed on to others. In the past, encountering a feeder in your life - a parent, spouse, or sibling, a school friend or neighbour - was a matter of bad luck. They caught the habit and gave it to you. But today, thanks to social media, feeders in your life can originate from someone located on the opposite side of the globe. In fact, social…

Tanzania is a country rich in minerals but it’s also one of the world’s poorest nations. More than one in three people in Tanzania earn less than $1 a day, and two in ten people live below the “food poverty line”, which is the minimum calories required for survival. Declaring it an “economic war”, Tanzanian president John Magufuli has set his sights on foreign mining earnings to distribute more “revenue to the Tanzanian people”. To date, generous tax incentives have seen foreign miners extract and export the country’s ample supplies of gold, diamonds, and coal. But new mining laws, put in place by Magufuli, seek to raise royalties, halt new mining licences, and give the Government a stake in foreign mining projects. >33% More than one in three people in…