Leaning Out

In Leaning Out, respected journalist Kristine Ziwica maps a decade of stasis on the gender equality front in Australia, and why the pandemic has led to a breakthrough. As the historic 2020 Women's March attests, a generation of younger women are speaking truth to power and changing the way we think of women in the workplace. This is the third book in The Crikey Read series from Crikey and Hardie Grant Books.

For ten years Australian women have been sold a dazzling promise: through sheer ’will’ and individual self-empowerment they could overcome decades of gender inequality in the workplace. The hard, structural work didn’t need to be done; all the solutions could be individual. Yet leaning in, power-posing and speaking up (and being spoken over) at the boardroom table have made very little difference for the great majority of women, still underpaid and overworked compared to their male colleagues.

The COVID-19 pandemic