Ideas at the House

What if ageing wasn’t something to avoid, but something to embrace?

Right now, a revolution is gathering force. Middle-aged and older women are refusing to fade out, shrink back or apologise for taking up space.

Jacinta Parsons’ new book, A Wisdom of Age, was sparked by conversations with women across the country who are rewriting the rules and living with unapologetic confidence.

Jacinta is joined by some of the formidable women whose humour, tenderness and rebellious wisdom shaped the book. This uplifting talk is a celebration of ageing with agency, and we’re just getting started.

Women’s pain isn’t “mysterious”. Medicine is failing us. For centuries, women’s symptoms have been misunderstood, minimised or dismissed, from wandering wombs and so-called “hysteria” to modern-day misdiagnosis, mistreatment and delayed care.

Medical science made extraordinary advances in the 20th and 21st centuries, but gender bias remains stubbornly embedded in healthcare, from a body of scientific research based largely on male experience, to a medical culture that can still see women dismissed or even belittled. An increasing body of testimony shows how dangerous this is for women – particularly First Nations women, women of colour and gender-diverse people – with poorer health outcomes across cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive and autoimmune conditions. Against this backdrop, studies like Australia’s first-ever Inquiry into Women’s Pain – drawing on the lived experiences of more than 13,000 women, girls, carers, healthcare professionals, peak bodies and researchers – point to the urgent need for reform.

Join this expert panel as they put medical misogyny under the microscope and, crucially, map out what meaningful change could finally look like.

For solo parents, queer couples and people experiencing fertility issues the path to parenthood often comes with extra steps. Today, finding donor sperm is harder than ever – It’s the drought Australia is not talking about!

As Australian fertility clinics scramble to meet demand, the search for sperm becomes an unexpectedly intimate chapter in the story of forming a family. Some navigate year-long clinic waitlists. Others sift through overseas profiles or have delicate conversations with friends. And some, like our moderator Edwina Storie, find themselves trawling unexpected corners of Facebook.

Bringing together lived experience, this panel unswaddles the messy truth of modern conception – from awkward donor conversations and legal grey zones to financial burdens, cultural complexities and what donor-conceived people wish their parents knew.

Join Melanie Saward, Alisha Burns, Maeve Marsden and Edwina Storie for an eye-opening conversation about what it really takes to make a baby today.

Miranda July’s “great perimenopause novel”, All Fours tells the story of a woman who abandons routine suburban life for a reckless road trip and an extramarital affair.

All Fours has hit a real-world nerve and since its release in 2024 has been blamed for the break down of both book clubs and marriages. It has become a catalyst for women re-examining their desires, their compromises and their lives.

In “The All Fours Effect”, distinguished panellists Neha Kale, Melanie Kembrey, Jacqueline Maley and Marisa Meltzer dissect this novel and unpack the art, the uproar and the questions we can’t un-ask.

Bringing up boys isn’t getting any less complicated. One minute they’re sweet, funny little humans. The next, they’re parroting some podcast bro who insists “patriarchy isn’t real” and “grindset” is a personality.

Shows like Adolescence and books like The Anxious Generation tapped a nerve. As toxic masculinity is loudly (and often rightly) called out, a generation of boys is confused and ashamed — and the algorithm is happy to lead them down dark alt-right rabbit holes. It’s part of the reason the Australian government introduced age restrictions for social media accounts.

So how do we cut through the bro-fluencer noise to raise resilient, emotionally literate boys?

Investigative journalist Jess Hill (See What You Made Me Do) and men’s mental health researcher Zac Seidler unpack the cultural forces shaping boys today and how adults can guide them with compassion.

You might be familiar with the concept of the “second shift” – the domestic burden that awaits a woman when she returns home from work. Then there’s the third shift (emotional labour) and the fourth shift (nighttime caregiving). Now we ask: is sex just the so-called “fifth shift”?

Join Yumi Stynes, Chanté Joseph and Aleks Trkulja for an engaging chat about whether keeping the spark alive in long-term relationships is totally hot… or just another unpaid shift women are expected to clock into.

Is maintaining a sex life in log-term relationships a labour of love, or just… labour?

Laila Lalami’s eerily prophetic new book imagines a world where AI can punish us for “potential crimes”.

Known for her razor-sharp explorations of the immigrant experience, Lalami once again proves the power of fiction to illuminate and anticipate the world around us.

From her celebrated essay collection Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America to her acclaimed novels, she has long interrogated power and national belonging.

Enjoy this rare chance to hear Lalami unpack identity, belonging, justice and the power of storytelling.

Real talk on money, power, financial safety and securing your future.

Saddle up for a no-nonsense conversation about women, money and the systems shaping our financial futures. Learn practical skills, gain confidence and rewrite your path to independence.

This frank, practical conversation brings together leading voices shaping the future of women’s financial literacy and security: Tasnia Alam Hannan, Zee Heart and Catherine Fitzpatrick, with Angela Priestley moderating.

From navigating personalised debt traps to the new realities of retirement, this panel offers clear guidance, real talk and empowering pathways forward.

Jane Birkin was synonymous with chic. An unlikely icon of French cinema, her effortless style and artistic legacy have been immortalised through her music and film career. And, of course, this British babe was the inspiration behind one of the world’s most coveted handbags – the Hermès Birkin. But who was the real woman behind the muse?

Join writer, critic and film curator, Kate Jinx and New York Times bestselling author Marisa Meltzer for an in-depth discussion about Birkin’s extraordinary life, times and legacy, inspired by Meltzer’s newly published biography, It Girl.

Don’t Ask the Trees for Their Names, a recently published collection of stories, brings together nine Arab-Australian women who have had to start over in a new country, carrying the weight of home and the promise of possibility.

In this talk Contributors Loubna Haikal, Oula Ghannoum, Mariam Maatooq and Sivine Tabbouch join moderator Antoinette Lattouf to share their intimate, sometimes raw, often joyful stories of migration, identity and belonging.

From the legacies of homelands to the surprises of new communities, these voices reveal the courage, creativity and resilience it takes to forge a life from scratch. Their stories confront political injustices, celebrate cultural heritage and illuminate what it means to build family, community and selfhood in a new land.

Warm, urgent and unapologetically human, this conversation is a powerful celebration of women, storytelling and the transformative power of shared experience.

New Motherhood is a time of overwhelming joy and love – but alongside those experiences, many new mothers also face exhaustion, emotional extremes, anxiety and profound changes in their mental health.

The much rarer cousin of postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis affects one to two in every 1,000 mothers. The early signs can look deceptively ordinary and be difficult to identify, but delayed diagnosis can lead to devastating consequences.

Moderator Lauren Novak (Meltdown) joins Ariane Beeston, Anne Buist and Rachel Skillington to break down the stigma surrounding motherhood’s misunderstood crises, unpack the warning signs with compassion, and look to solutions.

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon is an Australian arts trailblazer, but a career in music was not something her family had imagined for her. Growing up in Sydney, Deborah always loved music, but when she experienced Opera for the first time – everything changed.

Deborah went on to have an expansive global career as a soprano across the globe, and as a writer and composer of countless new works premiered all around Australia. She is the founder of Short Black Opera Company, with a mission to develop First Nations opera singers and uses her artforms as vehicles for radical truth-telling about untold Indigenous stories.

This intimate chat, moderated by Santilla Chingaipe, looks at the formidable career that took Debroah from Stolen Generation to opera star, to writer and composer of the first Australian Indigenous opera, Pecan Summer.

The term “heterofatalism” has gone mainstream, capturing a growing pessimism around straight romance, and it’s influencing everything from dating app use to the quiet rise of celibacy.

Straight women are exhausted by underwhelming dates, constant safety calculations and endless emotional labour. As disappointing swipes, draining dates and “embarrassing” boyfriends multiply, a new mood is taking hold – a rising belief that heterosexual relationships are inherently flawed.

Chanté Joseph, Dr Lisa Portolan and moderator, Lucy Smith unpack this cultural moment with humour, sharp analysis and hard truths. Chanté, who blew the lid off the embarrassment of boyfriends in British Vogue, brings her insider lens on contemporary dating culture, while Lisa, an academic, researcher and author shine a light on how gender, power and emotional labour shape modern digital romance. Together, they explore how women and gender diverse people are reshaping their romantic lives.