Virginia Haussegger On The Unfinished Revolution In Australia’s Media

Journalist, author and feminist thinker Virginia Haussegger joins Tina Quinn to examine why the feminist revolution — inside Australia’s media and beyond — remains unfinished.

Drawing on her latest book, Unfinished Revolution: The Feminist Fightback, Haussegger traces the long arc of sexism, backlash and resistance — from the media mockery of feminism during International Women’s Year in 1975, through to the misogyny directed at Australia’s first female prime minister, and the explosive reckoning of the March4Justice movement in 2021.

Despite women now slightly outnumbering men as reporters in Australian newsrooms, Haussegger argues that real power has barely shifted. Media ownership and executive leadership remain overwhelmingly male, reinforcing cultures of machismo, misogyny and resistance to accountability.

She reflects candidly on her own career — thriving at times inside these systems — and on confronting the ways sexism shaped even her own assumptions.

The conversation ranges from the treatment of women in political and media life, to the persistence of gendered violence, the silencing of feminist history, and Australia’s slide on global gender equality rankings.

At a moment of global backlash against women’s rights, this is a searching discussion about power, media, history and whether feminism still dares to imagine revolution.

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