How to avoid being paralysed by possibility
As I hold my baby daughter at four in the morning, feeling the softness of her cheek against my own…
A narrative for life
If I were to ask you to outline your narrative for living, how would you respond? Social critic Neil…
How to live a flourishing life
By Dr Christian Jarrett. Suppose there were a device you could buy that zapped your brain whenever your mood dipped.…
The therapy of walking
By Linda Cracknell. Among the fraternity of walking writers, I find myself falling into step with Robert Louis Stevenson, who…
What death can teach us
By Frank Ostaseski. Life and death are a package deal. You cannot pull them apart. In Japanese Zen, the term…
Daydreaming & creativity
By Kate Forsyth. I have always been a great builder of castles in the air. My year five teacher…
Who cares about climate change?
Feeling powerless about climate change? Osprey Orielle Lake has initiated a collective, women-led global movement to help save the planet.…
Earthrise
The shaking was gentle at first, then my father pushed harder against my shoulder. “You’ve got to get up!” “But…
Womankind #19: Flamingo
Issue #19 ‘Flamingo’ has arrived, you can buy a copy from our online store or subscribe now. Available January 27…
The day women walked out
What would happen if women stopped work? If they refused to go to their jobs in offices, hospitals, cafés, schools,…
A stitch in time
Ploughed Field, by Jane Jackson I live in a rural village in north Northumberland, a few miles from Scotland, with…
Letters from Tibet: Pema
When I first gave birth, I felt no maternal instinct. Just pain. Horrible pain. I was also reeling from this…
In search of the story
By Vicky Mackenzie It began one hectic afternoon in 1976 at the Daily Mail, the fast, national paper in the…
Womankind’s ‘compassion’ challenge
Can you refrain from making negative comments about yourself and others for five days? Take up Womankind‘s ‘compassion’ challenge and…
Womankind shortlisted in the Stack Awards
The 2017 Stack Awards, which celebrate the world’s “most exciting independent magazines” received over 400 entries this year, a record…
The human predator
Recently, a friend told me a story that wouldn’t leave her mind. An administrator at the school she worked at…
Brain fitness
Increasingly people are realising that their brain is their most important asset. After all, our brain not only directs our…
A woman’s place is in the resistance
There are two images from the 2017 global Women’s Marches that stay with me. One, from Athens, focuses on two…
Media misery syndrome
I once found myself in a nondescript hotel at the tail end of breakfast; it was just me and the…
The hysteria trap
The gender gap in medical research affects all aspects of our health and wellbeing. Women’s physical and emotional wellbeing has…
The therapeutic life
A lazy Sunday lunch with friends is not what it used to be. “I’ll have a decaf with almond milk,”…
Social daydreaming
A road trip through the outer cities of most Western countries can feel rather dystopian: car yards, big-box factory outlets,…
Subscribe
Click here to subscribe now and receive Womankind quarterly print magazine delivered to your door. 132 ad-free pages on self,…
Womankind’s Ad-Free Challenge
Want to write something for Womankind magazine? Then take up our next challenge. Womankind magazine is seeking participants for our…
Your experiential CV
Would a person climb Mount Everest, Earth’s highest mountain, if they couldn’t tell anyone about it? Let’s say that the…
The ladder of success
Self-help gurus love goals. “Success is goals, and all else is commentary,” says one guru. Self-help masters proclaim their love…
The second intellect
I was sitting outside the Sydney Opera House one day when a group of young girls came into my view.…
Womankind starts organic tea called ‘Poet’
Womankind + books + tea. Some news… Womankind has launched its very own ‘literary’ organic tea called ‘poet’, which can…
Goddess of nature
Recently I was asked to give a talk at my old school. Think private. Think all girls. Think wooden banisters…
Why we need more time, and less clothes
Why do we work so much? Why don’t we curate our lives so we can spend joyful hours painting, thinking,…
Quirky habits of happiness
The summer of 2005 was when things started to break. Sleep deprived and exhausted, in the early months with a…
The chore wars
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of…
Follow our dreams
Most of us have a subconscious desire to be admired, to be set apart. We wish to be viewed by…
Living more wisely
Recently on an inner-city street I came across a cluster of elderly men standing around a little table topped with…
Womankind’s communication challenge
Want to write something for Womankind magazine? Then take up our next challenge. Womankind magazine is seeking participants for 5…
The packaged self
Domina, Australia’s first ‘beauty adviser’ was a woman of ingenious thrift. In the early 1900s she cautioned women against buying…
The lost art of leisure
It is rare to meet a person these days who has superior skills in leisure. How often do you hear…
Where you stumble, there is your treasure
“All times are changing times,” writes author Ursula K. Le Guin. Change is reliable, faithful, constant – an ever-present tide…
City woes and the car culture
Have you ever fallen in love with a city? Has your pulse quickened with desire as the kaleidoscope of urban…
Ideas for change
Think for a moment about someone who’s self-obsessed. All this person can think about is her own petty concerns –…
Women in the Italian Mafia
In the mid-1990s, police enacted a crackdown in gritty, working-class Naples among the loosely-connected clans that make up the Camorra mafia.…
The science of everlasting happiness
Imagine holding in your hand a winning lottery ticket of $1 million. This is the ticket that will empower you…
Womankind’s ‘Meditation’ Challenge
ENTRIES CLOSED, RESPONSES WILL APPEAR IN THE JANUARY EDITION OF WOMANKIND. PLEASE LOOK OUT FOR THE NEXT CHALLENGE IN 2016.…
The age of anxiety
How many of us have been to a function hosted by friends, and found ourselves looking through French doors to…
Cooking as revolution
I must have been about seven when I asked my mother what communism was. I had no idea, but from…
Border wars
In 2011, Aurora wanted to take her three daughters to meet their grandparents. She was living in Salt Lake City,…
The self for sale
Many years ago I was stuck in an elevator with my boss. Not wanting to waste precious company time, my…
The grand act of life
As music hums from the car’s cabin, Andrea Kowch glides down the back roads of Michigan in search of a…
The packaged self
Domina, Australia’s first ‘beauty adviser’ was a woman of ingenious thrift. In the early 1900s she cautioned women against buying…
Womankind No News challenge
Want your story published in Womankind magazine? Then take our challenge. Womankind magazine is seeking participants for a week of…
Womankind No News challenge
Want your story published in Womankind magazine? Then take our challenge. Womankind magazine is seeking participants for a week of…
Why we shouldn’t take after the domestic cat
Some cats get so excited about chasing a battery-operated laser pointer, the type that lecturers use on overhead screens, that…
Stockists
Stockists: Bookstores, Galleries & Delis You can find a copy of Womankind magazine at your local bookstore or news agency,…
The Media Effect
Sociologists have long known that most of us are pretty nice. We work well in groups and take care of…
Happiness, and all that crap
The question of happiness and how to get it is endlessly entertaining. It’s one of the few topics on which…
Money or happiness?
I know a rich man who buys properties. He decorates them, fills them with consumer goods and then leaves them…
On the shortness of life
It is a general complaint among mankind, Paulinus, that Nature is niggardly: our allotted span is brief, and the term…
The ladder of true understanding
How well do you understand the world? Do you think you’ve got a good grasp of reality or not? Greek…
How are you smart?
The original scene: Paris, 1900‚ La Belle Epoque. The city fathers approached a talented psychologist named Alfred Binet with an…
If I’m free, why can’t I do what I want?
By Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek I woke up my son Jan (9) for school, as I do every morning. He was…
Shorts: Epictetus and External Events
Think about what usually makes you angry, frustrated, anxious; most likely it has something to do with external events that…
The news – why do we subject ourselves to it?
Every night at 6.00 pm, I want you to sit in a room for half an hour. During that time…
Photographers’ Award IV: winners
We are pleased to present the winning photograph and finalists of the Womankind Photographers’ Award IV: Wanderlust. The winning photograph…
Womankind’s ‘Image’ Challenge
How are women depicted in the media? Take up Womankind‘s image challenge and get published in the next issue of…
Broadcasting the war
War traditionally conjures up imagery of a specific type of violence. Inevitably, these images are masculinised: men in fatigues, riding…
Letters from Saigon
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hiep, 54, has been a caretaker at a Cemetery in Saigon for 27 years. Interview by Nhung…
Made in Vietnam
When investigating her book Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and Trafficking, author Anne Elizabeth Moore remembers one woman’s story in particular. A…
Winners: Photographers’ Award VII ‘vocation’
What a talented bunch of photographers submitted to this quarter’s award! While it’s wonderful to receive so many high-quality submissions,…
Lost words, the language wars
Languages reveal our cultural diversity – the different ways we explain ourselves, the different ways we categorise our knowledge, the…
Rachel will not be silenced
Why is Rachel Carson important to your life? Because your body is contaminated with the very chemicals she blew the…
Why do Australians hate thinkers?
Stuart Grant, a well-dressed, bespectacled philosophy academic at Monash University, awoke on a brisk mid-November morning last year to find…
Pleasure spots
Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the…
The value of boycott
In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He…
Loving animals and eating meat
Ever wondered why you don’t like eating dog, but don’t mind eating hot dogs? Or why you feel a sense…
The project of being alive
It’s not the first time that a movie has been shown to a vegetative audience but for some reason the…
The lost art of travel
We’re in perpetual motion; we can go anywhere, at any time, and the momentum builds. Before long, we’re planning another…
You are your life, and nothing else
Existentialist philosophers teach us that we alone are responsible for creating a meaningful life in an absurd and unfair world.…
The Cartoon Philosopher: 13 questions with Michael Leunig
1. What is the biggest threat to our minds? Our minds. 2. What is freedom? Non-compliance and creativity. 3. What…
The Identity Toolkit
Sum yourself up in a couple of words. Users of social media do it to introduce themselves online. “Surfer, father,…
‘I think therefore I am a man’: philosophy’s woman problem
By Helen Beebee, University of Manchester While just under half of all philosophy undergraduates in the UK are women, women…
Free range ‘debate’ puts the egg before the chicken
By Patrick Stokes, Deakin University The announcement that Woolworths will phase out the selling of cage eggs seems like pretty…
Our Surveillance Society
In the perfect prison, I am bathed in light. I don’t languish in the dark – I am put to…
Bringing thinkers into focus: Steve Pyke
It’s a dismal affair when the faces of people we don’t wish to remember – such as modern-day celebrities –…
Someone’s looking at you: welcome to the surveillance economy
By Martin Hirst, Deakin University Everything that fugitive whistle-blower Edward Snowden has revealed about America’s global espionage network PRISM should…
It might be a more free world, but few of us would want to live there
By John Daley, Grattan Institute Many are puzzled by the political theory of carbon markets. Why does the Institute for…
On Shadows and Realities in Education (Plato’s Cave)
The Republic, Plato, Book VII AND now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is…
Is an ethic of biodiversity enough?
The environmental crisis has never loomed so large nor been so extensively debated as in the last few years. But…
Womankind 19: Flamingo
Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argues that most people never accept this gaping responsibility over the course of their lives, but…
Womankind 18: Fruit Fly
What do humans and fruit flies have in common? Apparently, quite a lot. Our genetic makeup, scientists say, is unusually…
Womankind 17: Unicorn
In the Harry Potter series of fantasy novels, students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are offered an elective…
Womankind 16: Gyrfalcon
Why are ‘successful’ people often miserable? By that I mean people who have risen to the top of their field,…
Womankind #15 ‘Yak’
Do you ever say or think that once this happens then I will be happy? Once I lose weight, or…
Issue #14: Tanzania/giraffe
When I travel by plane I’m always disturbed by turbulence, as if the presence of turbulence means something is wrong.…
Issue #13: Turkey
In a society, that seeks efficiency above all else, technology towers over the frail human form. Technology can deliver more…
Issue #12: Greece
In the dark of night, a canny octopus escaped from his tank, gobbled up fish from a neighbouring tank, and…
Issue #11: Russia
The search for personal Utopia Lewin’s equation: B = ƒ(P, E) It is indeed rare to find an equation…
Issue #10: Vietnam
How do you measure your life?
Issue #9: Argentina
What is your narrative? It’s a question that’s difficult to answer, particularly if you’ve never given it much thought. You…
Issue #8: Egypt
Most of the time we do our utmost to ignore her. We switch on the radio, or television, or we…
Issue #5: Gothic
Sometimes we find ourselves at crossroads. We must make a choice between two paths, and the decision we make will…
Issue #6: Mona Lisa
In Renaissance times, a single-minded pursuit of any goal was limiting, dull; it lacked imagination. Leonardo da Vinci was not…
Womankind #4: ‘bee’
We ask children: ‘who do you want to be when you grow up?’ The answers are commonplace: sports star, pop…
Womankind #3: ‘cat’
I knew a family who lived in darkness. Come night-time, the family would patter between the black walls of their…
Womankind notebook
Womankind ‘Unicorn’ blank A5 notebook. Cover illustration of Mary, Queen of Scots by Stavros Damos.
