Annabel Crabb Will Lead An All-Woman Panel On Next Week’s #QandA

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; the #QandA panels stacked with experts and thinkers rather than politicians tend to be the best ones.

I qualified that with “tend to”, because it doesn’t always work. As Amy Gray noted in the Guardian last month, the show’s recent episode — dedicated to domestic violence, and featuring Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, alongside other domestic violence campaigners and experts — barely scratched the surface of the issue. It was beleaguered, she argued, by a “lack of questions and in depth responses”, and a panel with more men than women: “Not because men have more to add to the conversation or have the solution that has so eluded women. But because we only take issues affecting women seriously when a man takes notice and gets involved.”

She wasn’t alone in that particular criticism; Twitter wasn’t too happy about the lineup either.

Women are 99% of domestic violence victims but 40% of panel C'mon #qanda do better

— DavidW2035 (@DavidW2035) February 23, 2015

More men than women on #QandA Family Violence panel. Seriously @QandA? More than 1 woman a week is dying right now. pic.twitter.com/M7fFfsDH9A

— Louise Pascale (@loupascale) February 18, 2015

I wonder if @QandA realises that the continued marginalisation of women in public representation is a structural part of gendered violence.

— Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford) February 19, 2015

Next Monday’s panel could be read as a response to that criticism.

A tie-in with Sydney Opera House’s All About Women festival and International Women’s Day, next week’s Q and A will feature all women on the panel — and, for the first time ever in #ladyqanda history, it will be hosted by one too. (There was an all-women #QandA in April 2013 and another last September, but both were fronted by Tony Jones; meanwhile, last year’s All About Women tie-in featured, weirdly, three entire men.)

Hosted by Annabel Crabb in place of Tony Jones, the panel/skate park will also feature Foreign Minister, “not a feminist” Julie Bishop; author, Twitter hero and “bad feminist” Roxane Gay; and  regular Q and A guest and feminist icon Germaine Greer — as well as the CEO of Best & Less, Holly Kramer; and engineer, youth advocate and occasional Junkee contributor/full-time Junkee hero Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

It’d be great to see more women-stacked panels taking on the general topics, rather than being relegated to the “women’s issues” on Q and A. But 100% women — for the first time ever — will be pretty fun to watch.

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Feature screenshot from this great thing.