Celebrate Australian Women In Radio With ‘Girls To The Mic’
A pop-up digital station filled with incredible radio made by women about women, broadcast all over Australia for International Women's Day.
You wouldn’t usually hear the words “feminism” and “footy” in the same sentence. Nor when you turn on the AFL would you expect to see girls playing the game. With the season set to start in a few weeks, an Adelaide Crows fan, a Richmond Tigers supporter and an Essendon Bombers barracker are getting together to chat about this in a pub: these three women will be joined by host Karen Pickering on radio talk show Cherchez La Femme, to talk about women’s AFL and get stuck into the problems with the men’s league.
Cherchez La Femme is just one of the shows in the lineup of programs which will be aired in an Australian first: a pop-up radio station called Girls to the Mic, broadcasting in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and online on International Women’s Day, Saturday March 8.
A joint initiative of the Digital Radio Project and the CBAA‘s Community Radio Network, the day-long celebration takes its name from the Riot Grrrl movement’s “girls to the front” decree. “[Women in radio] is something that we don’t really take pause to recognise,” says the events executive producer, Eliza Sarlos. But while women will produce and host the programs, it’s a day of radio “to be enjoyed by everyone”. “I don’t necessarily think that women’s issues are just women’s issues,” Eliza says.
The programs will cover everything from women in politics and the arts in the inner cities, to grassroots activists around the world, to the lives of Indigenous women in Alice Springs. A whole range of original content from voices from across Australian stations – like Sydney’s FBi Radio and 2SER, Melbourne’s RRR and Joy FM, Brisbane’s 4EB, and Perth’s RTR – will be weaved together throughout the day, unifying the sector and “showcasing what it can do,” Eliza says. “It will highlight the role of women in our community and give people the opportunity to have the conversations that we can’t have on different platforms.”
Set your digital radio dial to ‘Girls to the Mic’ on March 8, or stream it from their website — because mixing a bit of feminism in with the footy can’t do any harm.
–
Katie Booth is Junkee’s editorial intern. She tweets from @kboo2344
Illustration by Steph Hughes.