That’s what The Ernie’s Book is all about. Written by Meredith Burgmann & Yvette Andrews, Ernie’s book is “a rollocking good read” that tracks 15 years of media quotes from men about women and presents the best of the worst in one small, pink book! The authors are speaking on Monday 19th May as part of the Sydney Writer’s Festival. I’ll be there – why don’t you join me? You might hear about some of the Ernie Award Winning shockers like:
- Michael Biddulph, chair of the Equal Opportunity Tribunal, questioning in a 1996 sexual harassment case why a woman had not been asked for sexual favours “Why would that be? I mean, she’s not unattractive.”
- John Howard, Prime Minister, who said in 2001, there was ‘no appropriate woman’ for governor-general (guess more than one thing has changed in that statement in the past few years!); or
- Steven Conroy, Federal Labor MP who in 2004 called his colleague Nicola Roxon “a skanky ho”!
Good work ladies, good to see someone’s keeping an eye out for us… even if some of these quotes must be a thorn in the side of the people who made them!