Sex and Power

January 1, 2007

Vive Magazine

When power struts in stilettos they’re black and cream, sexy and high. Very high. And right now they’re walking towards me, strapped to the feet of America’s “most powerful and dangerous columnist”, Maureen Dowd.

Dowd’s name on the end of a phone line incites panic. US President George W Bush calls her the “cobra”. His father’s Chief of Staff once famously promised colleagues, “I will destroy her … If it takes me the rest of my life, I will destroy her”.

Virginia Haussegger is a Canberra journalist and director of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation at the University of Canberra.

Related Media

May 1, 2024

Future Woman podcast

Hear Virginia on Future Woman with Helen McCabe

March 31, 2024

Our Radicals and Revolutionaries: Women’s Liberation

The chaps from ASIO were hiding across the road from the Canning Street house in Ainslie. None of the eight...

March 9, 2024

Meta may not care about Australian news but it’s the soul of our communities

I once rang a convent of catholic nuns in Melbourne, to ask if the Sister in charge might have a...

February 17, 2024

Joining the ‘first lady’ club: oh Jodie, what have you done?

So Jodie Haydon said ‘yes’, right at a time when women around the globe are increasingly saying ‘no’ to marriage....

August 14, 2023

Radicals, Rebels and Reformers: a clarion call from the Sisterhood

Oh, they were mad! Furious. Those wild ‘women’s libbers’. Noisy as hell and heading for the Canberra Times, driven by...

July 24, 2023

Barbie lands an unresolved feminist rant, but the joke is on us!

There is a fabulous moment in the history of the Canberra Women’s Movement when over a hundred furious feminists barged...