Anne Summers in conversation

I was born into a world that expected very little of women like me. We were meant to tread lightly on the earth, influencing events through our husbands and children, if at all. We were meant to fade into invisibility as we aged. I defied all of those expectations and so have millions of women like me.’ Anne Summers has been prominent in Australian media, politics and feminist activism for more than four decades. She is the author of eight books, including the remarkable Damn Whores and God’s Police, still in print forty-four years after it was first published. Anne has had a remarkable career. She has been Editor of Good Weekend, written for the Australian Financial Review, Far Eastern Economic Review, Le Monde and the National Times. She is currently a regular contributor to what was recently the Fairfax Press. She is the winner of a Walkley Award for journalism and, in the United States, where she lived from 1986-1992, she was Editor in Chief of Ms Magazine. She was a political advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating and ran the Office of the Status of Women in the Hawke Labor government. For six years she was chair of Greenpeace International. Her other books include Gamble for Power, Ducks on a Pond and the recently released Unfettered and Alive, a memoir, which she discusses here with Steven Lang.