By Jaz Hook
Giggles and obscenities fill the upstairs room at The Beresford on a Wednesday night, where one woman from each decade from her 20s through to her 70s takes the stage.
The theme is Ladylike, and each speaker approaches it in her own way. Some are tender, some are witty,
and some are utterly provocative.
One thing is clear, in the words of 60s speaker Maz Farrelly “once you get to my age you don’t give a f…”.
Generation Women Australia has been holding these cross-generational events in Sydney since 2018 and Melbourne since 2020. Every month a different group of women and a different topic.
It all started in New York where writer, founder and Australian native Georgia Clark created the first Generation Women event in 2017.
Inspired by conversations with her mother about the lack of representation and space for older women, Clark decided to give six generations a seat at the table with mics in their hands.
The response was immediate and successful, going ahead to do a pop-up event in Sydney that year where Generation Women Australia founders Donna Logue and Brooke Farmer were in the audience.
The group’s website proclaims: “Generation Women is driven by the vision of uniting and empowering 100,000 women through stories over the next 10 years.”
This is Generation Women’s ethos, with the belief that they can make a difference by elevating under-represented voices through personal stories.
On the team is social media manager Eva Cochrane, who said: “Having a space where women can come together and share, laugh, create and understand is magical.”
For as long as women have gathered, women have shared stories. They were a release from a world of rules on how women were to act.
Storytelling was often the only safe space to say the unsayable, to laugh at what was forbidden and to question what was demanded of us.
Generation Women brings to light what women have always done in private and reminds us
that no generation stands alone.
To attend the next Generation Women event this month head to their website to secure your tickets.
Featured image: Dasha Ross (left) and Maz Farrelly speak at the Generation Women Australia event. Photos: Eva Cochrane