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Welcome to the CoAL webpage

 

 Lesbian

not Queer, not LGBTQI++
Acknowledgment: indigenous land never ceded

Photo of irises by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash 

**** Current Campaigns ****

Restore Women’s Sex-Based Rights in the SDA (Sex Discrimination Act)

Victorian Pride Centre action by LAG (Lesbian Action Group) (August 2023)

Surrogacy

Freedom of Speech

Violence against Lesbians

UN2025 UPDATE

NGO USW69/Beijing+30 Forum

Thirty years after the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, lesbians are still struggling to be recognised at UN CSW events.
 
In March 2025, CoAL held an event, ‘Lesbians are fighting back in Australasia, too’, at the UN online CSW69 NGO Virtual Forum. The Forum, and concurrent Conference in New York, aimed to review any progress since the last International Women’s Conference held in Beijing in 1995.
 
Sand Hall, a CoAL member who had been present at the Beijing Conference, presented a photo essay that included images of the Lesbian Tent (some are on this website). We believe it was the first time there was a visible lesbian presence at a UN conference and in China.
 

SPEAKERS:    Susan Hawthorne, CoAL convenor

                        Sand Hall, CoAL member

                        Jan Rivers, LAVA (Lesbians Action for Visibility Aotearoa)

                        Anna Kerr, Feminist Legal Clinic (Australia) and Convenor, WDI Aust

A link to the recording is here.

4th UN UPR (Universal Periodic Review) cycle:  “other stakeholders” 

It’s Australia’s turn for review as a UN Member State. In mid-July 2024, CoAL joined wirh a number of Australian organisations to submit a Shadow Report to the Australian government’s one, only our version of the facts outlines Australia’s poor recent performance in protecting human rights for women.

Read more about our Shadow Report at ‘Australian feminists unite for UN shadow report: Why women’s voices matter in international human rights’ on the AAWAA website.

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Lesbian Herstory

You can find a timeline we have prepared about lesbian herstory, from antiquity to now, at this link.

Please contact us with your feedback on any errors or omissions you may find (there are many omissions, as we could spend a lifetime researching lesbians in herstory, but we are also busy putting out political fires and tending to our  other personal needs). Thanks!

Idet & Ruiu ('Homosexuality', Wikipedia)