Helping Aussie women communicate from a #PositionOfStrength

Following a sensational launch of #PositionOfStrength earlier this year, @TwitterAU and @WomensAgenda expanded our women’s empowerment initiative to include well-attended events in Melbourne and Canberra — and we even got a shoutout from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (@JulieBishopMP) during her visit to Twitter HQ in San Francisco!

#PositionOfStrength aims to engage and empower women while educating them how to use Twitter as a platform to build their professional and personal brand. The program enables women to project and protect their voices online, and grow their influence worldwide. After kicking off in Sydney, we took the campaign to Melbourne and Canberra. In Melbourne, more than 100 men and women gathered at Australia Post headquarters (@auspost) for our second #PositionOfStrength workshop and Soapbox.

Photograph by Janusz Molinski. Julie Inman Grant, Twitter Director of Public Policy for Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia; Angela Priestley, Women’s Agenda Associate Editor.

Photograph by Janusz Molinski. From left to right: Lucy Thomas, Susan McLean, Andrea Clarke, Cyan Ta’eed, Catherine Walsh, Lisa Annese, Jane Gilmore, Angela Priestley, Kate Ashmor, Dr Anne Aly, Rosie Thomas, Julie Inman Grant.

@WomensAgenda’s Angela Priestley (@angelapriestly) wrote about the Melbourne Soapbox, asserting that the women who participated derived great value and inspiration from the event.

@WomensAgenda has continued to feature each of the Soapbox presentations on their website, including those by Jane Gilmore, Kate Ashmor, Susan McLean, Lisa Annese, and Andrea Clarke. Our long-time safety partners Rosie and Lucy Thomas (co-CEOs of Project Rockit!) also delivered an inspiring Soapbox.

As part of National Stay Safe Online Week in Australia, we hosted a #PositionOfStrength workshop and panel Q&A at The National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. The workshop provided Twitter safety tips and best practices on how to utilise some of Twitter’s advanced features — multi-photo uploads, native video, @periscopeco, and @vine — to engage with users in creative ways.

Photograph by Tate Needham, Julie Inman Grant, Twitter Director of Public Policy for Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia; Flip Prior, Media Partnerships for News and Government.

The panel Q&A featured the Children’s eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon (@macgibbon) and Federal Labor MP Clare O’Neil (@clare_oneil_MP). @macgibbon discussed how social media enables people to be heard and how it’s important to encourage women to speak their minds online.

@clare_oneil_MP asserted that issues affecting women — like discrimination and gender-based harassment — are connected and a direct reflection of deeper societal issues.

Both panellists saw awareness-raising efforts and positive role modelling as fundamental to promoting and protecting women both online and offline. They concurred that platforms like Twitter can and do provide opportunities to start these important societal conversations — but should be supplemented with educational empowerment programmes like #PositionOfStrength.

This post was co-authored by Kara Hinesley (@karahinesley), Public Policy Fellow.