The Hidden World of Women

In today’s episode Emma chats with, Teresa from Kiind. Teresa is the Peer Navigation Lead at Kiind. Her job is to provide a space for families of people with disabilities the space to take first steps in accessing support and knowing they’re not alone. Her lived experience in navigating the world of diagnosis as a family member of a disabled person allows her to better connect to the people she’s working with. No one has been in yo...

March 31st is Transgender Day of Visibility. This is a day to show love and support to the Trans community. In honour of International Transgender Visibility Day, this special episode of Hidden World of Women, Emma speaks with Josey about her experiences raising her transgender child.  This heartfelt conversation explores the emotional journey of parenting a trans child, navigating change, and ensuring they feel unconditionally lov...

In this episode of The Hidden World of Women, host Emma chats with the incredible Allison Davies—a former neurologic music therapist, speaker, and advocate for neurodivergent individuals. Together, they dive into a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from:

• What is music therapy, and how can it support neurodivergent brains?
• Being diagnosed with AuDHD (Autism + ADHD) and what that journey looks like
• Do you need a form...

In this episode, Emma is joined by Fiona MacPherson to talk about her experiences with Lipoedema. This is a common connective tissue disorder that causes an abnormal buildup of fat that cannot be removed without surgery. Despite affecting 11% of women, Lipoedema remains underdiagnosed, often mistaken for obesity, and is not recognised by Medicare in Australia—leaving many women struggling to access affordable treatment. Many people...

We’re back for another year, and in our first episode, Emma wanted to talk about transitions. As schools, unis, and TAFEs go back, how do you cope when your baby isn’t a baby anymore?

When your child starts kindy, there’s an outpouring of support. But when they finish primary school, high school, or even uni, no one really talks about how scary change can be. In this episode, Emma McLarty joins the conversation to unpack these tran...

May is Ehlers-Danlos Syndorme (EDS) and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders (HSD) Awareness Month. During this month, people worldwide show their support for those with complex, multisystemic conditions. The awareness ribbon is black and white zebra striped pattern and zebra are used throughout the awareness campaign with phrases like #dazzletogether (a group of zebras is call a dazzle which I did not know and I LOVE!).

In this episod...

The latest instalment of The Hidden world of Women is a two part episode with Penny focusing on living as a visually impaired person. Penny is a mother of 5 children who doesn’t let having been blind since birth stop her doing anything! This is Part two of the episode, for part one follow the link at the end.

While being blind in a world made for sighted comes with its challenges Penny shares with  Emma how she tackles those challe...

The latest instalment of The Hidden world of Women is a two part episode with Penny focusing on living as a visually impaired person. Penny is a mother of 5 children who doesn’t let having been blind since birth stop her doing anything!

While being blind in a world made for sighted comes with its challenges Penny shares with  Emma how she tackles those challenges and Emma had a lot of questions - there were just so many things that...

It’s International Women’s Day today! This years theme is ‘Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress’ (find out more here https://www.un.org/en/observances/womens-day) As we’re a women’s organisation and gender based service we had to take the time to focus on acknowledging the 8th March. This year we struggled to come up with a topic for conversation particularly relating to accelerating progress until a post acknowledged Iris Apfel ...

In this weeks episode of the Hidden World of Women, Emma is joined by Serena. Serena is one unit away from completing her masters in counselling and was diagnosed with ADHD when she was 54. While this episode was going to focus on studying and careers with ADHD, in true ADHD fashion we went everywhere! This episode talks about Serena’s path to diagnosis, her experiences as a child of a mother with ADHD and what it’s like starting a...

In this week’s episode of the hidden world of Women we are joined by Ginger. Ginger has been in the adult industry for the last nine years and shared her experiences as a stripper and skimpy worker. She started stripping after returning from the UK and needing a job and source of income fast. The social expectation of a stripper is that they’re people who have “gone off the rails.” (A real thing people have said to Ginger!) in Gin...

In this weeks episode of the hidden world of women we continue the “Working Women” series. We’re joined by Kiah, a professional declutterer and organiser.

Kiah started her business in 2019 after her husband suggested that she use her skill set and passions and start Declutter with Kiah. With the support of her friends and family she started helping people make their spaces enjoyable to live in.

In this episode Emma and Kiah talk ab...

October sees the celebration of Frocktober for ovarian cancer awareness. As we’re a women's health organisation we had to do an episode talking about it.

In this episode of The Hidden World of Women, Emma is joined by former host: Melanie Brown!

Melanie shares her story losing a friend to ovarian cancer and caring for someone who was dying. This experience prompted her to start participating in Frocktober, a month long event of wea...

September is the month with the highest rate of births in Australia! In episode of Hidden World of Women we’re asking the question “what is a doula?” Emma sat down with Michelle to find out.

Michelle talked about how she felt like she’d been an unofficial doula for the last 20 years after helping advocate for her friends and family within the hospital system. She became a doula officially after she realised how difficult the medica...

It’s women’s health week! Given this podcast is brought to you by Women’s Health and Wellbeing Services (https://whws.org.au ) we couldn’t let it pass without a podcast episode related. This year’s theme is Grow Your Knowledge. As always there is a different prompt for each day and Monday is Check Me Out – women’s health checks including cervical screening self-collection, heart health and vulval self-checks. As we are still trying...

In this week’s episode of Working Women, Emma spoke with Kitty Woodhouse, The Maiden of Metal. Kitty shared her experience as a professional metal artist.

Emma asked about what drew Kitty to metal art (a broken gate that will one day be fixed….maybe) her experiences learning the craft (spite is apparently a good motivator) and the impact it has on Kitty’s mental health.

In te episode Kitty spoke about having PTSD (post traumatic st...

In this second episode of the ‘Working Women’ series Emma spoke to Linda Gerwar. Linda is a truck driver on the mines in Western Australia. Mining is something people talk about a lot but you don’t necessarily hear about the specific jobs on site. In this episode they talked about Linda’s career change later in life and the motivations for it, what drew her to the mining industry in particular and the parts of fly in fly out (FIFO...

Welcome back people! After a hiatus we return with a new series “Working Women.” This series was created after numerous conversations with women saying they don’t know what they want to be when they grow up (some of these women were in their 40s, 50s and 60s and some were in their teens and 20s) and one of the reasons; they just don’t know what’s out there. To try and shed some light on different employment options, this series wil...

November is PRIDE month in Australia. Pride month provides an opportunity to celebrate the impact that LGBTQIA+ community has had on the world. For many in the Pride community it is a chance to celebrate how far we have come as a society (while still recognising that we have a long way to go!)

In this episode I spoke with Emma Atkinson about her experience living in a heterosexual marriage with two children and then, after divorce,...