Jocelynne Scutt

What do you do when you see gender injustice …and then can’t make yourself ‘unsee’ it? 

Well, if you are a leading feminist lawyer such as Jocelynne Scutt you dedicate your life to fighting it.

Jocelynne Scutt AO first grabbed media attention in her 30’s when she became one of Australia’s most prominent female barristers in the 1980’s.

In addition to her relentless push for legal reforms to end discrimination against women, she also wrote countless books on feminist themes: including the ‘splendours’ of a free and autonomous life as a ‘Singular Women’; and the taboo subject of fertility pressures in her ground-breaking book, ‘The Baby Machine’. 

Throughout her long career Jocelyne has continued to write with great conviction and authority about women, power and sexual politics, and most recently about laws around women’s bodies and cosmetic surgery.

She served as Sex Discrimination Commissioner in Tasmania, then later as a judge on the high court in Fiji. Jocelynne now lives in Cambridge in the UK, where she is a Member of the English Bar, an elected Counsellor on the Cambridgeshire County Council, and a member of the British Labour Party. 

In her 70’s and just as energetic as ever, Jocelynne is still teaching law, these days at Buckingham University. 

BroadTalk is presented by Virginia Haussegger AM. It is produced by Martyn Pearce for BroadTalk Media.

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