Amani Haydar is an award-winning author, visual artist, advocate for women’s health and safety and a former lawyer, based in western Sydney on Dharug land. In 2018 Amani’s self-portrait titled Insert Headline Here was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. As an active visual artist and former Archibald Prize finalist, Amani collaborates with organisations like Settlement Services International (SSI) and the Older Women’s Network to deliver visual arts and storytelling workshops for people from migrant communities. Her illustrations have been featured in publications such as Admissions: Voices within Mental Health, The Very Best Doughnut by Randa Abdel-Fattah, Safar by Sarah Malik and The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism by Ghassan Hage.

Amani’s ground-breaking feminist memoir The Mother Wound (Pan Macmillan, 2021) explores the effects of domestic abuse and state-sanctioned violence on women and has received several awards including the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2022 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and it was also long-listed for The Walkley Book Award in 2021. The Mother Wound has recently been translated into Arabic, allowing Arabic readers worldwide to engage with the Arab-Australian experience. Amani’s writing has also been featured in collections such as Racism, Arab Australian Other, Sweatshop Women Volume Two, and anthology After Australia.

Amani was the recipient of the 2021 UTS Faculty of Law Alumni Award and was named Local Woman of the Year for Bankstown at the 2020 NSW Premier’s Woman of the Year Awards in recognition of her advocacy against domestic violence. Drawing on her lived experiences and legal background, Amani has served on the boards of Bankstown Women’s Health Centre and the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights.

You can find Amani on Instagram here

The Older Women’s Network (OWN) has been a vital, strong and consistent voice for older women in NSW for more than 37 years.

OWN have been at the forefront of progressive change, activism and advocacy since their humble beginnings when a group of women from the NSW Combined Pensioners Association decided to do something for older women in 1985.

OWN have gone from strength to strength as a dynamic members-led organisation expanding throughout NSW with around 18 groups.

Over the years, OWN has developed services and resources for older women and has written and contributed to numerous influential reports on key issues for older women such as income security, homelessness, ageism, wellbeing, abuse of older people and domestic violence. OWN have played a big part in putting these issues at the forefront of public policy debates. Equally important is OWN’s history of friendship, mutual support and, of course, fun!