Ruby Hamad: Why do so few men turn up to hear women speak?

But the seriousness of the subject matter were not all that these sessions had in common. Disappointingly, both had a dire lack of men in the audience. Yes, as reluctant as I am to make this about men, their glaring absence is important.

Why? Because it means men are still not listening when women speak about our experiences in a world dominated by men and male violence.

To be clear, I am not saying more men need to take up space in feminist or women-oriented spaces. All About Women, and similar events, are vital for giving a public platform to women (although there was certainly room for improvement in its diversity).

Sure, All About Women is all about women. But that does not mean it is only for women. Do men read the tile of such an event and equate it with a 'girly' get together, something if not entirely frivolous then certainly inconsequential to their own lives?

Maybe men don't want to spend the day sitting in silence while they are subject to a session of shaming for the sins of their sex? (damn, I didn't plan for all of those S's) Just prop up a couple of male straw dummies. At the end of the thing, you can just burn them.

I don't know exactly what it is that men seem to think women talk about on occasions like this. But I can tell them that it is a tragedy that not enough of them were present to hear Jennifer Clement reveal that Mexican police treat the theft of a car with far more gravity than the theft of a daughter. And how, in Mexico and around the world, the line of visitors for men's prisons is always so long, it forms a human snake, while the women prisoners wait week after week in vain, as the outside world forgets them.

Men - who largely run the criminal justice system - should know, as Orange Is The New Black writer Piper Kerman revealed, that women get handed harsher sentences than men for minor crimes. And that women - particularly Indigenous women and women of colour - are the fastest growing prison demographic.

Meanwhile, white women, the originators and primary benefactors of feminism, get slaps on the wrist or "treatment" for offenses that would get men between 5-20 year sentences. It's those same men who run the criminal justice system that award women lifetime alimony, grant custody to unfit mothers, award ruinous child support obligations against men, and deny visitation to fathers, no matter how much support they pay.

And men, who still dominate science and politics really needed to hear the words of Bundjalong woman Amelia Telford as she described how Indigenous women are hardest hit by climate change.

But as long as men are not there to hear women say these things, they will continue to think that women exaggerate their experiences, that the "gender card" is, as Charlotte Wood noted, some sort of devious trick women play to get an unfair advantage.

And women's lives will continue to be regarded as somehow marginal and extraneous to the 'real' goings-on in the world. As if half the world's population is somehow a niche market.

She of course fails to see the irrationality of "half the world's population" being told to shut up and listen at an event that's "All About the Half of the World's Population That Doesn't Include Me."

When, during my conversation with Jennifer Clement, one of the few male audience members made his way to the microphone and apologised the lack of men, I put a call out to the audience, asking them to make a note to bring at least one male friend or relative along to next year's festival, because men need to be privy to these conversations. And I would like to do so again here.

Be privy to these conversations...but don't participate.

It is astounding to me that men think they have little gain from an event such as this. Men need to hear first-hand what the world is like for women. Men need to listen while women speak.

The fact that so many still don't is a testament to how little they think we and our voices matter. And, as Jennifer Clement pointed out, nothing will change until women's lives matter more.

Why should any man place a woman's life above his own?