For Walkley Award winning journalist and UTS alumna Sarah Malik, words are her ultimate escape route that have paved a road to self-determination.
In line with the International Women’s Day 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme, the author of the recently published Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging came back to campus to share how she navigates the world through the lens of gender, culture and faith.
Malik, a presenter and writer for SBS Voices, opened her keynote with an appreciation for words and their power to shape a world full of nuance, opportunity and meaning.
“[Words] paved a road to self-determination from the limitations of a working-class adolescent, and the wider world that circumscribed it,” she said. “Words can illuminate or obscure, create sympathy or antipathy.
“I read not as a luxury but as if my life depended on it.”
In the library, just here, I developed a feminist consciousness.
For Malik, reading became the way she could contest the narratives that had defined what she learned was historically the ‘other’.
As a first-generation child of migrant parents, she spoke about the links between intersectionality and feminism, covering the layers of identity from class to race, gender and religion.
“Empowerment begins with a question. It begins with becoming comfortable with not having a place but being in the in-between place where things don’t always fit,” she said.
The TV presenter recounted her formative years as the shy, non-integrating Muslim migrant growing up in the Western suburbs of Sydney. She shared how she was able to make sense of the world by finding solace in other hybrids.
“I remember reading Dickens and Austin, while eating biryani,” she said. “My morning fasting meal was Vegemite on toast. I watched Beverly Hills 90210 and Bollywood movies. I listened to Qawwali and Bob Dylan… how could I recognise myself without imploding?
“I read.”
Sarah Malik’s memoir Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging.
Throughout her keynote, the UTS alumna was passionate to credit the role her alma mater played in nurturing her passions, writership and most recently, influencing her memoir Desi Girl.
“In the library, just here, I developed a feminist consciousness. UTS was my safe space, where I was an experimental petri dish, cultivating and becoming something new,” she said.
The event, hosted by the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion in partnership with UTS Advancement and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, featured a panel discussion joined by Associate Professor Eva Cheng, graduate architect Farra Zaed and was facilitated by The Hon. Professor Verity Firth AM, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice).
Professor Firth said Malik’s experience of intersectionality was the reality so many from the UTS community can connect with.
“We’re proud to be a university for all, with a diverse body of students and staff. Stories like this need to be heard,” she added.
Pictured from left to right: Sarah Malik, Farra Zaed, Associate Professor Eva Cheng and The Hon. Professor Verity Firth AM
In her address, Firth highlighted the four female distinguished professors in the Engineering and IT faculty and shed light on the Athena SWAN program which UTS received a Bronze Award for, in its progressing of gender equity in STEMM.
She spoke on the gender equity targets set by the university as part of their corporate planning processes.
“Across the board at the end of 2022, women academics increased to 46.8 per cent of all academic staff accounted for,” she said.
“We were very pleased to reach our overall target of 50 per cent undergraduate women students at UTS.”
In her closing remarks, Malik encouraged the audience to open their eyes to the threads that bind us together and urged all women to reclaim themselves, just like she did through her stories.
“I hope today is a celebration of your strength and your joy and the power of your words, our words, to speak, to keep fighting for the world we want to live in and the capacity of words to write new futures for ourselves,” she said.
“Let’s lean into ourselves, unapologetically.”
Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging by Sarah Malik. On sale now: $32.99
Photos by Bridie O’Kelly.
