The Scarlet Letter | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Renata Alexander
Family law isn’t just about courtrooms and contracts—it’s about real people, real emotions, and real challenges. In this episode, we sit down with Monash Law alumna Dr Renata Alexander. Growing up in a home of Holocaust survivors, Dr Alexander learned early on about resilience, justice, and the strength of the human spirit. These values have shaped her career in family law, where she helps people navigate some of life’s most difficult moments with compassion and clarity. Dr Alexander offers insights on the complexities of family relationships, the legal protections that matter most, and the emotional weight of legal decisions.
First published 2017.
The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.
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Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 1 |Episode 6 | Renata Alexander
Tamara Wilkinson: [00:00:00] Good morning, we're Tamara Wilkinson
Becky Batagol: and Becky Batagol,
Tamara Wilkinson: and welcome to the next episode of The Scarlet Letter, the podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. As we're beginning this podcast series by interviewing members of the Feminist Legal Studies Group.
In today's episode, we're focusing on the work of our family violence researchers. One of the six areas of research strength we have in our feminist legal studies group. Our six areas of particular research strength are family violence, alcohol, drugs, and gender, the impact of energy policy and climate change upon women, Women's economic empowerment, including labor rights, taxation, unpaid work, and [00:01:00] privacy.
Women, poverty, and the international movement. And reproductive health and abortion reform. Joining me in the interviewing chair is Becky Batagol, co convener of our Feminist Legal Studies group, and whose work also focuses on family violence.
Becky Batagol: Today, we're interviewing barrister, academic, and card carrying feminist, Dr.
Renata Alexander. Renata is the leader of our family violence discipline group here at Monash.
Tamara Wilkinson: Renata's main areas of research and practice is family law. Renata has been a barrister at the Victorian Bar since 2002. She's also a senior lecturer teaching various undergraduate and postgraduate subjects such as parents, children and the state.
professional practice and forensic family law. Renata has worked as an in house family lawyer with Victorian Legal Aid before working as the Deputy Registrar for the Family Court of Australia. Renata then went to the Victorian Bar in November 2002 where she practices on a part time basis given her [00:02:00] teaching and academic commitments.
Becky Batagol: Welcome Renata.
Tamara Wilkinson: Thank you. Perhaps you could start by telling us how you were introduced to
Renata Alexander: feminism. I grew up in a family that were Holocaust survivors that came to 1960s and I came as a child, I was five years old. And I think my sister and I were imbued with that sense of gender equality cultural integration and also socialism.
So from an early age I went to the Socialist Zionist Youth Group and there were certainly lots of the feminist seeds planted in that time, which was in the sixties and the early seventies. The other thing I think that helped with developing my feminist ideas was Monash University, dare I say the law school in the seventies, so I started here in 1973.
I was finding some of the subjects quite difficult, particularly contract, I remember. And property was very difficult for me. It didn't sit well with [00:03:00] my ideas. And In 1976, I was a founding member of Feminist Lawyers. So Feminist Lawyers started here, notwithstanding what the University of Melbourne might say.
It was a Monash Law School initiative. There were a number of female students who were in our fourth and fifth year, and we set up the first women in law conference. And one of the founding members, Bibby Lofte still has a poster, and it talks about the issues that we talked about at that conference and the speakers and they were family violence, pretty much exactly what we're talking about now.
Rape and sexual assault, gender equality, women in the workforce, particularly in the legal profession. Because at that time we only had, this might seem minor, we only had two toilets for female students in the entire law building.
Becky Batagol: Wow.
Renata Alexander: So I guess they were the sort of the early seeds of my involvement in feminism, just pretty much.
And [00:04:00] also I remember reading the women's room when I was in about fourth year and going to a meeting at the union building, what I call the union building, which is the campus centre. And there was a women's room up there and you could sit and chat and talk to like minded females, really. We didn't really accept any boys in feminist groups.
Tamara Wilkinson: So when Becky said you're a card carrying feminist, that's certainly not an exaggeration.
Renata Alexander: No, I know. I'm very proud. That's excellent. And over the years too, I think I've chosen which battles I'm going to fight. So I think I was far more, I wouldn't say radical, but I was much more assertive when I was younger.
And I think now I'm more selective about I think about the long term, the war, rather than about the individual obstacles along the way.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, certainly, yeah. Why do you think that feminist ideas resonated with you particularly? You mentioned a bit about socialism, obviously the two go well [00:05:00] together.
Is that sort of the crux of it?
Renata Alexander: I think so. I think it was that left wing liberal, also coming from, a history of, a cultural history of persecution. And and I think also there were some really important writers in the seventies and eighties that resonated with me. I spent a year I'm not a big fiction reader, but I spent a year only reading women writers.
I decided, I That only lasted for 12 months. But I just thought, it almost sounds clichéd, but people from the 70s and 80s, the works from those times were very, very important to me. Yeah. And it wasn't that I was living in an oppressed relationship or anything, or my, my family background was very healthy and supportive.
I just something about Not just feminism, but particularly about family violence, and about child abuse from when I started pretty much in 1977 and then [00:06:00] when I did my articles in 1978.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah.
Becky Batagol: Now Renata, you're sitting here with the most fabulous pair of swirly pink and purple tights, and you're known for your collection of outrageous tights.
And they certainly brighten most outfits you wear. Have you ever gotten to trouble for wearing bright tights? I haven't. I got into trouble for wearing bright tights, but in the early 80s there was a front page story that a senior solicitor in the family court was dressed down or criticised for wearing a pantsuit.
Renata Alexander: And interestingly she went on to become a judge of the county court. But when that became front page news, the delegation of feminist lawyers, led by me, at the family court, went to see the senior judge and said, Do you have a problem? What's the issue about dress code? Because he was the judge who'd criticised her.
And I think he was quite taken by our assertiveness because he said, looked [00:07:00] at me and said, Renata, I look forward to seeing your legs in my court. I should have taken it, I should have recorded that. And he said, I don't mean that in any bad way, I just you added a splash of colour to my courtroom. So I thought that was very sweet.
And I've never ever had an issue about wearing ties. I've been called a harlequin by a certain judge. I thought he was calling me a harlot. That he made it quite clear he was calling me a harlequin and I've pretty much been accepted because the rest of me is quite demure and conventional so that just adds a bit of colour but I haven't had any trouble.
Becky Batagol: But when you were a legal aid lawyer in the 1980s you were told to sit down girly by a male judge. Can you tell us that story and what that experience was like as a young lawyer and how it affected you?
Renata Alexander: Yes, it was a case I was appearing in front of a judicial registrar. It was like an associate judge in a family court.[00:08:00]
There were, it was an interim hearing by submissions. I was a solicitor there at legal age. The applicant had finished his submissions and I got up with my client sitting behind me to make some submissions about this case, a parenting case, and the associate judge just said judicial registrar said to me.
It's a damn girly, I haven't finished and I thought he had finished and he wasn't chastising me for interrupting and not letting the first solicitor or barrister speak. It was because he hadn't finished talking about football. So he and the, my male opponent had a chat about who won what on the Saturday night and the Sunday afternoon and then he looked at me and said now you can start.
After that, I was fairly outraged and I was already 30 years old and I was being called a girly. But more, more seriously, just that amazing sense of being put down, I was a [00:09:00] female, it was irrelevant, it was unrelated to, I obviously wasn't part of the boys talk about football. Nothing to do with my client, who was obviously distressed, although the outcome was fine.
We had a feminist lawyers meeting. that week and I told the story and that's where the column came from, of that incident. We were writing, and we still do write, a column for the alternative law journal called Sit Down Girlie. So I'm the original girlie.
Becky Batagol: And tell me about that column today.
Renata Alexander: It's shared primarily a couple of people have been writing it and they pretty much scan anything to do with feminist issues, law issues. It's a very popular Primarily written by Beth Wilson. And she has amazing pseudonyms. They were just very amusing. And every five years or so, they do a compendium of the columns so you can read all the pieces.
And every few years, someone, and that incident happened in the mid eighties. [00:10:00] Every few years, someone puts their hand up and says, Oh, I'm the girlie. And then I have to write a rejoinder and say no, it's actually me. It's very funny. I don't know why there's this issue about ownership of being a girl from the 80s.
But it's definitely me, because I was there. The original
Tamara Wilkinson: girl.
Renata Alexander: The
Tamara Wilkinson: original girl. The topics that you focus on, your areas of expertise are very interesting. Can you tell us a bit about that and a bit about how feminism has influenced your work?
Renata Alexander: I've pretty much concentrated in my practice and in my teaching and research on family violence.
And perhaps it came from when I was doing articles. I was article to a single practitioner who was very good, but we were in the same office. He did a lot of family law. And I think it was triggered there. I also did family law as an undergraduate elective here at Monash. But there was something [00:11:00] always about family violence and child abuse particularly that talked about power dynamics and the imbalance of power and the role of women.
And I was interested in the division of labour and gender stereotypes. And so that's what I concentrated on pretty much from When I did my, I did a post graduate diploma in family law, which we used to run in the early 80s and then I did my masters on family violence. It was called domestic violence then.
And they were called battered women and my whole thesis was about remedies for battered women. And then that progressed and I did my PhD on gender issues with a big focus on family violence. So that does sit very well with feminism, and really, in a way, it's a little bit old school really, it's what I would call the second wave of feminism.
The post modern feminist framework for me doesn't sit as well with [00:12:00] what I've been researching, so I'm concentrating really on how women get by and how they survive violent relationships, what happens to their children, what happens to them in terms of their financial position, in terms of their emotional well being.
And so that's what I do in practice when I can, and primarily what I do in my research and publishing, and also my students.
Becky Batagol: Renata, when I first read your work, when I was a PhD student, I think you had done Not long finished. I read a series of strong and well argued pieces from the late 1990s on why family violence cases shouldn't go to family mediation or family dispute resolution as we call it now.
Those articles really stuck with me and they still do today. Can you explain your arguments then and 20 years on do you still agree with what you wrote then? Yes, I still do agree. I'm a one person lobbyist against family dispute [00:13:00] resolution in family law. Unfortunately, it became compulsory in 2006, so I lost that battle with some exemptions of course.
Renata Alexander: But one of my areas was looking at the mediation process and looking at outcomes, so the process had some issues about who the mediators were, their training, their backgrounds and disciplines. Also about the participants in mediation that generally women, and without generalising, but generally women.
assertive, less able to advocate for themselves, and more interested in maintaining relationships rather than creating conflict, and more focused on children than themselves. Men tend to be more assertive about their own interests and their own needs. And and then I looked at outcomes and the longevity of mediated outcomes, and often There were some analyses done by the [00:14:00] Australian Institute of Family Studies where, and it's hard to compare, but generally in property cases, women were agreeing to less than they would have got had they litigated.
And of course litigation's got issues about cost and emotion and delay and waiting periods, but women were forfeiting entitlements. And they were also agreeing to parenting regimes that were not really but we're really to allay or to assuage a fairly assertive or aggressive partner. So my views haven't really changed.
There are exemptions now to family dispute resolution to do with family violence, but I, there are some mediators and FDR practitioners, family dispute resolution practitioners, who will still mediate pretty much anyone. And I don't think there's consistency in terms of screening. And family violence is a serious contraindicator, along with other issues.
So I still have that problem about power imbalance, about who the [00:15:00] mediators are, sole mediators versus co mediators and their backgrounds, about the outcomes. And again I'm not saying litigation is the answer, but it's really just one tool. And I think it's actually not being as, as used as people had hoped when the Act was changed in 2006.
So the short answer is, that's a long answer. The short answer is yes, I'm still opposed to FDR. Okay.
Tamara Wilkinson: Renata, you've been volunteering at community legal centres for over 40 years, especially at St Kilda Legal Service where you've been a volunteer since 1976 when you were a fourth year law student. You're one of the longest serving legal service volunteers in Victoria.
Yeah. And for this work you've received the Public Interest Law Clearinghouse's Community Legal Centre Award in 2000 and the Centenary Medal in 2001, which recognises citizens who have contributed to Australian society or government. Do you see any connection between this work and your [00:16:00] feminism?
Renata Alexander: I think all of us, whether whatever kind of, we've had or what our profession is, I think we need to give back somehow to the community.
And because I had that strong sense of social justice, through my parents and my sister, I've always wanted to work in the community, so I've worked at a community legal centre. It happens to be my local one where I grew up and I went to school and I know the area really well. And I think, even if you're doing the fairly mundane cases, I might see three or four clients each week and I'll do a divorce or a car accident or something.
I think there are issues there that are related to power imbalance between the property, we have a lot of tenants, we have a lot of consumers, a lot of people who are in debt. We have a lot of clients who might have child abuse or family violence or intervention order cases, so I do those. So I [00:17:00] think there is, it doesn't mean I have to walk around with a sign saying I'm a feminist left wing, but I think those principles come out and that's just a really day to day, something that you can do that actually makes a difference. You don't have to write a paper about it. You don't have to say you're changing the world. You're just helping three or four people a week. And that's just as useful, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
Becky Batagol: And Renata, your practice as a lawyer covers CLC work. You also work in our professional practice program here, supervising law students learning to do legal practice, and also you're a barrister. Have you ever been asked by a client to do something that contradicts your feminist values, and what do you do in that circumstance?
Renata Alexander: It's interesting, as a barrister I usually don't get those sort of cases, because I think people know that I don't. But I also have the principle of first cab off the rang. I haven't really had clients that have been challenging to my values. I may have acted in maybe half a [00:18:00] dozen cases for abusive men.
And that's okay too, because They're entitled to some legal advice and they're entitled to representation. Don't cut people off immediately by saying no, you don't sit comfortably with my principles. Obviously there are cases that I wouldn't do if they were a real affront to, to what I believe in, but I haven't had that situation.
What about in
Becky Batagol: your community legal
Renata Alexander: centre practice, has that happened? It has happened, and one notable thing happened. A woman came in for some legal advice. I was the only lawyer, it was during the day actually, when I was a day time volunteer. And she came in and she said, I need some legal advice. I said, that's fine.
And she said, I don't want to speak to you. any Jewish people. I don't want to speak to a woman. And because she was Polish, she said, I don't want to speak to anyone who has any connection to the Polish [00:19:00] community. And I speak Polish. I'm not a member of the Polish community, but I do speak Polish. And I got up and I did a tap dance.
I swear this is true. And I said, this is your lucky day. All three of those things. And she reported me to the management, but that was about it. That was in the, it was in the legal service. That's really the only time I've had that kind of confrontation. Yeah. Wow.
Becky Batagol: Not as much as I would have thought, as No, I haven't,
Renata Alexander: no, I haven't.
And even in court, whether by clients or, Look, there are clients who might say things I don't agree with, and I will tell them I may not agree, but I still have to focus on what their case is about. And certainly through legal service, the same. I don't just comply and say, yes, you're right.
I'll tell them what my view is and say, look, I don't agree with that. But we still have to see what, try to work out an [00:20:00] outcome.
Becky Batagol: Thank you Renata, I've learnt so much more. I've been a colleague of yours for the last 10 years or so and I've learnt so much more in the last 15 minutes than I have in the last 10 years about some of that.
Thank you very much, really enjoyed that. Thank
Tamara Wilkinson: you for having me. And thank you all for listening to The Scarlet Letter.