I am not a person who condones or believes in violence as an appropriate response.

As a Green, one of our four pillars is peace and non-violence.

And yet, there is an aspect of female resilience that is firm and assertive but not violent.

A friend of mine has been training in martial arts and self-defence beside his daughter.

Recently this friend described to me how his daughter had been harassed and bullied by some boys at her school, and how she had been called into the principal’s office for using her self-defence skills to silence her bullies.

My friend beamed with pride at his daughter’s response and reassured her that she had every right to stand up for herself. She said no, enough.

This got me thinking, how have I responded?

Like most women, I have been harassed, dismissed, underestimated, the story goes on.

The young girl and adolescent I was, has become a woman who is ready to join the conversation in her own right.

I look at the inspirational and resilient women and girls all around me and see so much to celebrate.

But I have not yet faced question time in the Australian senate. Last year, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young faced slurs from a male colleague in front of the entire nation. A male colleague who will now contest this very state election.

But this was not all.

Women left, and continue to leave, the Liberal Party in droves.

Meanwhile, the Nationals were focused elsewhere on ‘relationships’ with their staff and ‘sugar babies’.

The Minister for Women herself, Kelly O’Dwyer, fended off attempts on her job barely two weeks into her maternity leave. Turns out resilience is necessary.

What woman would enter politics at a time like this?

But there were positives.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters became the first woman to breastfeed in the senate, the GST on women’s sanitary products was removed, women won all sorts of awards for the first time and the Greens' Mehreen Faruqi was the first Muslim woman to become an Australian senator.

Why is this important? Because not all Australian women are white or Christian.

This was a sign of our parliament shifting ever so slightly to reflect the people it represents.

If you ask me who my feminist icons are (outside of politics), names like Michelle Law, Nakkiah Lui, Nayuka Gorrie and Ruby Hamad come to mind.

These women have two things in common, a razor sharp sense of humour and they are all women of colour. If you don’t know who they are, I highly recommend bringing them into your lives.

Michelle Law is currently showing the first season of her hit comedy Single Asian Female in Brisbane, while Nakkiah Lui’s latest work, How to Rule the World, is showing at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Theatre Company.

These women are skilled and unapologetically scathing, and rightly so. Voices like theirs have been locked out of the mainstream media, and even discussions on feminism.

Feminism is ultimately a quest for gender equality, a quest that is not done until equality has come to all women.

These women know the eyes of the next generation are on them.

I have also been inspired to see younger women leading the way forward.

Greta Thunberg sparked a global uprising that led to millions of children around the world making their demands for climate action heard.

Before her, 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki commanded the attention of the United Nations in 2008 for a whole six minutes, demanding action on climate change and Malala Yousafzai became a household name demanding equal access to education, putting her life and body on the line.

As a woman in my community and in politics, I stand on the shoulders of giants, and it has been refreshing and utterly invigorating to realise that the giant shoulders of tomorrow are already barging through the walls and glass ceilings of the patriarchy.