Mark Latham.

A change.org petition has been launched against the Australian Financial Review to stop publishing former Labor Leader Mark Latham's "offensive and derogatory" articles on female journalists.

The petition, created on Tuesday night by Melbourne author and Daily Life contributor Kasey Edwards, calls on the AFR to drop Latham as a columnist and to cease promoting further sexist, personal attacks on women on its website.

"No quality news organisation should publish dangerously personal, underhanded attacks on female journalists and pretend they are legitimate comment," writes Edwards.

Last month, the AFR - owned by Fairfax Media, which also publishes this site - ran an article by Latham titled 'Why Left Feminists Don't Like Kids'. The piece, which has since been heavily criticised on social media, slammed Pryor for revealing in a Good Weekend column that she manages her workload as a journalist, medical student and mother of two with the help of "caffeine and antidepressants".


"Why do people like this have children in the first place?" he wrote, "How will the children feel when they grow up and learn that they pushed their mother onto anti-depressants?"

On Tuesday, in a new AFR column titled 'Mum bloggers show dark side of feminist parenting', Latham targeted broadcaster and journalist Sarah MacDonald in response to her recent Daily Life article on parenting stereotypes.

"In the name of gender equality, left-feminism is breeding a generation of shirtless, tone-deaf, overweight, pizza-eating dummie," he wrote.

It is understood that complaints made by MacDonald to AFR editor Michael Stutchbury about the offensive nature of the column were ignored.

The final joke. We rang @FinancialReview re Latham slur on me & kids. An Editor called my husband back in 5 min. I still waiting 7 hours on — Sarah Macdonald (@sarahvmac) December 9, 2014



Edwards states on her change.org petition that Latham has a troubling history of publicly attacking female jouranlists, including News Ltd columnist Janet Albrecthsen, whom he infamously referred to as "a skanky ho".

"It's tempting to dismiss Mr Latham's articles as the pitiable ramblings of a political has-been desperate for relevance. But publishing his repugnant views on the pages of the AFR legitimises sexist, offensive commentary that is designed to attract outrage and readers — but contributes nothing to public discussion, " wrote Edwards in her change.org petition.

"And this from an organisation that purports to "support and promote" women through its annual "Women of Influence" competition."

Sign Kasey Edwards' change.org petition here.