Feminist protest and maternity at Pine Gap women's peace camp, Australia 1983

Abstract

Synopsis In November 1983, eight hundred women converged in the central Australian desert to stage a two-week protest against the presence of the U.S. military installation at Pine Gap. Part of a global women's protest against militarism and the dangers of nuclear war keenly felt in the early 1980s, I argue that in its organisational practices and ideological conflicts this event can be regarded as a microcosm of second-wave Australian feminism. In this paper I look at the function of maternity. While Pine Gap is often publicly remembered for its lesbian presence, when mothers became protestors their political agency was often recognised at the cost of their maternity. And yet maternalism was a major discursive argument for the protest. Drawing on newspapers and newsletters, pillowcases and poetry, mothers and memory, this paper seeks to create a sense of the controversial place of maternity, its uses and limits, in this particular event of 1980s feminism.