Fighting to be seen and heard

Abstract

In this article, I record the perspectives of four Western Australian women peace activists, each over 70 years old, who have been committed to pacifism since childhood. The article is written out of a desire to make visible women’s struggles, resistances, and active defiances. In particular, the article seeks to alert Australian women to their own histories of political activism, and to trace links between the so-called first and second waves of feminism by providing fresh insight into the political activities of Australian women during the middle decades of this century, a period commonly held to be an interregnum between two distinct waves of feminist activism. Consequently, the article focuses on the women’s own accounts of their lives as peace activists, paying particular attention to the processes of their politicisation and to the nature of their local and international support networks, in an attempt to uncover how they were each able to resist mainstream ideologies in their active pursuit of peace.