Mainstream Women's Organisations in Australia: the challenges of national and international co-operation after the Great War

Abstract

Leila Rupp has observed that after the Great War, the major transnational women's organisations—the International Council of Women and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance—‘encountered difficulty in coming back together’. The psychological and emotional effects of mobilisation for a total war effort among women in the combatant nations were arguably as hard to dismantle as the armies and administrative infrastructure. In Australia, although deep divisions remained among activist women, many remained convinced that maternalism could provide the basis for national and international regeneration. The proliferation of new mass organisations as well as the growth of the older ones in the five years after the armistice is evidence of renewed energy and a willingness to reassess Australian women's international identity and responsibilities. This article is principally concerned with struggles during this period among those mainstream organisations affiliated with the state-based National Councils of Women (NCWs), and through them, with the International Council of Women. Because the NCWs were the means by which most Australian women's organisations were brought to engage with international issues, an understanding of their difficulties and advances can show how isolated and provincial communities of women on the far edge of the ‘Euro-American arena’ developed some appreciation of the efforts being made by their sex to remould the post-war world.