Recent Australian Feminist Historiography

Abstract

Since 1970 there has been in Australia considerable feminist interest in searching out the female past in a specifically national framework. There, as elsewhere, the initial Women's Liberation Movement contained many highly educated women, many of whom were working as students and teachers in some field of tertiary education. The Women's Movement has always been concerned to publicize and publish itself, and very early there were women's newspapers, notably Vashti's Voice in Victoria and Me Jane in New South Wales, joined subsequently by Mabel, another national paper. These papers were populist and eclectic and widely read. There also exist several feminist journals which deal with the study of women: Refractory Girl, which began as 'a women's studies journal', and in 1976 became 'a journal of radical feminist thought'; Hecate, a women's interdisciplinary journal, and most recently Working Papers in Sex, Science and Culture which is concerned with recent Marxist theories of ideology and psychoanalysis. Feminist writing and publishing, both academic and journalistic, are flourishing in Australia. The political developments and splits within the Women's Movement are reflected in newspapers and journals, but in general publications have retained their collective organisation and are pluralistic, even contradictory, in the feminist views they present. One thing has remained consistent, however; the majority of feminist writers are both political activists and possess university education and many are still working within universities or similar establishments. During the past seven years many feminists have produced theses, journal articles and monographs which examine specific instances of women's struggles, in the workforce, in unions, in political parties, for the vote and education, as well as other issues affecting women. Feminists have sought out and interviewed women who were politically active during the interwar period and earlier in strikes, and in various other trades union struggles and campaigns. Much of this oral history has been published in Me Jane and Mabel as short feature articles. The overwhelming interest of women historians has been in urban women and women in the workforce. In 1975 My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann: Women and Work in Australia, by Beverly Kingston, and Gentle Invaders: Women at Work in Australia 1788-1974 by Edna Ryan and Anne Conlon, were published, and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History published an anthology of feminist labour history entitled Women at Work, edited by Ann Curthoys, Susan Eade and Peter Spearritt. The first two books may in some ways be considered complementary.