Abstract
AbstractThe decades from the 1940s to the 1960s were ones of increasing contacts between women of India and Australia. These were not built on a shared British colonial history, but on commitments to visions circulating globally of equality between races, sexes, and classes. Kapila Khandvala from Bombay and Lucy Woodcock from Sydney were two women who met during such campaigns. Interacting roughly on an equal footing, they were aware of each other's activism in the Second World War and the emerging Cold War. Khandvala and Woodcock both made major contributions to the women's movements of their countries, yet have been largely forgotten in recent histories, as have links between their countries. We analyse their interactions, views, and practices on issues to which they devoted their lives: women's rights, progressive education, and peace. Their beliefs and practices on each were shaped by their respective local contexts, although they shared ideologies that were circulating internationally. These kept them in contact over many years, during which Kapila built networks that brought Australians into the sphere of Indian women's awareness, while Lucy, in addition to her continuing contacts with Kapila, travelled to China and consolidated links between Australian and Chinese women in Sydney. Their activist world was centred not in Western Europe, but in a new Asia that linked Australia and India. Our comparative study of the work and interactions of these two activist women offers strategies for working on global histories, where collaborative research and analysis is conducted in both colonizing and colonized countries.
Highlights
Oppositional livesOutlining the lives of these two remarkable women is more than scene setting. It illuminates the distance between these women and the conventional mores of their organizations
HEATHER GOODALL AND DEVLEENA GHOSH offers strategies for working on global histories, where collaborative research and analysis is conducted in both colonizing and colonized countries
There had been some contact between women from Australia and India from the mid-nineteenth century, but these interactions had been limited to three types
Summary
Outlining the lives of these two remarkable women is more than scene setting. It illuminates the distance between these women and the conventional mores of their organizations. Lucy was one of the founders of the NSW Teachers Federation in 1918, having honed her advocacy skills by organizing the Night School Students at Sydney University There she met Sam Lewis, a fellow teacher and CPA member, who became a lifelong friend.[26]. 32 Autobiographical note by Kapila and dated 7 January 1946 in Bombay, and attached to the draft of Kapila’s plenary speech to the Second Australian Women’s Charter Conference, August 1946, Jessie Street Papers, MS 2683/3/1211-2, NLA. She focused first on the conditions of women in nursing—an all-female workforce in India at that time—before beginning a campaign for teachers, where the gendered pay gap was not as widespread or systematic as it was in Australia Both Kapila and Lucy considered economic justice and the independence of women the fundamental measure of any progress, though they worked in differing local conditions. 36 Dymphna Cusack, ‘Foreword’ to Mitchell, 50 Years of Feminist Achievement, p. iv. 37 Penelope Johnson, 1986: ‘Gender, Class and Work: The Council of Action for Equal Pay and the Equal Pay Campaign in Australia During World War II’, Labour History, Vol 50, May: 132–146
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