In the early 1980s Robyn Rowland (1984:18-19, 132–8) identified a backlash by conservative women against Australian feminism, women who opposed abortion legislation or protested at the devaluation of the homemaker role by feminism. Today, the term ‘backlash’ is more popularly understood as a backlash by men (Faludi 1991), although Beatrice Faust's (1994:48) short polemic Backlash? Balderdash! contests the claim that Australian feminism is suffering a backlash, largely because of the country's institutionalised welfare system and compulsory voting. The women of ‘middle Australia’ noted the existence of a welfare state which encompasses alternatives to violent marriages in income support schemes and work opportunities for women, and of a public discourse which asserts women's educational and occupational choices. They commended greater economic choices (as managers, policewomen and in the defence forces, for example) and equal pay, a welfare system allowing a woman to raise a child apart from the father (Riley-Smith 1992:16–24). While these women did not believe women were equal, they were ‘more equal than we were’. They referred to their mothers (both ‘mothers’ and ‘grandmothers’ according to my nomenclature) as ‘doormats’, ‘slaves’ and ‘subservient’, women who ‘had to sit back and listen’, ‘stayed home and raised the kids’, and ‘did everything for my father’ (Riley-Smith 1992:16–20).

In 1993 Anne Summers wrote a letter addressed to ‘women who were born since 1969’, claiming that the world in which they came of age was ‘almost unrecognisable’ to women like herself, born a generation earlier. She reminded these ‘daughters’ that abortion was no longer illegal and dangerous, that married and pregnant women were no longer fired, that women were now entitled to the same wages as men, that women no longer went to university to find husbands, that more women could be seen in politics and management (Summers 1993:195). Thus, according to Summers, a revolution has occurred but those born after its effects had become commonplace are unaware of the revolution.

I envisaged this book as my own ‘letter to the next generation’, a celebration of the tidal wave of post-war feminism. From my own history, such a celebration seemed called for. I am an exceptionally lucky beneficiary of feminism. On the occasions when I have considered an abortion, I have always been in a jurisdiction which allowed it. My job depends on feminism, and I am an extremely highly paid woman, earning about four times the average income for women and about twice that of men. Marlene Goldsmith (1994:181) suggests women with ‘Dr’ in front of their names are taken more seriously; certainly I rarely interact with men who are other than respectful, at least superficially.

During the time the marriage bar was in force, young women had to imagine their futures as a choice between becoming a wife and mother or working. These opposing paths are neatly captured in the alternative Phylis was offered by her father. In grade seven, she was taking care of her younger sister and managing the house. He said: ‘Okay, you can either go on or you can have this new pair of shoes’. Phylis chose the shoes which were a ‘beautiful sort of forest green suede’ with high heels, and found a job as a clerk.

The majority of the women who were interviewed were drawn from five ‘samples’. Most of the women from non-English speaking backgrounds were part of a phenomenal network which Halina Netzel kindly shared with me. Further ‘snowball’ interviews were produced from this sample, for example, Agnes Whiten recommended two women whom I contacted through the Association of Non-English Speaking Women of Australia. Additionally, I contacted the President of the Vietnamese Women's Association who referred me to a founding mover of this Association. Griffith University allowed me to send a letter to all enrolled students over the age of 45, asking them to contact me if they were willing to be interviewed. I wrote to women in postcode areas which potentially indicated a lower socio-economic status (Rochedale, Acacia Ridge, Beaudesert, Oxley, Wilston, Inala, Daisy Hill). There was a 50 per cent response rate, although the majority of women who replied had some previous contact with me as a lecturer. To speak with women from rural and regional areas, I contacted the Queensland Country Women's Association, while Rosemary McBain of the Far North Queensland Family Resource Services kindly provided me with the names of women in Cairns from a variety of backgrounds. Fourthly, I interviewed three Indigenous Australian women I had met prior to the commencement of the project. One of these women, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, very kindly introduced me to a further three Indigenous Australian women.

In the quotation above, Lyn Thomas suggests four meanings for postfeminism, the first a true postfeminism beyond the structural inequalities which divide men and women; the second an antifeminism in which feminism's project was never necessary; the third a more complicated understanding of sexual difference contrasted with the simplicities of a universal oppression of women; and the fourth, the backlash against feminism, articulated by Susan Faludi (1991). From the stories and statistics in this book it should be apparent that gender equality has not been achieved at home, at school or at work. Even in the educational sector where such an achievement may be most plausibly argued, women are still under-represented in those disciplines which will lead to higher paying careers. While many young professional women in the workforce today may only substantially confront the challenges of their gender when they decide to have children, women in so-called non-traditional areas – which cover a range of skilled and unskilled pursuits – experience harassment and discrimination.

Defining a Women's Movement

In 1994 International Women's Day was celebrated in twenty-three cities and towns in Queensland, and the annual ‘Reclaim the Night’ march in October is held in capital cities and provincial centres. By the mid-1990s traditional feminist organisations like the Women's Electoral Lobby had been joined by groups as diverse as networks of businesswomen in the ASEAN trade bloc, eco-feminists, ‘feminists in cyberspace’, and women joggers ‘running the country’ (Sawer and Groves 1994a:87–8). But do all these organisations belong to the women's movement?

Judith Grant (1993:4) suggests that the core concepts of feminism in its various manifestations – ‘woman’, ‘experience’, ‘personal politics’ – have each posed dilemmas. That to define ‘woman’ would be a problem might seem strange, given that in most societies most of the time social members are only too aware of who are the women and who are the men, performing much boundary work to keep these distinctions clear. Postmodernists question the notion of ‘woman’ to disrupt these taken-for-granted distinctions, a reason for their interest in border-crossing sexual identities such as hermaphroditism, transsexualism, non-heterosexual identities and practices. More central, however, is the question of who feminists mean when they use the category ‘women’, given that women's experiences of oppression differ so widely across time and space.

Passages To and From Women's Liberation

Feminism was suggested to women by incidents as major as the shame of rape or an unwanted pregnancy, as pressing as equal wages, or as apparently superficial as unequal access to leisure facilities. As people act they change, if but slowly, the structures in which we are embedded. We create and recreate our own identities, as working-class women, as Greek–Australian women, as urban Indigenous Australian women. But in the process and by our own practices, we add to society's repertoire of ways of ‘doing’ those identities. From their encounters with feminism, the ‘mothers’ in my sample went on to divorces, secondary study, asking husbands to share housework more equally, demanding better conditions at work, or going to the movies alone.

In her essay, ‘Throwing like a girl’, Iris Young (1990) applies Simone de De Beauvoir's notion that women in patriarchal societies live a contradiction to the ways girls and boys from a very young age use their bodies. De Beauvoir suggests that patriarchal societies define woman as other, as not much more than her body, as ‘the object for the gaze and touch of a subject, to be the pliant responder to his commands’. Against this immanence of womanhood, this confining of experience within the body, is transcendence, ‘the free subjectivity that defines its own nature and makes projects’ (Young 1990:75). Thus, femininity means being something while masculinity means doing things. But given a woman also has a human existence, she too ‘is a subjectivity and transcendence’ (Young 1990:144). When women use their bodies they express this contradiction between immanence and transcendence. They use only a part of their bodies to accomplish a task, holding back. They react to the approach of a thrown object rather than going forward to meet it. They express a fear of getting hurt. They use up much less space than their bodies are capable of being in. When using their bodies, women are both in them, making them do things, but also standing outside them, seeing them as objects.

A history of women's liberation written from archives and remembrances is now a flourishing sub-industry in academic feminism (Curthoys 1992; Burgmann 1993; Ryan 1992), including the ‘first fulllength book in Australia on this topic’ (Kaplan 1996:xi). The present text focuses on the impact of women's liberation on so-called ordinary women, but a brief history of Australian feminist activism, achievements and defeats will contextualise the discussion of women's experiences of growing up; of giving meaning to their bodies as sexualised; of education, work, motherhood and marriage.

Nineteenth-Century Feminist Struggles

Had one of the earlier generation of feminists – those who were active in the decades around the turn of the century – looked back over the last forty years from the perspective of about 1920, she too might have written a letter both celebratory and anxious to the next generation. She would have noted that forty years ago women did not have the right to vote or stand for parliament, a right still denied many women in other nations.

In the 1960s about four-fifths of husbands disapproved of their wives working (Gilding 1991:118). By the 1990s the vast majority of husbands and wives approved both of women's labour force participation and equal sharing of housework in such situations (Bittman and Lovejoy 1993:313), while in a 1987 survey 75 per cent strongly supported equal opportunity legislation for women (Sex Discrimination Commissioner 1992:15). These surveys suggest that it is now widely accepted that women should have equal opportunities at work, supported by equal pay initiatives, equal employment opportunity legislation, childcare, education and retraining. However, while men endorse equal sharing of housework, they do not generally practise it. Working women carry the double load of which Helen complains.

The Importance of Perceptions

In politics, as in all other areas of social life, perceptions are more powerful than logic. De Bono recounts the apocryphal story from the Cold War of the race between an American ambassador and a Russian ambassador: ‘The American ambassador won. The race was reported in the local press to the effect that there had been a race and the Russian ambassador had come second and the American ambassador had come just one before the last person in the race. There was no mention that this was a two-person race’ (De Bono 1991: 46). De Bono then emphasises that there can be no truth in perception: ‘It is always from a point of view. It is never complete.’

This fundamental point arises in portrayals of environmenmental politics and institutional change. Anyone wanting to influence perceptions about the failure by government to address environmental issues needs to look no further than the useful study by Philip Toyne, the former director of the ACF. Toyne reflects that Australia, both as a nation and a continent, leads the world in the rate of mammal extinction; that, since European settlement, we have wiped out eighteen species of mammals, a hundred species of higher plants, three species of birds, one species of reptile, and two species of freshwater fish; and that four hundred terrestrial and marine invertebrates and three thousand plants are at risk (Toyne 1994: 3–4).

Background

Founded in 1891, the ALP is the oldest political party in Australia. As noted in chapter 8, there is disagreement over whether or not the ALP still represents a ‘labour tradition’. Yet, tradition and innovation need not be treated as exclusive categories. A significant element of continuity in the ALP is the enduring influence of trade unions. The ALP was created as a political instrument for the trade union movement, and the ties remain close: ‘The ALP was founded by trade unionists and it is still one of a small handful of true “labour parties” in retaining union affiliation and funding at the core of its organisation’ (Jupp 1982: 103).

The 1994 platform retains the connection with the origins of the party by noting ‘The recognition by the trade union movement of the necessity for a political voice to take forward the struggle of the working class against the excesses, injustices and inequalities of capitalism’. This does not settle arguments over continuity and change in the party. Democratic socialism, the term widely used to describe the ideology of the party, is interpreted in different ways by members and factions of the ALP.

The following issues are therefore pertinent to any analysis of the attempts by the ALP to adapt to environmentalism in recent times:

• the potential tension between the historic focus by the ALP on the needs of the working class and the attempt by the party to appeal to a broader cross-section of the population;

• the increase in support for the ALP among those with tertiary education and in non-manual occupations in the 1970s and 1980s (see Papadakis 1993: 177, table 6.1);

• […]