Abstracts History

A Global History of Australian Women's Liberation, 1968-1985

by Rosa Campbell

This dissertation offers a global history of the Australian women’s liberation movement. It begins in the 1950s and concludes in the mid-1980s, with most attention being given to the period 1968-1985. Throughout this period the Australian women’s liberation movement changed the fabric of Australian society, successfully agitating for gender justice and transforming both the nation and the lives of individuals. The research focusses on two key cities of Australian feminist organising; Sydney and Melbourne but it also considers the women’s peace camp at Pine Gap, near Mpartnwe/Alice Springs and a global feminist conference which took place in Australia’s capital, Canberra. Its findings are drawn through close attention to periodicals from across Australia, the US, Britain and the Pacific. It combines twenty-two oral history interviews with archival research to reveal the dynamic and extensive ways that the Australian women’s liberation movement was globally influenced. Historians have recognised that feminist movements have been globally informed, but the global turn in the history of feminism has largely focussed on the late 19th and 20th century up until the 1950s, neglecting the women’s liberation movements of the 1970s. A global approach is conducive to understanding the Australian women’s liberation movement. This global frame reveals the work of those who have been marginalised in histories of feminism, such as communist women, migrants, women of colour including those from the Global South, and First Nations women. Through employing a global perspective, this dissertation foregrounds their direct involvement in women’s movements, and their transformative contributions at the level of political thought. It dislodges white women as the central change makers in feminism and the Global North as the central site of feminist thought and action. This dissertation examines the significant impact of communist women on Australian women’s liberation. It reveals the importance of global communist networks on the movement for women’s health from the 1950s. It also suggests that the Australian women’s liberation movement was significantly informed by Vietnamese and Chinese communism. It traces this influence at the level of ideas and considers face-to-face visits. It contends that the lack of scholarship on communist women in the women’s liberation movement is due to paradigms established during the Cold War, which suggested that communist women were not authentic feminists. These paradigms continue to influence how the history of women’s liberation is written today. A further strand of research investigates the project of Australian state feminism. Australian women’s liberation is unusual for its willingness to work with the state after the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. A global perspective makes visible the shared realities faced by state feminists in both liberal democratic Australia and communist China and Vietnam; in all cases women’s agency was limited by pressures of state participation. Through…