Australia has a long-standing association with the protection and creation of women's rights. Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote (after New Zealand in 1893) and the first to give women the right to be elected to a national parliament.[1] The Australian state ofSouth Australia, then a British colony, was the first parliament in the world to grant some women full suffrage rights.[2] Australia has since had multiple notable women serving in public office as well as other fields. In Australia, women (with the notable exception ofIndigenous women and most women not of European descent) were granted the right to vote and to be elected at federal elections in 1902.[3][4]
Australia has also been home to several prominent feminist activists and writers, includingGermaine Greer, author ofThe Female Eunuch;Julia Gillard, former prime minister;Vida Goldstein, suffragist; andEdith Cowan, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament.[3] Feminist action seekingequal opportunity in employment has resulted in partially successful legislation, but more changes are required.[5] Laws against sex discrimination exist and women's units in government departments have been established. Australian feminists have fought for and won the right to federally fundedchild care andwomen's refuges. The success gained by feminists entering the Australian public service and changing policy led to the descriptive term 'femocrats'.[6]
Germaine Greer's 1970 novelThe Female Eunuch became a global bestseller and a highly influential text in the feminist movement. It discusses and challenges the role of Australian housewives as a homemaker, which Greer suggests leads to a repression. The predominant critical theory of feminism in Australia is that male dominance of business,politics,law and themedia has resulted ingender inequality.[7] Feminism research has expanded the scope of political science in Australia to include issues related tofemininity, motherhood andviolence against women.[7]
Joanna Murray-Smith, a Melbourne-based newspaper columnist claimed in a 2004 column that 'feminism had failed us'.[6]Virginia Haussegger has also criticised feminism for promising she 'could have it all'.Miranda Devine consistently argued that feminism has been a mistake and failed to liberate.[6] In 2016, feminist and sociologistEva Cox writing inThe Conversation said that feminism has failed and needs a radical rethink using, "feminist perspectives to set social goals that are sustainable, and create social resilience".[8]Holly Lawford-Smith, feminist and Lecturer in Political Philosophy wrote 'Academic mobbing needs to be challenged, both inside and outside the institution'.[9][10]
Australia has and has had several notablefeminist authors, academics and activists whose work has been recognised internationally. Perhaps most widely recognised isGermaine Greer, whose bookThe Female Eunuch was held in high acclaim after its publication.
Julia Gillard was Australia's first femaleprime minister from June 2010 to June 2013. On October 9 2012, Gillard delivered a famousMisogyny Speech in the AustralianFederal Parliament about following accusations of sexism from the Federal Opposition Leader,Tony Abbott. In 2020, Gillard's speech was voted 'Most Unforgettable" moment in Australian television history by readers of The Guardian newspaper.[11]
Australia has had several feminist organisations during its history, many of which helped the push for basic women's rights like granting of fullsuffrage, financial independence from husbands, access to abortions, and equal pay. Other high-profile Australian feminists includeEva Cox andJocelynne Scutt.
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The first examples of Australian feminism occurred during the mid 1800s to 1900. The early movement mostly concerned the applications of basic human rights to women, including the right to vote, the right to stand for parliamentary election, and protection from sexual exploitation.Mary Lee, an Australian-Irish woman, was influential in garnering support for manywomen's rights movements in Australia. From 1883 onwards, Lee was involved in the raising of theage of consent for girls in Australia from 13 to 16, the founding ofThe Working Women's Trades Union, and co-founded theWomen's Suffrage League, which led to thegranting of suffrage rights to women in South Australia. In the early 1900s theAustralian Labor Party displayed reluctance toward women and their entrance to the parliament.[12] During World War I, women were introduced into the workforce at higher rates than previous years, although often in fields already populated by women.
Edith Cowan, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament in 1920, is depicted on the back of theAustralian fifty-dollar note. In August 1943,Enid Lyons andDorothy Tangney became the first two women to elected to thefederal parliament.[3] Between the World Wars, theCountry Women's Association was founded inNew South Wales andQueensland, spreading throughout the rest of Australia over the following 14 years. An overarching, national group was formed in 1945. The popular magazine, theWomen's Weekly, created for a female market byFrank Packer, was also founded during this period. However, from its first edition in 1933, the magazine was edited by men untilIta Buttrose was appointed in 1975.
During World War II, Australia, like other Allied countries, encouraged the introduction of women into the workforce, replacing many male workers who had joined the military e.g.Australian Women's Land Army. Thesecond-wave of Feminism in Australia began during the 1960s with the confrontation of legal and social double standards as well as workplace discrimination and sexual harassment. Equally, feminists worldwide began a push for female sexual freedom.Germaine Greer rose to international prominence during the later part of this period, with the publication and widespread adoption of, her ideas in her 1970 book,The Female Eunuch. At the time of the book's publication, Greer was considered aradical feminist, with her ideas and claims at times described as "polemic".[13]
During this periodAboriginal Women's rights also became more prominent, with notable female Indigenous Australians during this period includeLyndall Ryan andAileen Moreton-Robinson. This contributed to the rise inIndigenous feminism in Australia.[citation needed] In 1962,Fay Gale earning her Ph.D from theUniversity of Adelaide with her thesis "A Study of Assimilation: Part Aborigines in South Australia". This explored the lives of Aboriginal women who were members of theStolen Generations, having been forcibly removed from their parents as infants. It focussed on the ways society treated them with disrespect due to the colour of their skin.[14]
DameRoma Mitchell was made the first female Justice of the Supreme Court of South Australia in 1965, at the recommendation ofDon Dunstan, South Australia's 38th Attorney-General.[15] She was still the only female judge in South Australia when she retired 18 years later in 1983 although JusticesElizabeth Evatt andMary Gaudron had been appointed to federal courts by theWhitlam Government. It was not until 1993 that the second woman was appointed to the court, Mitchell's former student,Margaret Nyland.
As the feminist movement led to the organisation of British, Canadian and American feminists in the late 1960s, so too did Australian women move to address oppressive social conditions.[16] The social base of the Australian feminist movement was boosted by the growing segment of women employed as juniors in the 1970s.[12] Feminist authors have been credited with stimulating the movement at the time. By the early 1970s the feminist movement in Australia was divided. On one side was the Women's Liberation Movement which leanedleft and believed men did not have a role in women's liberation. The other side was represented by theWomen's Electoral Lobby which was considered more mainstream and sought to engage change within existing structures.[16]
The first Australian state to deal withmarital rape wasSouth Australia, under the progressive initiatives of PremierDon Dunstan, which in 1976 partially removed the exemption. Section 73 of theCriminal Law Consolidation Act Amendment Act 1976 (SA) read: "No person shall, by reason only of the fact that he is married to some other person, be presumed to have consented to sexual intercourse with that other person".[17]
Around 1977, Women Against Rape (WAR) groups started emerging in Australia,[18] afterWomen Against Rape was formed in the UK in 1976,[19] and others were created in other countries. They were possibly influenced by American feministSusan Brownmiller's bookAgainst Our Will, published in 1975, as well as women's personal experience of working withrape victims.[18]
The Sydney Women Against Rape collective was formed with three aims:[20]
Women Against Rape in War groups started forming in the late 1970s and early 1980s, starting inCanberra. The Canberra group came to national attention onAnzac Day 1981, when they staged a demonstration mourning "all women of all countries raped in all wars", and groups formed inSydney,Adelaide, andMelbourne. Women laid wreaths at theStone of Remembrance during the Anzac Day service at theAustralian War Memorial in 1983, and in 1984 the Anti-Anzac Day Collective formed in Melbourne, which challenged the "exclusionist, masculine mythology" of Anzac Day. The protests were met with highly negative responses from the public, police, and politicians, and hundreds of women were arrested.[21][22]
Criminalization ofmarital rape in Australia began with the state ofNew South Wales in 1981, followed by all other states from 1985 to 1992.[23]
Prominent writerHelen Garner attracted widespread controversy for her 1995 non-fiction reportageThe First Stone, which details the fallout from a sexual harassment scandal aimed at a well-respectedmaster at theUniversity of Melbourne.[24] Garner, who could not access the two female complainants due to their refusal to speak to her, used her own personal experiences to highlight feminism, female and male sexuality, sexual harassment, as well as abuse of power and fraternalism in universities. The book became a bestseller, but it was hotly debated both in Australia and the United States by some critics and feminists as an example ofvictim blaming.[25]Janet Malcolm, writing for theNew Yorker in a 1997 review ofThe First Stone, says that Garner "closes ranks with the abuser".[26]
Australia's first woman Premier wasCarmen Lawrence, becomingPremier of Western Australia in 1990.[3] The short-livedAustralian Women's Party sought to ensure equal representation of men and women at all levels of government.Quentin Bryce was the first woman to hold the position ofGovernor-General of Australia between September 2008 and March 2014.
Former Prime MinisterJulia Gillard gained international attention and praise in 2012 for an off-the-cuff speech in the Australian federal parliament directed at then Opposition Leader,Tony Abbott. The speech, known as theMisogyny Speech, has been uploaded to YouTube multiple times, garnering many thousands of views. The speech was also discussed internationally across media, with thefeminist blog,Jezebel, calling Gillard "one badass motherfucker".[27] Other world leaders were also said to have offered praise in public and private conversations with Gillard.[28]
Abbott, who later became prime minister of Australia, has frequently been accused ofsexism andmisogyny. InDavid Marr's 2012 article in the AustralianQuarterly Essay, titled "Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott", Marr describes several alleged incidents which Abbott committed or was involved with, that were highly offensive and sexual in nature towards women.[29]
Australia has and has had a wide array of supporting groups and agencies that have been funded by governments, public donations, and members. These groups include:
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