How the Personal Became Political
The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
- 170 pages
- English
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How the Personal Became Political
The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
About This Book
How the Personal became Political brings together new research on the feminist and sexual revolutions of the 1970s in Australia. It addresses the political and theoretical significance of these movements, asking how and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political?
These movements produced a series of changes that were both interconnected and profound. The pill became generally available and sexuality was both celebrated and flaunted. Homosexuality was gradually decriminalized. Gay liberation and Women's Liberation erupted. Activists established women's refuges, rape crisis centres, and counselling services. Crucially, in Australia, these developments coincided with the election of progressive governments, who appointed women's advisors and expanded the role of the state in the provision of childcare and other services. It was a decade of contestation and transformation.
This book addresses the political and theoretical significance of these 1970s revolutions, and poses key questions about the nature of sweeping change. What were the key policy shifts? How were protests connected to legislative reforms? How did Australia fit into the broader transnational movements for change? What are the legacies of these movements and what can activists today learn from them? Scholars from several disciplines offer fresh insight into this wave of social revolution, and its contemporary relevance.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Australian Feminist Studies.
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How the Personal Became Political: The Feminist Movement of the 1970s
Elizabeth Reid (AO, FASSA, FAIIA) was the first adviser on womenâs affairs to any head of government in the world, appointed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1973. Drawing on her own life and writing, and those of other members of the Womenâs Liberation Movement and the Womenâs Electoral Lobby, Reid recreates the fire that burned in 1970s feminists. Weaving together connections between sexuality, justice, morality, and the cultural structures of sexism, Reid evokes womenâs experiences of personal disempowerment that fuelled their activism and political determination. In 1973 when the Prime Ministerâs office advertised for a Womenâs Adviser, feminists debated whether or not revolution could be made from within government. Reid recalls her work as Womenâs Adviser, and her leadership of the Australian delegation to the 1975 International Womenâs Year events in Mexico City. As the nationâs most prominent feminist, Reid travelled around Australia and spoke to all kinds of women. She received more letters than any member of Cabinet other than the Prime Minister. In this significant retrospective, Reid summarises the achievements of the Whitlam Government in various areas, the constraints it faced, and more broadly the successes of the 1970s feminist movement and what we can learn from it now.
Introduction
So, 1970. What was it like here in Australia? âŚWe women were invisible except as sex objects and homemakers. You never saw a woman driving a bus, let alone piloting a plane. You never saw or heard a woman reading the news, let alone commenting on it. ⌠There were hardly any women CEOs or even managers; they made up only 3% of senior executives, public or private. There was not a single woman in the House of Representatives.[Only recently had the marriage bar been lifted and married women teachers and public servants allowed to continue in employment.] There were separate newspaper [sections] for womenâs jobs and menâs jobs. ⌠Jobs, like the ads, were rigidly gender specific.A woman was unable to get a loan without a male guarantor, usually her husband or father. Pubs were segregated. A woman couldnât go into [the bar of] a pub without a male to accompany her. There were taxes on contraceptives and the advertising of them in the ACT was illegal. âŚFor women who did have jobs the rate of pay was substantially lower than that for men doing the same work or work of equal value. ⌠It was assumed that women were never breadwinners; this was the rationale for pay inequity.
Our society abounds in 19th century protective and paternalistic attitudes. Women are prohibited from working in the mines, from carrying heavy weights, from carrying arms, from night work (except where required for the smooth running of society); women are discouraged from being garbos, waterside workers, builders labourers, road labourers, surveyors, electricians, wool-classers, shearers, barristers, lawyers and architects. âŚâŚ Very few registered medical doctors are women and almost all doctors display a dismaying lack of knowledge of womenâs diseases and complaints.Only 221 aboriginal women have attained educational qualifications of trade or technical level or higher. Over 50% of the aboriginal female work force is concentrated in service and recreational occupations. âŚGirls are brought up to be girls and boys are brought up to be boys as if there were two different kinds of people.Women but not men are identified by their marital status (that is, by the use of Miss and Mrs.). Once married, a woman takes over her husbandâs name, domicile and, often mandatorily, his citizenship.
Becoming a feminist
Becoming a feminist might begin with an experience you have that gives you a sense of injustice, a feeling that something is wrong or a feeling of being wronged.
Only when we reflect on our initial puzzling irritability, revulsion, anger, or fear, may we bring to consciousness our âgut-levelâ awareness that we are in a situation of coercion, cruelty, injustice or danger. ⌠This may help us realize that what are taken generally to be facts have been constructed in a way that obscures the reality of subordinated people, especially womenâs reality.
Feminism and the structures of sexism
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why arenât you feminine, why arenât
you soft, why arenât you quiet, why
arenât you dead?
Feminism can allow you to reinhabit not only your own past but also your own body. You might over time in becoming aware of how you have lessened your own space give yourself permission to take up more space; to expand your own reach. ⌠It does take time. To reinhabit the body, to become less wary, to acquire confidence. Feminism involves a process of finding another way to liv...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Citation Information
- Notes on Contributors
- IntroductionâHow the Personal Became Political: The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
- 1 How the Personal Became Political: The Feminist Movement of the 1970s
- 2 Beauty Becomes Political: Beginnings of the Womenâs Liberation Movement in Australia
- 3 When the Personal Became Too Political: ASIO and the Monitoring of the Womenâs Liberation Movement in Australia
- 4 Feminism in Sydneyâs Suburbs: âSpeaking Outâ, Listening and âSisterhoodâ at the 1975 Womenâs Commissions
- 5 Making Family Violence Public in the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974â1977
- 6 Being a Womenâs Adviser at the State Level: Deborah McCulloch and Don Dunstan in 1970s South Australia
- 7 Before the Refrain: The Personal and the Political in South Australiaâs Sexual Revolution
- 8 Abortion and the Limits of the Personal Becoming Political
- 9 Activism and Australiaâs Ban on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Military Service in the 1970sâ80s
- Index