TY - JOUR
T1 - 'How much longer will we allow this country's affairs to be run by radical feminists?'
T2 - Anti-feminist activism in late 1970s Australia
AU - Arrow, Michelle
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The historiography of Australia's feminist and sexual revolutions has
focused on activists who articulated new claims for rights and
protections on the basis of gender and sexuality. Very few scholars have
investigated anti-feminist women's groups as part of this history. This
article focuses on two anti-feminist women's groups in late 1970s
Australia: Women's Action Alliance, and Women Who Want to Be Women. It
argues that they adapted the women's movement's slogan ‘the personal is
political’, using their identities as wives and mothers to authorise
their political campaigns and contesting structures designed to
facilitate women's access to policy-making. Finally, the article argues
that while these groups were small, they did influence Federal politics.
The rapidly changing economic orthodoxies of the late 1970s exerted
particular pressures on women. Feminists and anti-feminists both offered
a similar analysis of these economic pressures, even though the
solutions they advanced were very different.
AB - The historiography of Australia's feminist and sexual revolutions has
focused on activists who articulated new claims for rights and
protections on the basis of gender and sexuality. Very few scholars have
investigated anti-feminist women's groups as part of this history. This
article focuses on two anti-feminist women's groups in late 1970s
Australia: Women's Action Alliance, and Women Who Want to Be Women. It
argues that they adapted the women's movement's slogan ‘the personal is
political’, using their identities as wives and mothers to authorise
their political campaigns and contesting structures designed to
facilitate women's access to policy-making. Finally, the article argues
that while these groups were small, they did influence Federal politics.
The rapidly changing economic orthodoxies of the late 1970s exerted
particular pressures on women. Feminists and anti-feminists both offered
a similar analysis of these economic pressures, even though the
solutions they advanced were very different.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111677042&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1031461X.2020.1821723
DO - 10.1080/1031461X.2020.1821723
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85111677042
VL - 52
SP - 331
EP - 347
JO - Australian Historical Studies
JF - Australian Historical Studies
SN - 1031-461X
IS - 3
ER -