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The article focuses on the accomplishment of Cheryl and Nikki Bart, mother and daughter, of scaling the summit of Mt. Everest, which became a topic at the "Australia 2020 Summit." It provides the author's narrative and personal story of attending and participating in the said summit. It explores the way in which women were included in and excluded from the processes, content and discussions of the event, in the hope that the analysis may assist in formulating ways to enhance effective strategic thinking, policy development and service delivery which specifically addresses the needs of and opportunities for women in Australia over the next decade and beyond. Related issues are further duscussed.

In 2011, something surprising happened in terms of Australian feminist cultural memory: a celebratory feminism arrived in the shape of the hugely popular ABC television mini-series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. Eschewing dour social realism for a stylish and ludic narrative, Paper Giants uses the story of the women's magazine Cleo to tell the story of Australian women's liberation. This essay analyses the components of the mini-series' celebratory feminist aesthetics, examining the ways in which it mobilises feminist tropes to speak an intelligible feminist language in postfeminist times. Further, I detail how women's liberation becomes central to the national historical narrative underpinning the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong civil society is fundamental to the wellbeing and resilience of communities. Young people play powerful in civil society activism, but their contribution is yet to be fully grasped and appreciated. As the 10-year anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace, and Security approaches in 2025, more action is needed to genuinely include, prioritise and champion the role and perspectives of young people. Succession planning is an important aspect of youth civil society activism. Whilst much has been written about the topic in the public and private sectors, very little exists in the context of civil society organisations, and in particular, in youth civil society organisations. Drawing on lived experience of voluntarily coordinating a youth feminist organisation in Australia, I argue there are six added complexities that youth civil society organisations face. As part of feminist ethic of practice, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of 'representational irony' and in doing so, share learnings, reflections, and practical recommendations to assist others. Whilst the paper focuses on youth civil society activism, learnings apply more broadly to stewardship and succession planning in organisations that seek to include and champion young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a drama-based method to illustrate the responses of healthcare and legal systems to women experiencing coercive control. This approach involved writing a play using the first-person narrative voice of a victim-survivor. We presented the play at the Stop Domestic Violence Conference (Gold Coast, Australia) in 2021. The central character, 'Kate', provided an embodied performance that enabled the conference participants to see, feel and understand experiences of coercive control from a personal perspective. We followed the trajectory of coercive control from the beginning of an intimate relationship to the time of separation. We showed how the process of coercive control escalates from love bombing, reproductive coercion, isolation, and technology-facilitated abuse until a point of police intervention. As Kate told her story, the conference audience witnessed the barriers and challenges faced by survivors of coercive control, and the emotional, financial, and psychological impacts that are intensified in geographically remote environments. They watched Kate navigate health and other systems meant to help women experiencing domestic and family violence, but that ultimately failed to deliver. Finally, the drama-based approach allowed us to present a feminist embodiment of coercive control and an innovative method for communicating inter-disciplinary research findings on domestic abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to mobilise change in the secondary years of schooling, interventions into the canon must move beyond (re)forming text lists or providing teachers with readymade pedagogical resources. Drawing on the Australian context, the authors outline some of the contemporary challenges teachers face in diversifying and decolonising the curriculum. Drawing on their Literary Linking Methodology the authors discuss a pilot project that seeks to unsettle the canon by supporting teachers to undertake extended immersion with both contemporary literary texts and archival research. Accordingly, this paper contributes to understandings of the tensions and challenges teachers face in introducing contemporary Australian texts into the curriculum and offers insights into the ways in which professional learning might be (re)imagined so that English teachers might draw on available cultural resources as researchers and literary knowledge producers in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood poverty matters—not only because of the disturbingly high number of children affected, but also because of the deleterious impact on their human flourishing, both now and in the future. Effectively addressing child poverty requires clear identification of the nature and causes of the problem, as well as an understanding of how it is experienced. This paper aims to deepen understanding of child poverty, by drawing on key elements of a capability approach, rights-based approaches, and feminist standpoint theory, and empirical research. It is grounded in the findings of rights-based, participatory research with children aged between 7 and 15 years in Indonesia and in Australia, which cast new light on the dimensions of poverty that are most egregious from a child-driven standpoint. It presents a three-dimensional typology of material, opportunity, and relational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the authors' efforts to secure the personal papers of feminist activist Merle Thornton for archival use at the National Library of Australia (NLA). Particular focus is given to Thornton's role in Australia's second-wave feminist movement. Details on the scope of the collection, which includes an oral history interview with Thornton and materials related to a 1965 protest at the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and the Equal Opportunities for Women Association (EOW), are presented. Other topics include workplace discrimination and Thornton's corpus of fictional works.

This conference report serves as a summary for the International Women's and Gender Studies Conference which took place in Brisbane Australia, 12-16 July 2003. The conference sponsored a series of papers about post 9/11 feminist challenges as well as those that address how to end the silencing of women. Speakers at the conference were not limited to those within academia, and there was a focus on the history of women's liberation and feminism in Australia.

This paper examines the challenges of using feminist pedagogies in the development of school-based interventions to address Violence Against Women in Sexuality and Relationships Education in Australia. The focus of the paper is a feminist-based classroom program developed by a group of teachers, which was piloted in three secondary schools in Melbourne. The paper uses interview data from the teachers who taught in the program as well as the students who completed it to explore the feminist discourses embedded in the key program resources. The analysis shows that the program draws heavily on liberal and radical feminist approaches, both perceived by many gender scholars as having limited understandings of gender by comparison with post-modern approaches. The data also indicate that these approaches have the potential to elicit powerful responses from students, raising their awareness of sexism, objectification and sexual safety. The paper concludes by arguing that, while many scholars see post-modern approaches as conceptually superior, they are in practice extremely difficult to operationalize and therefore of limited practical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three years (2015-2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent "boom time" for women's sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women's Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women's Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a narrative of progress that assumes that gender equality is becoming closer with every decade. This paper employs a critical historical method inspired by the work of Joan W. Scott to analyse articles that have declared or commented on a contemporary boom in women's sport in Australia. The 120 contemporary articles are analysed alongside 400 historical articles that present similar arguments and themes. In identifying similarities between the historical and contemporary articles, this paper raises questions about the reality of the so-called moment of progress we are currently experiencing, and discusses the possible consequences for feminism and social change in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper serves as an epilogue to the Women in Planning special issue ofAustralian Plannerreflecting on the potential for women’s activism and scholarship to promote social and spatial change around what have often been dismissed as irrelevant private or personal matters. This paper highlights the energy and willingness among women planners and those sympathetic to their goals towards seeking and creative positive and transformative change and engagement with issues of gender in planning. It specifically reports on the Women in Planning Symposium, held in Brisbane in 2016, and based on the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Through this case we do not set out to ‘prove’ the impact of feminist approaches to planning or Appreciative Inquiry as applied in this workshop, rather, our goal here is to conclude this special issue by advancing an agenda for women in planning which is transformative, generative and pro-feminist and which has the potential to highlight and address gendered concerns in a productive way. We will reflect on both the findings that Appreciative Inquiry yielded, and on the process itself as a tool for participation and engagement, particularly in a feminist/emancipatory context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents data from a study of secondary school for girls, the majority of whom identify as Indigenous Australian. ‘Gamarada’ High School is located in a suburban area of Queensland (Australia) and was established to provide quality education for disadvantaged girls. The paper draws on student and teacher interview data from a broader study that was concerned with examining how the school addressed the economic, cultural and political dimensions of Indigenous girls’ disadvantage. The focus here is on issues of political justice in relation to Indigenous representation and, more specifically, how such representation at the school supports the key Indigenous equity priority of self-determination. Feminist post-colonial theories are drawn on to argue the importance of educators engaging with a politics of representation that initiates theory from the social location of Indigenous experience, reflects an anti-racist/anti-colonial agenda and recognises and values the central role relationality plays in Indigenous lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at the establishment of Women's Studies programs in selected Australian universities. It highlights the resistance to Women's Studies as an academic knowledge by some feminists outside of the academy as well as non-feminists within the academy. This paper argues that connections to the Women's Liberation Movement and the difficulties encountered by feminists when introducing Women's Studies into the academy made some feminists suspicious of the value of theory for feminism, especially in relation to a political agenda. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. (Austen, Persuasion ([1818] 1946) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conference report presents information about the Feminist Legal Academics Workshops, which were held at Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide on June 19-21, 2003. A diverse group of academics, practitioners, activists, students and writers from Australia and abroad were present to discuss the state of feminism and law. The conferences theme was 'Legal Feminism-Now and Then?' and its priority was to reflect on the 1990s as a decade of feminist legal scholarship.

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tells the multi-layered story of how the author came to write a theatre script about breasts as part of her research. She frames this writing as 'border-work' as she plays at the edges of academic and fictional writing. In this paper ideas from Barthes and Cixous are interleaved with extracts from the author's own texts and with her story of writing for theatre in order to explore how poststructural theory can open up new spaces and places from which (and into which) to write. She describes the collaborative contexts of collective biography research, of writing, of dramaturgy, and of performance within which 'the Breast Project' was written and speculates on the extent to which the theatre script was shaped within and by these contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postfeminist media culture – or ‘internet feminism’ – readily enabled widespread feminist celebration of Julia Gillard’s empowerment, defence of her rights to equality and critique of the sexism that dogged her. However, this paper examines such public feminist commentary for the ways in which it sidelined women’s studies scholarship on the possible contributions of women’s ‘difference’ to public life. This marginalization was in keeping with the culture of postmaternalism described by Julie Stephens, which entails a widespread disavowal of the maternal and themes of care or sociality, including within feminism. Nevertheless, consistent recourse to the word ‘disappointing’ to describe Gillard’s performance – particularly by those on the left of the political spectrum – suggested a submerged desire for Gillard to do leadership differently, and with more ‘care’. In the absence of a robust and recognizable vocabulary for publicly articulating the links between care, sociality, women and politics – a vocabulary which might conceivably have provided Gillard with a more supportive script to follow – the prevailing feminist commentary struggled to diagnose and enunciate the systemic issues that constrained her ability to alter the political culture in which she was embedded. Ultimately, this paper argues that a significant task for public feminism is to disseminate the language and logic that will enable subsequent women in politics to claim greater authority and expertise with regard to the performance and provision of sociality and care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Laws and regulatory guidelines dealing with assisted reproductive technology in Australia and elsewhere typically operate on the principle that the physical and psychological well-being of the person who might be created using the technology must be an active consideration. An ethical/legal problem arises when future persons are protected at the expense of existing persons. This occurs when women, who create and gestate these future persons, are socially, legally and medically positioned as transgenerational vectors of harm, and are subject to pressure to act for the benefit of people who do not yet and may never come to exist. This paper explores the way women are understood, in science and law, as subject to situational and environmental harms as well as constituting a (prenatal) environment for the perpetuation of those harms. Finally, recognising that harm is itself actively gendered, this paper also explores how gendered assumptions are smuggled into legal explanations of disease and its causes and how this might impact regulatory responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical analysis of existing literature on historical and contemporary gender dynamics in Australian social work education and practice. Analyses of gender dynamics and inequalities have the potential to illuminate pathways for inclusive social work education and practice, for both practitioners and people who access social work services. This critical review of the literature demonstrates that Australian social work education and practice have been shaped by gendered discourses, structures, and power dynamics since its inception. In a contemporary sense, women constitute the majority of social work educators and practitioners, while men disproportionately dominate positions of power and prestige, although rigorous Australian data on the roles and representation of men and women are not readily available. Our findings point to the need for further engagement with gender as a unit of analysis in Australian social work research, including further engagement with inclusive and intersectional feminisms. IMPLICATIONS Enhanced knowledge of Australian social work history, particularly in relation to gender, allows for a greater understanding of current gendered power relations in social work education and practice. Gender dynamics are underresearched in contemporary Australian social work education and practice. Up-to-date data on the status and representation of men, women, and nonbinary people in social work are needed as the foundation for transformative and inclusive social work education and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection are now widely accepted as important in contemporary social work practice. Despite this, there remain differences in how the terms are discussed within the literature. This results in confusion in how students are instructed about reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection. This paper presents a proposal for clarifying these concepts based on the results from an interpretive study of reflective practice in social work education and practice in Australia. The study utilised three different methods: autoethnography, an archaeological analytic, and qualitative interviews. It found that reflective practice is understood as a capability, a form of critical thinking, a discipline response to a changing sector, and a way of theorising from practice. Conceptual clarifications of reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection are presented. IMPLICATIONS There is a need for clarification about the meaning of reflective practice, reflexivity, and critical reflection within social work. Findings from a qualitative study on the meaning and use of reflective practice in Australian social work education may provide conceptual clarification of these terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses pre-service teachers' responses to a critical analysis of gender/power relations using examples from a final assessment for an intensive elective unit called Teaching Sexuality in the Middle Years. This unit critically examines gender/ power relations, the production of difference, heteronormativity and pleasure and desire, employing a feminist post-structural framework. Despite the focus on critical thinking, reflection and interrogating structural inequalities in this unit some students were resistant or unable to engage with this approach in their assessments, although appearing to do so in workshops. We consider the broad range of sexuality education discourses mobilised by this unit to try to make sense of what looks like resistance but may be something more complex and difficult to negotiate. The paper ends with a consideration of some of the implications of this approach for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of women's refuges in Victoria, Australia emerged within the context of emergency accommodation for women being the province of charity-based organisations, whose interventions into women's lives were often disempowering and autocratic. Feminist refuges argued against this charity-based approach to women and drove a process of conceptualising and responding to domestic violence in new ways. Following a formal request for the addresses of Victorian refuges by the Minister for Community Services in October 1979, the refuge movement united to keep their addresses secret, and launched a much publicised and protracted campaign in opposition to the state's demands. This resulted in a commitment from the then Department of Community Welfare Services (DCWS) to support the refuge program to operate in unique and radical ways, and in doing so gave recognition to the importance of gender in the provision of welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement theorists have developed several concepts to explain the role of social networking in maintaining social movements. This is particularly relevant for periods when levels of public activism are low due to backlash, hostile social contexts and structural uncertainties. As part of my study of the women's movement online and feminist blog networks in Australia, I provide a review of several of these concepts, interrogating their applicability to the study of online communities. This paper explores the relevance of the social movement theory concepts of submerged networks, abeyance structures and the related idea of counterpublics for the study of feminist blog networks. In 2009, the radio station Triple J's ‘Hottest 100 of All Time’ poll featured no solo women artists, and women played on few tracks. In response to this, several strands of discourse developed in the Australian feminist blogosphere identifying ways that the history of rock music excludes or erases women. Activists developed a cross-platform poll on Twitter, Facebook and email, and promoted it through blogs and Twitter, to counter the ‘Hottest 100 Men’ with a ‘Hottest 100 Women’. This paper shows the ways these women have used blogging networks to challenge mainstream discourses and generate new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia and Bangladesh are two opposite countries with regards to cultural and geographical settings. But sometimes, their visions regarding women's identity come closer when a woman is treated as a sex object. This paper considers women's representation in television commercials in Australia and Bangladesh. A total of 400 advertisements were recorded from various television channels of Australia and Bangladesh in 2005 and 2006. Bringing an interdisciplinary but empirical approach to a broad range of recently screened advertisements, this paper examines how femininities are stereotypically represented in these two countries' television commercials. The study suggests that women are produced and reproduced as sexual objects. The representations of women's bodies circulate around the binary of purity and pollution. The interesting finding of this study is the extension of the "malegaze" concept where women come under the gaze from (hetero) sexual perspectives. This constructs women's secondary position and creates instability in societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the need to re-imagine multiculturalism and feminism in order to better accommodate women in minority cultures who are religious. It begins and ends with comments about multiculturalism and ‘difference feminism’ in Australia. In the body of the paper I use anthropological field-work in Indonesia, first to show that culture and religion are not separate and immutable, and secondly to show how Muslim women in the women's movement in Indonesia are using Islam to build a multicultural discourse. Finally I apply my findings about Muslim women activists in multicultural discourse in Indonesia to multiculturalism in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Canadian Muslim women, as opposed to their Australian counterparts, have attained prominent social status not only in terms of their contribution to electoral politics but also in other political spheres. With its focus on the Sharia debate, this paper investigates one potential explanation for this difference. Challenging Okin's feminist perspective, which claims that multiculturalism is an undesirable policy for emancipation, it is argued that multiculturalism facilitates agency of female members of Muslim communities. A comparative examination of the Sharia debate between the two secular countries of Canada and Australia demonstrates that the former's more robust multicultural polity in terms of responding to requests to adopt the Sharia have not only culminated in Muslim women's empowerment but have enhanced their political representation. In contrast, Australian Muslim women have neither had the opportunity to articulate their position with regard to Sharia nor to contribute to an important issue that could have empowered them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I use a governmentality framework to explore the growth of women's mentoring programmes in Australian universities over the last 10-15 years. These programmes are supported because they speak to institutional concerns with improving performance in a performative culture, while being seen to deal with the problem of gender inequity. I draw on the mentoring experiences of two women academics from a larger study to illustrate the ways women are governed and self-govern, and negotiate subjectivities through mentoring. This reading locates mentoring within a network of institutional power relations, in so doing unsettling the truths we hold about mentoring as always good and unproblematic. It offers an important account of why mentoring has become so popular in these places in these times and reflects on the implications for feminist political goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many geographers benefit from the support of unheralded teachers whose inspiration leaves important marks on their thinking. This paper considers the legacy of Jan Monk's professional contribution in terms of her fostering of wider structures that support the development of a disciplinary capacity for and commitment to good educational practice, her work in researching and bringing to light the hidden disciplinary roles of women in the development of the discipline, particularly in the USA, and the place and significance of her early work in Australia at the intersection of geography and indigenous studies. It concludes that her insistence on the importance of place and context, her attention to people's own sense of place in shaping their relations with each other and their wider worlds, continues to provide a powerful starting point for benchmarking our work as teachers, mentors and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on the perspectives of young men, explores the relationship between dominant constructions of masculinities and the sexual harassment of young women in Australian secondary schools, within a feminist poststructuralist theoretical framework. Of particular importance in this process are the ways in which sexual harassment is integral to the construction of hegemonic heterosexual masculine identities; the importance of popularity, acceptance and young men's fears within male peer group cultures; and the utilization of sexual harassment as a means through which to maintain and regulate hierarchical power relationships, not just in relation to gender, but how it intersects with other sites of power such as 'race' and class. It is highlighted that sexual harassment is considered a legitimate and expected means through which to express and reconfirm the public and private positions of 'hegemonic masculinity' within a heterosexualized, racialized and classed gender order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces body lines in feminist poststructural research by identifying the conditions under which research into the lived body can be brought into discursive relation with contemporary theoretical formulations of the body. It begins by identifying the erasure of the corporeal body in the somatophobia of essentialism and the exclusive focus of poststructural research on the constitution of bodies in language. Potential methodologies for researching the lived body are suggested and the problems of phenomenological research identified. The theoretical conditions, methodological gestures, and analytical strategies for researching the body in body/place relations are explored in relation to the author's own work in Body/landscape journals (Somerville, 1999) and the work of other Australian researchers. These are brought together in relation to a small sample of the author's current research into safe bodies in the mining industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts a diffractive analysis that reads Bruce Beresford’s Australian populist filmPuberty Blues(1981) through the more recent (2012) Channel 10 eight-part series television of the same title. The purpose of this experimental analysis is tonoticeways both of these filmic artefacts re/enact gendered semblances performatively, co-creating binary gender relations through Baradian intra-actionswitha virtual audience (in the perpetual present). This paper is not a historical account of the texts and/or a review of the substantial literature connected to either text or television/film production in Australia. It attempts to conduct a non-representational analysis as a reading through of the texts with each other. What is significant is the process of examining “how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how those exclusions matter” (Karen Barad 2007, 30) during inter-action with filmic text and viewer. This manoeuvre posits that by re/turning events as iterative interactions visibility of materiality in the making may be rendered visible. By understanding intra-active processes educators may be able to frustrate delimiting accounts of girlhood as just the way itisand rather utilise these texts to open up other imaginaries of affirmative difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The history of Australian feminism remains well known for the early success of white women’s right to vote and stand for election to federal parliament. Yet much less well known is the story of how, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, Australian women could be and were involuntarily stripped of the very nationality which guaranteed those political rights. This paper draws fresh attention to the story of nationality loss, demonstrating in particular the vigorous and sustained interwar campaign launched by Australian women activists to gain independent nationality rights. By highlighting the double layering of interwar Australian citizenship as a status located in both the British Empire and the Australian nation state, the paper argues for the critical impact of that layering on Australian women’s rights and activism. This article has been peer reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2009, the Jessie Street National Women’s Library curated an exhibition in Sydney,Remembering Pine Gap, using their extensive collection of materials relating to the Pine Gap women’s peace camp held in central Australia in 1983. Arguably, one of the most iconic events of the Australian women’s peace movement held at the height of Cold War politics, the event accrues significance through being the subject of an exhibition. As well, the exhibition is one of the few that takes a feminist event as its sole focus, and so reminds us of the material connection between the politics and aesthetics of feminist space and time. This article investigates what this might mean as a form for remembering feminist activism, and as an activist form.Remembering Pine Gapis therefore critically situated in relation to other feminist and social protest exhibitions, and is then addressed as an activist form through its feminist aesthetics. In doing so, the paper seeks to extend the ways in which activist spaces and forms can be remembered as physical and material sites as well as intellectual cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The history of the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) is distinguished by its extensive involvement in electoral politics and public policy. This paper traces WEL's development as part of the broader women's movement, considers its engagement with government and situates it in relation to Australian and international political traditions. It describes WEL's distinctive style of political engagement, through its candidate surveys for the 1972 federal election to the online party scorecards of the 2000s, and the more than 900 policy submissions along the way. Personal connections via the ‘femocrats’ and feminist members of parliament strengthened WEL's policy influence and helped it realise (at least for a time) the goal of a feminist policy machinery across the whole of government at both commonwealth and state/territory levels. WEL has also been part of a broader women's movement, generating tensions as well as inspiration and support. With characteristic pragmatism, WEL members made sense of their place in the movement by working for the ‘preconditions of revolution’ from the reformist end of a ‘continuum of radicalism’. They were aiming to broaden the impact of feminism by making gender equality part of the core business of government. This is a project that was undermined by major changes in political conditions, but which WEL continues to pursue through its particular focus on policy analysis and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the connections of feminist scholarship in the social sciences with political struggles and institutions. The creation of bases for a feminist knowledge project is outlined and its uses in challenging sexist culture and in developing agendas of reform are explored. The impact of neoliberalism and the significance of Australia's location in the global periphery for the shape of the public realm and the character of feminist research are discussed. The resource represented by feminist scholarship across the global South for understanding contemporary forms of patriarchy is emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores some of the theoretical and practice issues in relation to feminist oral history. The central theoretical premise is that transcripts from interviews are to be understood as constructed texts rather than as windows into the past. It draws on the author's conduct of a research project that documented the history of the Victorian domestic violence services movement from 1974 to 2005. The author's position is analysed in relation to the production of historical evidence—which was done by conducting oral interviews and producing transcripts—and in writing feminist history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, a dominant figure in Australian sociocultural constructions has been that of ‘the bogan’, which, although capricious, has typically been deployed as a negative descriptor of the white working-class poor. In this paper, we examine media representations of this ubiquitous figure from 2009 to 2012 through a gender lens. In the texts, ‘the bogan’ is implicitly and explicitly rendered masculine, with the feminised archetype, the ‘female bogan’ (or ‘boganette’) as supplement or ‘other’. Drawing on feminist cultural theory of class, we examine depictions of the female bogan that invoke her identity-as-mother as a source of scorn while affording considerable attention that disparages her embodied self. Following this, we explore how the chosen media texts position the bogan and the female bogan in relation to feminism and the sexualisation of culture. Collectively, these texts demonstrate both shifts and continuities in what are powerfully fused gender and class discourses of the female working class. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is an examination of Ruby Rich (1888–1988), an Australian feminist, concert pianist, Zionist, pacifist and eugenicist. Although much lauded by her peers, Rich has gone largely unexamined by historians, particularly in contrast to the recent research on her feminist contemporaries Mary Montgomerie Bennett and Bessie Rischbieth. I draw attention to Rich's remarkable life and varied experiences, and use her example to explore the relationship between feminism and eugenics in twentieth-century Australia. From the early 1920s, Rich became a prominent figure within several Australian feminist organisations and in 1926 was appointed the founding president of the Racial Hygiene Association of NSW, an organisation which espoused eugenics. Although it is often assumed that eugenics is innately anti-feminist, Rich remained an active champion of both feminism and racial hygiene for over 50 years. Her example therefore provides an opportunity to trace the unlikely sympathies between these two movements, and highlights the extent to which eugenics found acceptance among progressive members of the Australian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between living with a disability and an individual's risk of being disadvantaged or discriminated against is clear. However, the focus is often on issues of equity and access to employment and services and the physical health needs of individuals. When focusing broadly on rights, the gender and sexuality of people living with a disability can easily be rendered invisible, or subjugated to other seemingly “higher order” issues. Broader issues of the sexual health, sexual identity and sexual expression of people with a disability needs to also be brought into focus. Drawing on research from Australia and internationally, this paper provides a brief overview of the experience of sexual assault and sexual victimisation, homophobia and gender-based discrimination for people with a disability. Recognising and balancing these complex and sometimes apparently competing self-identities and needs is complex, yet is integral from a human rights perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature and extent of gender stereotyping, both linguistic and pictorial, in a set of 10 Australian English-language textbooks for intermediate learners. In order to determine how accurately the books reflect the status of women in contemporary Australian society a content and linguistic analysis was conducted, focusing on, amongst other things, the ratio of male to female characters, the portrayal of women and men in social and domestic settings, the use of gender-inclusive expressions, and the ordering of items in female/male symmetrical constructions. Despite the generally high level of sensitivity to gender issues displayed by most of the writers, the findings suggest that the ideal of a truly balanced treatment of men and women has yet to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematises embedded notions of masculine and feminine embodiment within the contexts of contemporary Australian mainstream popular culture. Drawing on Bourdieu's (1990:56) theory of `habitus' as non-consciously performed practices'… internalised as second nature and so forgotten'; personal reflections as artist, choreographer and teacher; and a brief analysis of the male body in the television program, So You Think You Can Dance Australia (TEN Network, 2008), the author questions and considers the development of habitual ways of perceiving particular forms of male embodiment as aesthetic and attractive, and other forms as un-aesthetic. Further, the impact of the author's own experiences as actor! dancer and choreographer are considered in relation to his work as a director and choreographer of `the bodies of male and female students' in school productions. Through this paper, the author conjectures about the potential for the drama classroom to be a site in which embodied gender inequities may be challenged and deconstructed. Jack Migdalek [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the professional middle class in information industries, “working from home” is an increasingly common feature of the employment landscape, resulting from the affordability and portability of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The phrase invokes a sense of freedom from the banality of the traditional office, offering flexibility in both working hours and location when other commitments prevail. In recent debates in Australian politics, working from home is also offered as an empowered choice for women who seek to combine paid work and childcare duties, thereby consecrating a preferable version of (post)feminist subjectivity suited to neoliberal economics and ideologies. This paper shows how these subjectivities have been represented in recent ICT advertising for two purposes: firstly, to highlight the role of mainstream media in normalising preferred uses of new media technology for work purposes; and secondly, to note how this process contributes to wider discourses limiting the aspirations of middle-class feminist politics to an individual level. In doing so, the paper seeks to question the ethical horizon of new media advertising as well as the feminist and labour politics upon which its appeal relies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The underachievement of boys has been a focus of intense concern in Australia for over 15 years. Historical analyses suggest that male students' poor performance has traditionally been attributed to factors external to boys themselves (methods, teachers, texts), deflecting attention from the relationship between masculinity construction and successful engagement with school. This paper turns the focus back, addressing the ways in which gender itself was constructed within hearings held for the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Boys' Education. Discursive analysis demonstrates that witnesses to the Inquiry drew upon a series of gender binaries in representing male and female students, and accounting for their relative attainment. These binaries worked to associate masculinity with 'authentic' learning, such that the success of male students was naturalised even in the absence of achievement. Conversely, the association of femininity and 'inauthentic learning' worked to undermine female students' demonstrated success. The role of these binaries in the reproduction of a paradoxical relationship between gender and achievement is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, comments made by a group of senior male academics in Australian universities about their leadership behaviours, are considered. Whereas the majority of the men in the study spoke about gender relations, and sometimes feminism in their workplaces, only two of the men engaged in discourses of gender and/or feminism, as well as actively practising and supporting pro-feminist principles in their workplaces. For a further four men, who even though they utilised gender-related discourses, there was dissonance with their work practices. It is speculated that fears of feminism, masculinity and of litigation may be possible explanations as to why several of the men grappled with the personal challenges of what it means to be situated in the 'uncertain terrain' of publicly espousing support for feminism whilst not wanting to lose their positioning as a male in a patriarchal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The women's peace movement has a long history in Australia and groups of women have protested since at least World War I. In this paper I discuss the women's peace movement of the mid 1980s and, in particular, the activities of the Western Australian group, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Sound Women's Peace Camp held south of Perth in 1984. Radical feminism informed the women's peace movement and was expressed through protests not only against war, but also against other forms of what were considered to be patriarchal violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the rise and use of a "woman-centred" anti-choice strategy to oppose abortion in Australia and the USA. It argues that this strategy seeks to imitate and exploit aspects of the pro-choice, women-centred position on abortion. The strategy contends that women do not really choose abortion but are pressured into it by others and then experience a range of negative effects afterwards, including an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and post-abortion grief. Rather than evaluate the truth of such claims, this paper seeks to explicate from a feminist perspective the design, intent and implications of this strategy and how it is being used in legislative tactics, counselling, law suits and anti-choice activism. Such an analysis is necessary for pro-choice efforts to respond effectively to this new strategy, not only through literal rebuttals based on evidence, but also through responses that counter its ideological power. Cet article étudie la progression et l'utilisation d'une stratégie anti-avortement ≪ centrée sur les femmes ≫ en Australie et aux Etats-Unis; il avance que cette stratégie souhaite imiter et exploiter des aspects de la position pro-avortement centrée sur les femmes. La stratégie affirme que les femmes ne choisissent pas vraiment l'avortement, mais y sont incitées par d'autres et connaissent ensuite diverses séquelles, notamment un risque accru de cancer du sein, de stérilité et de dépression post-avortement. Plutôt que de se prononcer sur l'exactitude de ces affirmations, l'article explique dans une perspective féministe la conception, les intentions et les conséquences de cette stratégie et comment elle est utilisée dans des tactiques législatives, des consultations, des procès et des actions militantes anti-avortement. Cette analyse est nécessaire pour que les efforts en faveur de l'avortement répondent efficacement au mouvement qui s'y oppose, par des démentis fondés sur des preuves, mais aussi par des interventions pouvant contrer son pouvoir idéologique. Este artı́culo examina el surgimiento en Australia y los Estados Unidos de una estrategia en contra del aborto "centrada en la mujer", la cual pretende imitar y explotar aspectos de la posición a favor del derecho de decidir centrada en la mujer. La estrategia de oposición asevera que las mujeres no optan a abortar sino que están presionadas por otros y que posteriormente experimentan una gama de efectos secundarios negativos que incluyen un aumento en el riesgo de cáncer de mama, la infecundidad y un sentimiento de profundo pesar. En lugar de evaluar la certeza de dichas afirmaciones, este artı́culo busca explicar, desde una perspectiva feminista, el diseño, la intención y las implicaciones de esta estrategia, y cómo se utiliza en tácticas legislativas, servicios de consejerı́a, pleitos y diversas acciones en contra del aborto. Este análisis es necesario para que las acciones a favor del derecho de decidir respondan eficazmente al movimiento anti-aborto, no solamente mediante refutaciones literales basadas en evidencias, sino mediante respuestas capaces de contestar su poder ideológico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a series of articles on the association of feminism, religion and citizenship in Australia. Feminist academic historians' attitude toward the religious elements of Australian women's past; Challenges in incorporating religion to feminist history.

The 'women's lobby' or the 'powerful feminist lobby' has been held responsible for a range of evils including the undermining of the traditional family, public expenditure on community services, social engineering and the imposition of 'political correctness'. To what extent is there a 'women's lobby' working from inside or outside government to influence public decision-making? In this paper we explore this question, using data from a social network analysis of the Australian women's movement conducted in 1992-3. Our findings are that there is a large, very loosely connected network of organisations engaging in advocacy on behalf of women. Density of ties is less than is found in a comparable study of the Canadian women's movement but there are more ties between non-government groups and government agencies. Issues of organisational philosophy have inhibited the development of a 'peak body' for the non-government women's movement and led to reliance on issue-specific coalitions. Latterly, awareness of increasing fragmentation has led to a series of attempts to create more effective national networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]