Feminism

Some years ago, when I was able for the first time to lecture on the position of women in Australian society within an Australian Studies undergraduate course (in a section headed ‘Minorities’), the available material on the topic, apart from occasional brief throwaway references in the standard works, was minimal. Recognition that this gap existed – in academic courses, in the knowledge structures of disciplines, in our minds – coincided with the publication of those first few books, like Damned Whores and God’s Police, My Wife, My Daughter and Poor Mary Ann and others, that allowed the subject of women to be spoken and the social structures and discourses that positioned them to be examined.

‘“No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming.’ In her introduction to There's Always Been A Women's Movement this Century, Dale Spender admits that the elan of involvement in the recent women’s movement made her overlook ‘the unlit corridor of women's history’. She deplores ‘the process of reducing women to invisibility’. In a patriarchy, ‘sexism’ is ‘something that all members do ... There weren’t many patriarchal traps that I did not fall into’. Wanting to ‘generate a tradition of strong authoritative women’, she interviewed five ‘elder stateswomen’, all born between 1890 and 1910: journalist and leader of the six Point Group for equality Hazel Hunkins Hallinan; journalist and novelist Rebecca West; pacifist, educationalist and writer Dora Russell; journalist and Fawcett Society stalwart Mary Stott; sociologist Constance Rover. The result was ‘a genuine educational experience’ that prompts some flushed prior publicity: ‘it would be a (patriarchal) mistake to think of these discussions as insignificant but pleasant gossip about old times. This is a form of women's history ... each women tells her own story ... despite all the many limitations, we have here a valuable record’.

It would be remarkable indeed, if this collection of documents did not fulfil its broadly stated aim of interesting the general reader of Australian history and adding something more to the available literature for women’s studies courses. For the general reader it is a pleasantly presented book, utilising line drawings, cartoons, and advertisements as they appeared in the journals and newspapers of the late nineteenth century. The documents appear also as very extensive illustrations to the editor’s commentary, and although a querulous reader might complain that it is not always clear where the commentary ends and the documents begin, it is an easy book for browsing. As well, because documents of this kind have not been over-used in the conventional collections on Australian history, the general reader is bound to find something that is either new or stimulating.

‘Women as clergy ... would be comparable to offering a meat pie on the altar of God.’ The Rev. Ian Herring, Victoria, 1971.

That is not the isolated view of a raving misogynist. The 1968 Lambeth Conference heard the now Anglican Primate of Australia, Marcus Loane, say that the admission of women into the priesthood would sound the ‘death knell’ of men’s interest in the Church. Just like a public bar.

And at Lambeth this year, 200 Anglican bishops were billeted 2 km away from their wives, so that they could more easily ‘wait upon God’.

The established Churches, like all our political institutions, have tenaciously guarded their rituals and hierarchies from female intrusion.