CHAPTER 20: What a Legacy We Inherit!

"Those of us who are committed have to keep on talking, even when we feel there is no-one listening. We have to critique what is happening and somehow resist being drawn into the vortex of the market that wants to drown us."
Prof Margaret Thornton

Josie Lee looking forward see www.womensweb.com.au

We start with WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS in general. 1... THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT 2...WORKING WITH CONSERVATIVE WOMEN'S GROUPS

3...RESPONSE TO HOSTILE WOMEN'S GROUPS 4...WHAT MAKES THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT ACTIVE? 5...'MY COUNTRY IS THE WHOLE WORLD' 6...SISTERS 7...AND FROM SONGSTERS

Dale Spender: 'Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties.  Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions ... for safety on the streets ... for child care, for social welfare ... for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law.'

Alice Henry, Chicago, July 1915: ' ... our work is here, and we have to pursue it. Whatever will strengthen the labour movement, or the woman movement, goes to strengthen the world forces of peace. Let us hold fast to that. And conversely, whatever economic or ethical changes will help to insure a permanent basis for world peace will grant to both the labour movement and the woman movement enlarged opportunity to come into their own.'

To me we inherit from the Women's Movement the qualities feminism offers - the opportunity for growth and change, liberation, life, justice, human rights for everyone and an egalitarian way of interacting with others. There is nothing small or mean here. It is based on co-operation.

Patriarchy is 'the elephant in the room'. What we inherit from patriarchy has many negative aspects - 'the petty death-dealing divisiveness of a patriarchy gone mad', as one feminist described these aspects. It may offer order, but at a terrible cost - the cost of unthinking obedience and at the cost of fear and hatred of the 'other' which is passed on through the generations. It offers safety, but doesn't and can't deliver. It is based on competition and may cause a desperate scramble to be a winner, sometimes creating a confusion of lies, ignorance and prejudice in the process.

Patriarchy and Feminism are both our legacies but to me a feminist world view must nearly always have precedence.'

WOMEN'S ORGANISATIONS

It seems we have inherited three different traditions of women's organisations -

1. feminist women's groups, including peace, social justice, environmental and labour groups,

2. conservative women's groups usually committed to the status quo (such as charities rather than rights) or part of another organisation such as a women's section of a political party, and

3. reactionary women's groups determined to subvert, undermine and destroy the women's movement. If and when they subvert, undermine or try to destroy the women's movement on basic issues such as women's place in the world or women's control over their bodies I have named them enemies. Many women and groups are progressive on some issues and reactionary on others, and many change over time. These are our legacy also.

1...THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

Unknown author: "The women's movement is about balance, liberation, women working together. In spite of being seen at times as revolutionary, it can never be one of those revolutions where you just end up with another group on top but nothing else has changed."

It is feminist.

It is a movement - open to change, rather than traditionalist or conservative.

It is about liberation and reciprocity - not controlling others, democratic rather than hierarchal, consensual and inquiring rather than prescriptive.

It is about social and economic justice, rather than charity.

It is about everyone rather than just a self help group for or by women - most women's groups are that, but they are not necessarily part of the women's movement.

It looks to the future and is often ahead of others. The "White Australia Policy' was challenged by feminists from the beginning.

Lastly, it is a way of looking at the world, not a creed.

2...WORKING WITH CONSERVATIVE WOMEN'S GROUPS

Rebecca West: 'I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a door mat.'

Feminist groups often work with conservative groups, groups which don't see themselves as feminist. DES Action is an example of this. It is a conservative self help group run for and by women affected by DES, yet it started off with women's liberation.

Marian Vickers: 'The main thing I want to emphasize is that DES Action comprises very ordinary people - DES mothers and daughters and other concerned individuals. We are not radicals or 'professional' activists: just average, sensible people who are becoming increasingly incensed at the apathy and inaction of the government and the medical profession on this serious health issue. Thanks to Bon Hull, Wendy Lowenstein, Jean Melzer, UAW and DES Action/SAn Francisco.' Despatch, Newsletter of DES Action, Sept. 1980

Despatch, Newsletter of DES Action, Sept. 1980: 'For most of us in DES Action the term DES has been part of our vocabulary for less than a year. However one of our members, Bon Hull (from the Women's Action Committee), has been aware of the DES issue for several years. (See Chapter 16 In Our Own Hands)

1974: After reading material in a US magazine Bon wrote to the USA requesting information on DES. Since then she has been receiving information on DES and material on other areas of women's health from the Boston Women's Collective.

1976: There was an article on DES published in the Age. The issue then died: there was no follow up nor official action taken either by the medical profession or the government. ... most of us remained unaware and at risk.

1977: Bon started writing her book In Our Own Hands (which has just been published). By this stage she had collected a lot of information on DES and also had contacted DES Action/San Francisco who have been very supportive.

1979: In July/August Wendy Lowenstein read Bon's manuscript. When she came to the section on DES, Wendy suddenly twigged that she was probably directly involved ie as a DES mother. Wendy, an enthusiastic 'doer' then rant the Union of Australian Women (UAW), with which she has been associated for many years, and asked if any women's groups were involved with this important health issue. The answer was "No".

The UAW agreed to take up the DES issue and asked Yvonne Smith to organize things. The choice was an excellent one as Yvonne is a quietly efficient and effective organizer. She did an enormous amount of 'hack' work at the end of last year - organizing meetings and writing many letters to women's groups, health groups and politicians. The DES Action Group (Interim Committee) was formed and the first meeting was held in the UAW on the 24th September 1979 ...'

Kaz Cooke: 'I'm not a feminist,” some women say sternly as they march off to work where equal opportunity legislation protects them ... Women who say they are not feminists and act like individuals with basic human rights have just got their terminology wrong.' Kaz Cooke, The Modern Girl's Guide to Everything (1989)

3...RESPONSE TO HOSTILE WOMEN'S GROUPS

Robin Morgan: 'Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.'

There is evidence of women's groups formed to undermine, subvert and destroy the women's movement.

No-one in the women's movement has saiad that any individual woman must vote, stand for parliament, do paid work or take control and responsibility for her own body, and no-one could in the name of feminism, yet there are those who want to inflict their world-view on everyone else and it is more difficult to know how to respond when they are women. It is a difference about who women are, often described as feminism versus femininity. It is also more than that. Women in the women's movement do not want to force any woman, for example, to have an abortion. They will work, fight and struggle to prevent anyone from forcing a woman to have and abortion. Yet women in reactionary women's groups want to stop any woman from having access to abortion services.

Barbara Wishart said in 1975: 'We are reaching a stage where it will no longer be possible to convince women that femininity is an adequate substitute for a full, meaningful life, for personal autonomy and political power' and it seems more and more women are so convinced.' p 376 Political Socialization and Women in Australia in The Other Half, Women in Australia ed Jan Mercer Penguin 1975

Carmen Callil: 'It is an eternal truth that when the word "family" is uttered by a politician, women, and therefore men, have everything to fear.' p 211 Bad Faith A Story of Family and Fatherland Vintage 2007

When anti-feminist organisations such as Right to Life or Women's Action Alliance claim to support the family they are not referring to the diverse types of families most of us belong to. They refer to a hypothetical family - capital "F" romanticized family, which really doesn't, exist.

Over the last century the Women's Movement seems to have handled this prejudice by ignoring hostile groups. This poem from the late nineteenth century is an example of that:

An Obstacle

I was climbing up a mountain path
With many things to do,
Important business of my own,
And other people's too,
When I ran across a 'PREJUDICE'
That quite cut off the view.

My work was such as could not wait,
My path quite clearly showed,
My strength and time were limited,
I carried quite a load,
And there that hulking Prejudice
Sat all across the road.

So I spoke to him politely,
For he was huge and high,
And begged that he would move a bit
And let me travel by -
He smiled, but as for moving! -
He didn't even try.

And then I reasoned quietly
With that colossal mule;
My time was short - no other path -
The mountain winds were cool -
I argued like a Solomon,
He sat there like a mule.

Then I flew into a passion,
I danced and howled and swore,
I pelted and belaboured him
Till I was stiff and sore;
He got as mad as I did -
But he sat there as before.

So I sat before him helpless,
In an ecstasy of woe -
The mountain mists were rising fast,
The sun was sinking low -
When a sudden inspiration came,
As sudden winds do blow.

I took my hat, I took my stick,
My load I settled fair,
I approached that awful incubus,
With an absent minded air -
And I walked directly through him,
As if he wasn't there!

Charlotte P Stetson (Charlotte P Gilman, author of The Yellow Wallpaper; Women and Economics;
Herland etc.) published in the Australian feminist journal The Woman's Sphere in September1900:

There is no evidence that persuasion had any effect. In the Woman Voter feminists did try to do something about them, they challenged the Australian League of Women to a debate, but they were unsuccessful. The same process occurred later in the Women's Liberation Movement. The problem seems to be that the agenda of the Women's Movement is to support women in their full humanity, but hostile women's groups are established, and function, for other reasons - for some version of God, to combat socialism or communism, to support 'free' enterprise, the patriarchal family etc. The religious right is particularly strong at the moment. Fortunately we have some protection in our Constitution -

'The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion,
or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free
exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as
a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.'
The Australian Constitution, Clause 116 (Italics mine) Http://unbelief.org

4...WHAT MAKES THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT ACTIVE?

Women's activism on suffrage and women's liberation burst upon the world seemingly out of nowhere. Why did it happen?

As ar as I can see there were conditions that led to the women's movement becoming active, conditions that allowed -
a. Raised awareness of injustice and unfairness in the minds of many women at the same time.
b. Belief they should tackle the situation by coming together with other women.
c. Confidence that they could do something about this.
d. Belief they must tackle structures rather than people or groups of people eg 'patriarchy' rather than 'men, 'war' rather than 'the enemy' (whoever that may be at the time).

It appears women saw themselves as part of something greater than themselves or even as part of the organisations they belonged to. They saw themselves as part of a movement and acted accordingly. Competition was there but co-operation was paramount.

Passion is important, too. Alice Henry said of young women in the 1920's: 'They don't seem to burn with causes and have high emotional adventure.' Stella (Miles Franklin) concurred, 'There is nothing for them but to conform and imitate and they are anaemic specimens. No rebellion, no venturesomeness', she complained. p 214 Diane Kirby Alice Henry: The Power of Pen and Voice CUB

5...'MY COUNTRY IS THE WHOLE WORLD'

'As a woman I have no country, as a woman I want no country, as a woman my country is the whole world', said Virginia Woolf. Virginia was referring to a time when women literally lost their citizenship upon marriage to a foreigner, yet this statement still remains a powerful commitment to belonging to a place where we, as women, are deeply connected to everything and everyone in the world. It also has resonance with the idea of women being complete in their own right, not just in relation to others, or as a collection of roles such as mothers, daughters, wives.

Does it matter if there is no women's movement? I think it does. What else can connect us, as women, in our own individual bodies, with our own individual lives, to the whole world?

Economics connects us internationally, but if we as women are omitted from this system, as Marilyn Waring believes we are, we have a lot of work to do. Marilyn explains how the word 'economics' in its Greek roots describes the management or rule of a house or household. Yet now the work women do in their homes is excluded from the economic system, as is the natural environment.

This is taken from Counting for Nothing What Men Value and What Women are Worth Allen & Unwin 1988 -

Marilyn Waring - A Woman's Reckoning, An Introduction to the International Economic System: 'I am awake in a glistening morning ready to write. From the window, the lush green grass, thick with autumn dew, leads to the empty beach. The sea and sky beyond - both blue and unpolluted - are washed clear and clean by the sun. The only sounds are the early dawn chorus and the roaring of the waves. I sit, as writers and artists have done for centuries, labouring unpaid. Yet I am sure this is work. I am sure it is productive, and I hope it will be of value. But as far as the International Monetary Organisation (ILO) is concerned ... it is none of the above.

I consider the hills rising directly from the sea. They were once covered in thick native bush, which must have been nonproductive, for it was burned or cleared off. Now thousands of pine trees inch their way to a harvest at twenty years. That will make them "productive." If the mineral prospecting lecences on the hills reveal minerals in quantity, the hills, too, will be productive. As they are - untouched, unscathed - they have no value. That's what the international monetary system says.

My tenancy of this house is unproductive ... I contribute nothing, as I am a guest here. I consume a little water and electricity. Now that has value! If modern plumbingconveniences were not providing water and I walked with my bucket to collect it from the streams there, it would be worthless. That's what the international economic system says.

If I were to take commercially prepared, prepackaged food from the fridge, I would be economically consumptive. But I choose to eat ... from the domestic garden, items of no value. All in all, I seem to be having a very worthless sort of day - like the beach, the birds, and the clear and unpolluted skies ... p 12

We women are visible and valuable to each other, and we must, now in our billions, proclaim that visibility and worth. p 264

Just being women in situations such as war can connect us when everything seems to alienate us from each other. The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA) is a good example of women working together internationally, 'proclaiming that visibility and worth'. Women in Australia support women from RAWA, and by their work women from RAWA support women in Australia and around the world.' See Chapter 19

From the Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan (RAWA) website, Mariam said: "The fundamentalists impose their domination with the help of their weapons, foreign masters and money. Without these, they have no footing in Afghan society."  ' http://www.rawa.org/ RAWA supporters in Melbourne www.womensweb.com.au

August 4, 2008 - Hiroshima (Japan): RAWA representative addressing the opening plenary of 2008 World conference against Atomic and Hydrogen bombs where more than 5000 people were gathered.

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6...SISTERS

Zelda D'Aprano: 'Dear Sisters ... To have been involved in the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) is, in my opinion, a badge of honour; we have the highest reason for being proud of our achievement and the results of this period. To be proud of our involvement and achievements is to give the young women of today good reason to continue the essential campaigns yet to be waged. I know that, for most of you, whatever field you're in, you will be assisting young women to be confident, capable, strong and caring young women, with a true appreciation of their own worth, but the invisibility of the WLM from history and the tendency to work from the top has taken the feelings, the passion and the life force out of the struggle and left a feminism without a heart.

When we started the Women's Action Committee in 1970 there was very little to read on the oppression of women. Today we have a preponderance of books which have revealed every facet of the methods, techniques and stratagems used to 'keep us in our place'. What is lacking is books on what the structures are, how they function and how they prevent people from being liberated, both women and men, and information on what can be done to change these structures.

Sisters, very early on we gave women the courage to introduce the initial changes, we now need your passion, your heart and your head to continue the changes necessary to free us all from the patriarchal mess: we don't want more of the same!' Zelda by Zelda D'Aprano, Spinifex Press 1995

In Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions Molly Hadfield explained it this way: 'I think the Women's Movement was great, not only for me but also for hundreds and hundreds of women. It has got to come up again. My auntie used to say that we have always had a Women's Movement. 'Don't think they have stopped', she said, 'They will rise up again when issues arise which affect them'. cp 49 Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions pub Union of Australian Women www.womensweb.com.au

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7...AND FROM SONGSTERS

'The first time it was fathers, the last time it was sons
And in between your husbands marched away with drums and guns
And you never thought to question, you just went on with your lives
'Cause all they'd taught you who to be was mothers, daughters, wives.'

sang Judy Small, referring to the normal state of most women in most times at most places, but ending with:

And now your growing older and in time the photos fade
And in widowhood you sit back and reflect on the parade
Of the passing of your memories as your daughters change their lives
Seeing more to our existence than just mothers, daughters, wives!

See Appendix 2 Songs from the Women's Movement

And then:

'I am woman hear me roar, In numbers too big to ignore
And I know how much to go back and pretend
'Cause I've heard it all before, And I've been down there on the floor
No-one's ever gonna keep me there again.'

sang Helen Reddy. See Appendix 2 Songs from the Women's Movement

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APPENDIX 1