Feminism in Australia
[1] The Australian state of South Australia, then a British colony, was the first parliament in the world to grant some women full suffrage rights.
[3][4] Australia has also been home to several prominent feminist activists and writers, including Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch; Julia Gillard, former prime minister; Vida Goldstein, suffragist; and Edith Cowan, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament.
[3] Feminist action seeking equal opportunity in employment has resulted in partially successful legislation, but more changes are required.
The success gained by feminists entering the Australian public service and changing policy led to the descriptive term 'femocrats'.
The predominant critical theory of feminism in Australia is that male dominance of business, politics, law and the media has resulted in gender inequality.
[7] Feminism research has expanded the scope of political science in Australia to include issues related to femininity, motherhood and violence against women.
[11] Australia has had several feminist organisations during its history, many of which helped the push for basic women's rights like granting of full suffrage, financial independence from husbands, access to abortions, and equal pay.
[3] Between the World Wars, the Country Women's Association was founded in New South Wales and Queensland, spreading throughout the rest of Australia over the following 14 years.
The second-wave of Feminism in Australia began during the 1960s with the confrontation of legal and social double standards as well as workplace discrimination and sexual harassment.
Germaine Greer rose to international prominence during the later part of this period, with the publication and widespread adoption of, her ideas in her book, The Female Eunuch in 1970.
[14] She was still the only female judge in South Australia when she retired 18 years later in 1983 although Justices Elizabeth Evatt and Mary Gaudron had been appointed to federal courts by the Whitlam Government.
[15] The first Australian state to deal with marital rape was South Australia, under the progressive initiatives of Premier Don Dunstan, which in 1976 partially removed the exemption.
They were possibly influenced by American feminist Susan Brownmiller's book Against Our Will, published in 1975, as well as women's personal experience of working with rape victims.
[21] Prominent writer Helen Garner attracted widespread controversy for her 1995 non-fiction reportage The First Stone, which details the fallout from a sexual harassment scandal aimed at a well-respected master at the University of Melbourne.
The book became a bestseller, but it was hotly debated both in Australia and the United States by some critics and feminists as an example of victim blaming.
Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard gained international attention and praise in 2012 for an off-the-cuff speech in the Australian federal parliament directed at then Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.
