The UAW enjoyed success in the 1950s and 1960s with their combination of the conventional and subversive, being a "product of both mainstream and left culture" but were considered conservative by the post-Vietnam Women's liberation movement.

The Northern Territory had a branch revived from the defunct Darwin Housewives' Association, but purportedly attracted few members due to concerns of Communist affiliation.

[2]: 28–30  Through this grassroots approach, the UAW was on one hand able to connect housewives and mothers in local communities to national or international issues beyond the home,[2]: 4  and on the other, provide the organisational backing to campaign for improvements in their members' immediate surroundings—such as child-minding centres in Rockhampton.

[5] The UAW's name, as opposed to the NHA's, reflected their aim to attract "all women",[6]: 07.3  recognising that those who stayed in the post-war workforce were no longer necessarily housewives and would want to identify otherwise.

[8] Nevertheless, they subscribed to the underlying notion that children were a woman's responsibility,[2]: 34  which informed their stance on issues from living costs to environmental damage, and especially war.

[2]: 34–35 Maternalism provided the ideological backdrop for domestic activities, such as apron-making and millinery demonstrations, to comfortably coexist alongside equally important discussions on serious political issues in local group meetings.

[2]: 45  However, the circumstances surrounding the UAW's formation and individual members' actions in the politically hostile Cold War environment earned it the continued scrutiny of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation through the 1950s and 1960s.

[2]: 27–28 At the local level, the UAW focused on the everyday lives of its members and sought to relate them to broader political issues, rather than dictate party policy.

With the rise of the Women's Liberation movement in the 1970s, reproductive rights and contraception became an additional focus, although the UAW's persistent maternalist and domestic approach struggled to keep up with the eventual trajectory of feminism.

[15]: 52 As the UAW saw their efforts come to fruition with the introduction of progressive legislation and encouraging results in the workforce, they remained persistent in supporting equal treatment at the workplace.

[2]: 139  In 1981, for example, NSW state secretary Lee Gorman pledged the UAW's support in pursuing the case of four women appealing to the Anti-Discrimination Board for being stood down by the Urban Transit Authority for being pregnant.

[2]: 70 Although the UAW met with limited success in the 1950s and early 1960s, it was ironically near the end of the 1960s, when they started losing members to the Women's Liberation movement,[6]: 07.13 [8]: 149  that their efforts to lay the necessary groundwork paid off.

The UAW initially took a broad approach towards women's health, organising public meetings and letter-writing campaigns on topics from cervical cancer to childbirth.

Victorian members worked against anti-abortionists taking over the directory boards of the Royal Women's and Queen Victoria hospitals between 1970 and 1975, and publicly countered their attempts to exclude abortion from the Medicare rebate scheme.

[2]: 135–136 The UAW was an early, ardent and constant supporter of Indigenous rights, striving to promote racial equality consistent with their left-wing opposition to oppression.

[2] Notably, the UAW also strived to depict Indigenous people in a positive light in their magazine Our Women, in stark contrast to mainstream media at the time.

While the organisational relationships faded, the UAW nevertheless remained fully supportive of Indigenous causes and continued to contribute when possible, such as donating a third of a received bequest to the Oenpelli Community School.

[2]: 166 The UAW was one of the first urban women's groups to act on environmental issues,[2]: 81  starting in the 1960s after being inspired by ideas brought from America in books such as Silent Spring, and the controversy over Agent Orange.

[2]: 80, 118 The UAW also maintained a constant anti-nuclear stance that was mostly focused on the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, but also stemmed from their maternal concern over the long-term environmental consequences future generations would have to bear.

Through personal correspondence and grassroots campaigns, they addressed conflicts related to issues of equality and freedom, and strongly protested against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War.

While the UAW likely had minimal impact on foreign affairs, organisation leaders were motivated by an "ideological commitment" and members gained the satisfaction of being part of an international movement.

The UAW's executive committee was affected by a "pro-Soviet bias",[2]: 135  choosing not to take specific action against the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

The UAW protested the South African apartheid movement since the 1950s, maintaining support for various anti-apartheid citizens and figures, including Elizabeth Mafekeng and Helen Joseph.

Prominent attendees included Elizabeth Anne Reid and Margaret Whitlam, as well as Joan Child who was now able to assist as a Member of Federal Parliament.

[2]: 150–153 The UAW's founding undercurrent of coupling Soviet-influenced internationalism with the "common female experience"[6]: 07.10  promoted regular interaction with individuals and organisations from multiple countries, often women's unions that shared similar goals and philosophies.

[21] Through international contacts, the UAW also concerned itself with individual plights of socio-political importance, such as the imprisonment of prominent civil rights activist Angela Davis.

[6]: 07.2  However, this also proved to be their weak point, as the UAW's continued focus on peaceful motherhood started to seem outmoded and ineffective to a new generation of activists and campaigners in the vigorous post-Vietnam Women's Liberation movement.

[2]: 98–100  While the UAW did attempt to keep up, reflected by the increasing seriousness of content in Our Women and records of continuous efforts through the 1970s, they struggled to identify with the concepts and approaches of this new wave of feminism, not only failing to attract many new members but losing others to more radical feminist groups.

By then, the UAW had only a loose association with the CPA, but conflicts nevertheless arose between the CPA-aligned Victorian branch and the SPA-aligned New South Wales and national executive committees, especially over the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

It remains active (2019), with a recorded statement[24] from 2011 strongly denouncing the bombing of Afghanistan and the Australian government's treatment of asylum seekers, particularly in the Tampa affair.