Great Hopes: “Second-Wave” Feminism and the State, from Whitlam to Fraser (1972–1983)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Australian government policy but also provides relevant international examples. It analyses gender equality policy during the Whitlam and Fraser governments. Fortuitously for feminists, Whitlam’s election coincided with so-called second-wave feminism’s serious challenge to traditional policy frameworks in the 1970s. The government drew on international developments but also implemented innovative Australian policies. Feminist demands in state-based areas from childcare and women’s health to women’s refuges fitted well with the Whitlam government’s policy framing around “positive equality” whereby government would provide additional services and facilities that improved peoples’ lives. Consequently, the Whitlam government became a pioneering government internationally when it came to the implementation of gender equality measures and the policy machinery associated with them, including being the first government in the world to appoint a women’s advisor. The Whitlam government was also an early pioneer of intersectional approaches. However, neoliberal ideology began to have some influence during the end of the Whitlam government’s period in office and increased under the Liberal/Coalition government of Malcolm Fraser that followed. Furthermore, social conservative Liberals were beginning to mobilise against social liberal perspectives within the Liberal Party that were more supportive of feminism.

Introduction

As several commentators have pointed out, there was a fortuitous convergence between so-called second-wave feminism that reached Australia’s shores in the late 1960s and the election of a new Labor government in December 1972 after over two decades of conservative Coalition government.¹ Indeed, Sara Dowse has suggested that “the convergence of the rise of ‘new wave’ feminism and the election of a social democratic government after so long a period of conservative rule is perhaps unique in contemporary western democracies”.² Or, as Marian Sawer has put it, “the stars aligned in southern skies”.³ Feminism was just beginning to make its mark on mainstream politics internationally. 1972 was the same year that Olof Palme, the social democratic Prime Minister of Sweden, gave a pathbreaking speech supporting gender equality.⁴ Meanwhile, the UN was advocating greater women’s equality, including proposing 1975, which would fall during Labor’s period in government, as International Women’s Year.⁵ So, Australia was positioned to be amongst the countries at the forefront of international developments, especially given its determination to transform Australian society after decades of conservative government.

Whitlam’s election speech had explicitly addressed the “men and women of Australia” promising a brighter future that included advances for women.⁶ Prominent feminist Anne Summers, who was subsequently to become head of the Office of the Status of Women during the Hawke Labor government, has written of the excitement many feminists felt. The government’s second act in office was to write to the Arbitration Commission (the independent regulatory body overseeing wages and conditions) seeking to reopen the equal pay wage case. It then moved within days to remove a 37.5% tariff on imported diaphragms and condoms and remove a 27.5% “luxury tax” on oral contraceptives as well as putting the pill on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme thereby further reducing its cost.⁷ By April 1973, the Whitlam government had become the first in the world to appoint a dedicated women’s advisor (Elizabeth Reid) to advise on women’s policy.

The appointment was crucial given that, as Whitlam later acknowledged, women (along with racial minorities) had also been largely excluded from conventional forms of political power:

For most of this country’s history women have lived without visible political power; they have been excluded from almost all levels of government in our society. The momentous decisions of war and peace, of finance and technology, as well as the everyday decisions which affect how all people live, have been made by a minority of individuals who happen to be born white and male. Women whether they be conservative, liberal or radical should be fully represented in the political power structure simply as a matter of right: not just because they are women, but because they are capable human beings with skills, abilities and creativity from whom the world has much to gain. We all of us live in this man-made, man-defined and man-controlled world.⁸

Indeed, there were no Labor women members of parliament during Whitlam’s first period of government, although three were elected in the 1974 election. Importantly, Whitlam was also to acknowledge that the women’s movement was not just demanding greater political representation but also a transformative broadening of political thinking:

one of the most enlightening changes that has recently occurred is that women are insisting more and more that concerns of the home be the concerns of politics, that the personal be the political. Child care, family planning, housework and so on are now becoming issues for the political arena. To this extent women are in the process of trying to re-define and to re-describe, the political.⁹

Nonetheless, the deficiencies in women’s political representation combined with the transformed political thinking had also left many members of the women’s movement wary of engaging with the state.

The Women’s Movement and the State

The reservations amongst Australian feminists (many of whom would have preferred descriptions like women’s liberationists at the time) regarding interactions with the state have been explored by a number of academic commentators.¹⁰ However, it is noteworthy that a wide range of Australian feminists in the community, including those who identified as liberal, socialist and even radical feminists, were prepared to engage with governments to some extent. As we shall see later in this chapter, the downsides of working within the state also troubled many femocrats as they chafed against the bureaucratic, political and budgetary constraints that they encountered. Whitlam’s own women’s advisor, Elizabeth Reid, remained unhappy with many of the compromises she’d needed to make.¹¹ The reservations were all the greater since the transformation of politics feminists advocated went well beyond the purview of the current state, challenging existing social structures and domestic life. Looking back on 1970s feminism, Elizabeth Reid noted that:

The solutions that we were discussing in those times were collectivist and communal; for example, medium density housing, shared facilities such as laundry, or shared services, such as childcare, cooking and cleaning. This is in sharp contrast to today’s world where the policy response is increasingly individualised and personalised.

Although most contemporary Australian feminists were probably unaware of it, such approaches had a long history. For example, some nineteenth-century British socialist feminists who had advocated equality in domestic personal relationships had suggested collective solutions in their “utopian” communities, albeit often with limited success in challenging gendered divisions of labour.¹² However, such earlier feminist perspectives had been sidelined as issues of class struggle increasingly came to dominate issues of gender equality. As Barbara Taylor has explained:

The accelerating contest between capital and labour became the central axis on which all socialist struggles (non-Marxist as well as Marxist) turned, with every other struggle subordinated to that “world-historical” battle. The Owenite call for a multi-faceted offensive against all forms of social hierarchy, including sexual hierarchy, disappeared – to be replaced with a dogmatic insistence on the primacy of class-based issues, a demand for sexual unity in the face of a common class enemy, and a vague promise of improved status for women “after the revolution”.¹³

I have argued elsewhere that socially conservative male trade unionists and social democrats played a key role in restricting women’s employment (which had been widespread in early factory production in areas such as the cotton industry) and constructing the worker as a male wage-earning head of household.¹⁴ As we shall see, class issues still often continued to trump gender ones. Some Labor politicians in Whitlam’s government also still adhered to the belief that women needed to be “protected” from waged work. The issues twentieth-century Australian feminists were to encounter were therefore often very old ones.

Furthermore, even women’s organisations that were often associated with mainstream liberal feminism, such as the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL), put forward demands that can seem quite radical today.¹⁵ As Marian Sawer points out, the six key WEL demands were “equal pay, equal employment opportunity (EEO), equal access to education, free contraceptive services, abortion on demand and free 24-hour child care”.¹⁶ Unlike in a few other countries, free contraception and free childcare are not available in Australia today, and 24 hour free childcare generally remains an ambitious demand.¹⁷ The right to abortion, while available with some medicalised restrictions in all Australian states and territories, is under threat internationally.¹⁸

The Need for Transforming Society

Despite some political differences, all brands of 1970s feminists wanted to see major transformations in society. They had good reason to do so. After all, this was a society where sexist attitudes were widespread and working mothers, for example, were often criticised for neglecting their children. Susan Ryan (born 1942), who was elected to the Senate in 1975 and later became Hawke’s Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, has written eloquently about what life in Australia was like for women during the 1950s and 1960s.¹⁹ Partial advances made in women’s employment during the Second World War ended when the male troops returned home.²⁰ Women in the postwar period were expected to focus on being housewives and mothers in marriages that were meant to last for life, however unhappy. For much of this period, contraception was unavailable and abortion illegal. Most girls only received three years of secondary school education until they were 15 and were often discouraged from studying science or maths. Most went into low-paid factory or clerical jobs, although a few went into acceptable female professions such as teaching and nursing. Women only rarely made it into then male-dominated professions such as medicine or law.

In both the private and public sectors, women commonly lost their jobs once married. The marriage bar in the Australian Federal Public Service had remained until 1966, although women could return as temporary employees in junior typist positions considered unsuitable for men.²¹ Some women managed to remain in part-time work but risked losing even that if they became pregnant. Few women received superannuation and usually lost it once marriage forced them to resign.²² Equal pay for those who did work was still a dream with most women being paid 75% of the male rate, under long established industrial relations principles that had supported a male wage-earner head of household model (thereby also justifying lower female and higher male wages).²³ Women needed a male guarantor to get a home loan as well as personal loans.²⁴

Other MPs were also well aware of the inequalities women faced. Senator Ruth Coleman complained that there were only 5 women members out of a total of 187 in the Senate and House of Representatives in 1974 and the Parliamentary Handbook still only referred to the entitlements of wives of members. Yet such matters were minor compared to other barriers women faced, especially the inability to obtain loans, including hire purchase or housing finance, without a male guarantor, while in Western Australia women could not be financial guarantors for children attending tertiary education.²⁵ Insurance companies routinely asked women questions regarding their husband’s employment.²⁶ Minister for Labour, Clyde Cameron, noted Government Gazette job advertisements had regularly stated a preference for male candidates before Labor stopped it.²⁷

Labor Senator Jean Melzer cited examples of a teacher discouraging a female student from proceeding to sixth year maths on the grounds that it would cruel her marriage prospects.²⁸ Melzer complained that some parents still thought that girls did not need an education because they would only work briefly as a clerk or typist before being married.²⁹ Senator Melzer cited examples of women trying to access a government employment scheme being questioned whether they should be trained in case they had more children (and of a woman being asked for the name of her gynaecologist to confirm that she had had a hysterectomy); of married female government officers applying for appointments overseas being asked how their husbands felt about going overseas when men were never asked equivalent questions.³⁰

The next section will analyse some of the key ways in which the Labor government began to address such issues.

Women’s Services and Positive Equality

Whitlam’s concept of “positive equality” was to play a crucial role in the provision of women’s services.³¹ Reflecting the postwar Long Boom, Whitlam initially argued that the “abundance” produced by rising living standards and economic growth would take care of many needs, while also providing revenue for funding government programmes.³² Additional improvements in a citizen’s life would now come from the provision of government benefits and services, ranging from the provision of adequate public health care and sewerage for outer suburbs to the provision of community centres and better educational opportunities.³³ Whitlam’s argument was particularly important because Australia had tended to rely on a system of industrial courts and mediation services to ensure good standards of living via high wages (for male wage-earner heads of households), with less focus on government provision of welfare services than in some other western countries.³⁴

Whitlam’s position on positive equality and the provision of government services was to fit well with feminist demands for women’s services ranging from women’s health centres to refuges for victims of domestic violence. Nonetheless, as late as 1975, Whitlam was still describing his conception of equality in a way that reflected its origin in attempts to improve the quality of life of the male wage-earner head of household by providing community services that would supplement his wage income. In other words, it was a conception that had its origin in attempts to address issues of class inequality rather than gender equality:

what I call positive equality … is based on this concept: increasingly a citizen’s real standard of living, the health of himself and his family, his children’s opportunity for education and self-improvement, his access to employment opportunities, his ability to enjoy the nation’s resources for recreation and cultural activity, his ability to participate in the decisions and actions of the community, are determined not so much by his income but by the availability and accessibility of the services which the community alone can provide and ensure. The quality of life depends less on the things which individuals obtain for themselves and can purchase for themselves from their personal incomes and depends more on the things which the community provides for all its members from the combined resources of the community.³⁵

Positive equality was therefore largely based around government filling the gaps that a capitalist economy had not filled. Importantly, in terms of later developments, it was the exact opposite to the neoliberal prescriptions discussed in the next chapter, in which it would be argued that the private sector was best able to provide the services people needed and, accordingly, that citizens should be encouraged to purchase them from the private market rather than having services provided by the state. By contrast, Whitlam argued that the aim of the government was to pursue “equality” by providing “things which the community alone can provide” in the form of “welfare, health, education, recreation and transport”.³⁶ Whitlam claimed that the Liberal Party’s opposing philosophy was based on “private incentive and individual initiative” and a related view that people were motivated by “fear and greed”.³⁷ That therefore if governments provided services and security, citizens would lose motivation, becoming “lazy and improvident”.³⁸ Whereas Whitlam argued that reducing insecurity would liberate human creativity rather than reducing motivation.³⁹

Whitlam also argued that competitive pressure from government service providers would help compensate for constitutional barriers to government powers over the private sector.⁴⁰ Senator Ruth Coleman emphasised that the new Australian Government Insurance Corporation would not be allowed to discriminate against women, potentially pressuring existing companies which, for example, routinely asked women questions regarding their husband’s employment.⁴¹ However, Whitlam did not mention a major constitutional issue, namely the lack of a bill or charter of rights in the Australian Constitution that could also disadvantage women.⁴²

Initially, the Whitlam government did indeed see the burgeoning of multiple services for women. Not only was government funding for childcare centres substantially increased but government funding was provided for family planning, women’s refuges, rape crisis and women’s health centres that the women’s movement had begun to set up. Interestingly, these were sometimes run on significantly unbureaucratic lines, for example, as Marian Sawer notes, the Leichhardt Community Women’s Health Centre opened in 1974 might have been funded by the federal government but it was actually run by a women’s collective.⁴³ The government was proud that it had encouraged a greater participation by women in the planning, delivery and administration of community health care.⁴⁴

Whitlam also emphasised the role of educational services in ensuring that restrictive gender expectations were not placed on girls.⁴⁵ The government established a sub-committee of the Schools Commission, which was explicitly designed to improve services that would benefit women and girls, including forms of childcare.⁴⁶ The abolition of tertiary education fees benefited many women, including older women wishing to return to the workforce or upgrade their skills. However, Whitlam trod softly given his acceptance that many women still identified as full-time housewives. He emphasised that the function of such programmes was not to require women to aim for workplace careers but rather “to give women the pre-conditions necessary for them to be able freely to choose the lives they want to lead”.⁴⁷ The underlying assumption was that the choice was largely a woman’s, rather than one that might also involve men’s participation in childcare. In his 1972 election policy speech, Whitlam had specifically talked of: “A woman’s choice between making motherhood her sole career and following another career in conjunction with motherhood depends upon the availability of proper child care facilities” that he pledged the Pre-School Commission would be involved in developing.⁴⁸ Just as equality of pay and conditions was a question of justice for those women who chose to work, so women should not “be expected to bear full responsibility for the rearing and care of our future generations” although many women might freely make that choice.⁴⁹ Labor claimed that a 1969 Bureau of Statistics survey showed 91,500 women with children under six would have worked if they could obtain childcare.⁵⁰ Facilitating women being able to work if they wished to, albeit often part-time and combined with caring responsibilities, was therefore a major priority for the government but so was pay equity for those who did choose to work.

Women, Wages and Employment

Having facilitated reopening the equal pay case in the Arbitration Commission, the Whitlam government fully supported the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ claim for equal pay, which the McMahon Liberal government had opposed. Whitlam had repeatedly raised issues regarding equal pay since 1958 but had received negative responses from the then Liberal-Country Coalition government.⁵¹ Whitlam explained that if it succeeded the new equal pay application would extend an existing Arbitration Commission equal pay judgement since: “Women in industries employing predominantly females were excluded from the application of that judgement”.⁵² In other words, the 1969 judgement only applied to women doing exactly the same work as men in traditionally male-dominated jobs (and it is estimated therefore benefited fewer than one in five employed women).⁵³ Whereas the new judgement was intended to support the government’s position of “equal pay for work of equal value” regardless of the employee’s sex and thereby potentially challenging the historical value attributed to predominantly women's jobs.⁵⁴ Unfortunately, although a major step, the judgement did not achieve all that had been hoped for since equal value continued to be assessed against male norms rather than female-dominated work being fully revalued.⁵⁵ Both the Rudd/Gillard and Albanese governments had to take subsequent action. Furthermore, the Commission did not initially support an equal minimum wage for men and women, arguing that the minimum wage still contained a (male head of household) family wage component.⁵⁶ However, in 1974, the government, along with the Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Union of Australian Women and the National Council of Women of Australia, successfully argued for an equal minimum wage for women.⁵⁷ Whitlam argued that it was “a significant step forward in the application of the principle of economic remuneration for work of equal value” and reflected Labor’s “consistent support for wage justice for women”.⁵⁸ Whitlam then pressured recalcitrant state governments to move on the issue so that the federal government could finally ratify the International Labor Organisation (ILO) Equal Remuneration Convention of 1951, which successive Liberal-Country Party Coalition governments had failed to do.⁵⁹ Whitlam later criticised the Opposition Leader, Billy Snedden, for stating that legislation ensuring equal pay would disadvantage women since it might restrict their job opportunities.⁶⁰

The government also moved to make federal public service workplaces more women-friendly. However, it was still assumed that women would usually have the primary responsibility for childcare although Whitlam argued that women should not be disadvantaged as a result:

if there is to be real equality of opportunity, we must accept the fact that the work pattern of women is different. A woman should not be unduly penalised in employment by requirements such as unbroken service, full-time working hours and other conditions governing her eligibility for security of employment and opportunity for advancement beyond junior status.⁶¹

Consequently, the government introduced measures such as removing age limits for appointment for the position of Clerk, Clerical Assistant and Typist in the Commonwealth Public Service, which would facilitate women who had taken time out for child rearing to enter or re-enter the public service and would hopefully be combined with permanent part-time work and more flexible working hours.⁶² Similarly, the 1973 introduction of three months paid maternity leave (and 40 weeks unpaid) for the public service was based on an assumption regarding women’s child rearing responsibilities.⁶³ Paternity leave was limited to two weeks paid leave.⁶⁴

Moreover, some ALP politicians still harboured concerns that women would be forced to go out to work rather than being full-time carers for their children, including women otherwise benefiting from the new no fault divorce laws. For example, in 1975 conservative catholic Labor MP Tony Luchetti still objected to women working:

When I became involved in the great political party which has made such a contribution to the development of Australia over the years- the Australian Labor Party- I was reared on the credo, on the thought and on the belief that what we were trying to do for women was to take them out of industry- take them from the mines and from the workshops- and give them a position of dignity in their own home in which they could care for their children, be greatly respected and preside over the moulding of the character and human quality of our people and the building of our nation.⁶⁵

In 1970, future Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating had also expressed concern about married women working:

Husbands have been forced to send their wives to work in order to provide the necessaries of life. Young mothers have been forced out of their homes by economic pressure…. Family life is the very basis of our nationhood. In the last couple of years the Government has boasted about the increasing number of women in the work force. Rather than something to be proud of I feel that this is something of which we should be ashamed.⁶⁶

Yet, other Labor MPs had very different views. Gareth Clayton challenged traditional gender expectations arguing that: “One of the changes to be encouraged is in the relative roles of women and men in society. Historically, men have been the breadwinners and women have stayed at home as unpaid servants for the menfolk”.⁶⁷ By contrast: “Women and men should be free to seek employment with equal opportunities in all occupations, or to stay at home if they wish”.⁶⁸ Whitlam himself repeatedly stressed that the government’s role was to facilitate women having choices, and that it was addressing the needs of all women in the process:

Some of you may feel… that the only women we are concerned to help are the minority of young, career-minded women with higher education. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t think even the most radical women’s organisation would want to force women into any role that they wouldn’t choose for themselves. It may well be true that if they were completely free to choose, most women today would choose the traditional role - to be wives, to be mothers, to stay at home. Women who choose those roles, those honourable roles, have as much right to help and guidance as anyone else. The point is that women should be free to make their choice; they should have exactly the same opportunities as men to education, to highly paid and satisfying jobs, to positions of responsibility and personal fulfilment, it is this freedom that we want to enlarge.⁶⁹

Indeed, the government’s wages policy was clearly designed to help many working-class women. The government also recognised that discrimination in multiple forms, including gender, religion, race and sex, had an adverse effect on productivity and the number of people in the workforce.⁷⁰ Discrimination was seen as an unjust “anti-social” offence that was not just a human rights and moral problem.⁷¹ However, it was also an “economic problem” and a lost investment in skills and training.⁷²

As its term in office progressed, Whitlam argued that there had been very successful outcomes in terms of women’s wages, boasting that an ILO study:

…has shown that in the year ending June 1974 the world’s biggest increase in real wages for women in manufacturing industry went to Australian women. Then real wages went up by 16%. From December 1972 to the December quarter 1974 average minimum weekly award rates for women increased by 73%.⁷³

By 1975, Whitlam was boasting that while male award wages had risen by 64% during the government’s term in office, the amount for women was 90%.⁷⁴ The government also emphasised advances in training for women and that they had introduced “anti-discrimination committees throughout Australia, new training and retraining opportunities”.⁷⁵ Meanwhile, the government was addressing women’s previous lack of influence by being “the first Government to appoint women as judges, as arbitration commissioners, as career diplomats, as member of statutory bodies”.⁷⁶

In short, the Whitlam government was firmly breaking with an earlier social democratic tradition that had historically supported the family wage with higher wages for male wage earners and that had restricted payment and employment for women accordingly. Women workers were now considered members of the working class (as were migrant workers and members of minority races which included women too) with government policies designed to address those who were most vulnerable in the community.⁷⁷

Other Measures for Diverse Groups of Women

Women who were single parents were seen as particularly vulnerable. The introduction of a supporting mother’s benefit in 1973 not only provided essential financial support but potentially helped to change social attitudes. The government recognised “that supporting mothers form one of the largest groups below the poverty line and introduced a supporting mothers’ benefit”.⁷⁸ Once again, Whitlam was clear that the government’s programmes were not focused on looking after privileged women. On the contrary:

To this day the majority of poor people in Australia are women, including mothers many of them single or deserted mothers. The need to create a more humane world for these women is an overwhelming concern of this Government: We introduced the Supporting Mother’s Benefit, we removed the sales tax on the pill, we are funding women’s refuges, women’s health centres and family planning centres.

Perhaps the most exciting development has been the acceptance of the need for multi-purpose centres, centres concerned with all the needs of women in the area. The Hunter Region Working Women’s Centre in Newcastle is one such centre. It will cater for women’s health, welfare, educational, workforce and legal problems as well as providing recreation and child care facilities.⁷⁹

Class was not the only issue. The government also confirmed that: “We are concerned about the problems facing all women in Australia, be they young or old, Aboriginal or newcomers, married or unmarried, English speaking or non-English speaking”.⁸⁰

The input of Aboriginal women was seen as particularly important when it came to the provision of Aboriginal health.⁸¹ Nonetheless, there are criticisms that government conceptions of Aboriginal self-determination and land rights did not take Aboriginal women sufficiently into account.⁸² There were also still divisions between Aboriginal women and the wider feminist movement with many Aboriginal women feeling that white women were not placing enough emphasis on the racism Aboriginal women experienced.⁸³ Senator Coleman reminded Opposition Senators that Aboriginal women would also benefit from the Racial Discrimination Bill, given “that there are Aboriginal females”.⁸⁴

Migrant women also felt that their experiences were sometimes ignored.⁸⁵ Although Whitlam did acknowledge that: “There could scarcely be a more disadvantaged group than migrant women”. Not only did many migrants live in disadvantaged urban areas but “to inequalities of opportunity in housing, employment and education is added the burden of strangeness”.⁸⁶ The government did develop volunteer programmes to bring language teaching into migrant women’s homes, and hoped to use ethnic radio broadcasting to break down the isolation of migrant women who stayed at home while their husbands went out to work.⁸⁷ The government also attempted to address language issues by trying to ensure that non-English-speaking migrants contacting a government department would have access to people who could speak their language and translate documents if required.⁸⁸

One group of women the government did not mention was lesbian women. Traditionally, Labor governments had assumed that the citizen was heterosexual and, despite its many reforms in other areas, the Whitlam government did very little to challenge that. Whitlam himself tended to construct sexuality as a private issue arguing that issues such as  homosexuality and abortion (which were also matters for state rather than federal law) “are in essence matters of private conscience and not of public policy”.⁸⁹ The construction was significant in so far as it suggested Whitlam thought neither should be criminalised (as male homosexuality, but not lesbianism, still was at that time) but it was also a convenient way of sidelining the issues. Whitlam might believe that women were redefining the political so that (heterosexual) women’s issues were no longer confined to private life but issues of addressing the needs of lesbian women were another matter entirely. It was far removed from later Labor conceptions which saw issues of sexuality not as issues of private morality but as issues of equality. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, lesbian couples were in fact excluded from many benefits available to heterosexual couples whose relationships were recognised. Furthermore, married heterosexual relationships were not seen as private matters but were recognised in legislation, covering issues such as citizenship, superannuation and social services.⁹⁰ Some progressive Labor and Liberal MPs did unsuccessfully try to pass a motion encouraging decriminalisation of male homosexuality at state level. However, lesbians remained largely invisible when it came to tackling issues of discrimination or providing explicitly targeted government services.⁹¹

Several groups of women therefore felt that their needs had not been taken adequately into account in the government’s positive equality model. However, there was also an additional problem, namely the economic underpinnings of the model.

Economic Underpinnings of Equality

Initially, the political economy had seemed to favour women. An influential OECD report had advocated that Australia increased the participation of women in the workforce, partially to offset the costs attributed to Australia’s migration programme.⁹² Indeed, the percentage of women in the workforce had already been increasing despite discriminatory practices that the government argued also had a negative impact on productivity.⁹³ However, as noted earlier, the conception of positive equality was underpinned by an assumption that economic growth would continue to provide rising standards of living and also fund the government revenue needed to pay for a larger public sector. That assumption was to be undermined by a worsening world economic situation.⁹⁴ Treasurer Hayden’s (blocked) 1975 budget speech emphasised that the government was facing high inflation and high unemployment (i.e. stagflation) and argued that this undermined Keynesian prescriptions supporting greater  public sector expenditure; instead requiring public sector expenditure restraint.⁹⁵ Meanwhile, the government introduced wage indexation to constrain “unrealistic” and “harmful” wage rises that it argued had resulted in “higher prices, a severe squeeze on profits, a slump in new investment and a contraction of job opportunities”.⁹⁶

The Economic Impact on Women’s Policy

Proposed funding for women’s services came under threat as the recession worsened, with substantial cuts to childcare in particular occurring including via a focus on cheaper family daycare programmes, despite a WEL campaign that restored part of the axed funding.⁹⁷ However, there were some exceptions, such as an increase in single parent benefit.⁹⁸ Despite welcoming its positive initiatives, WEL remained critical of the government on various grounds, including a focus on preschools rather than long-day care for children that would be more helpful for working women and women wanting relief from domestic care responsibilities.⁹⁹ Various government inquiries (e.g. the children’s commission) and services (such as women’s health services) were only funded after major campaigns and pressure from the women’s movement.¹⁰⁰ Meanwhile, the state and national committees originally set up to investigate sexual discrimination remained toothless advisory bodies, although they may have contributed to the creation of a sex discrimination act if the government had retained office.¹⁰¹

There were also problems with the government’s employment programmes for women. Ann Game and Rosemary Pringle write of the irony of the government encouraging women into the workforce as thousands of women in the clothing, textiles and footwear industry lost their jobs as a result of Whitlam’s 25% tariff cuts that were designed to make Australian industry more economically competitive.¹⁰² As Marian Sawer has pointed out, the government’s National Employment and Training Scheme (NEAT) had originally been designed to address inequalities in employment, and consequently, a majority of those assisted originally had been women re-entering the workforce but from late 1974 the scheme prioritised those who had recently become unemployed along with “primary breadwinners”.¹⁰³

Reviewing gender equality initiatives during the period of the Whitlam government, Sara Dowse also concludes that “the limits to reform are set by the political economy — not by the particular government in office”.¹⁰⁴ To which could be added that the limits to reform actually involve both the political economy and the particular government, given that the view of how government should respond to economic crises is influenced by a specific government's ideological influences. Despite Whitlam’s comments about reconceptualising politics, the government’s conception of the economy was not subject to adequate gender analysis. The government’s framing emphasised problems in the capitalist form of the economy (and the public sphere) but overlooked the role of the patriarchal economy (and the private sphere). The government’s attempts to negotiate with a male-dominated trade union movement to restrain wages protected programmes of interest to powerful male unionists but failed to protect major areas of interest to women. A narrow conception of the “economy” was privileged. Dowse, head of the women’s unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, has described a 1975 meeting where a group of male public servants nodded sagely in agreement when informed that the government’s key priority would now be managing the economy. It was left to the sole woman in the room to ask: “Isn’t the economy meant to serve society rather than the other way round”.¹⁰⁵ Unfortunately for Australian feminism, the clear answer for decades to come was to be “no”.

Gendered Cultures

At the same time as the economy was deteriorating, the Whitlam government was also encountering an increased culture wars-style gendered backlash against its support for women’s equality. Indeed, some backlash elements had been present from the start, as media attacks on Elizabeth Reid had revealed.¹⁰⁶

Whitlam (and Reid) had been well aware that pursuing gender equality would require major culture change and that there were limits to how much government could do. As Whitlam argued in 1974:

Government legislation can only achieve so much and I shall not pretend to you that any government can achieve immediately for Australian women the revolution required to allow them to develop fully as individuals, for instance it must be said that, even if we were to remove all the inequalities of opportunity and of status, it still would not be enough, we have to attack the social inequalities, the hidden and usually unarticulated assumptions which affect women not only in employment but in the whole range of their opportunities in life, this is not just a matter for governments and for action by governments it is a matter of changing community attitudes and uprooting community prejudices, and insofar as this requires a re-education of the community then clearly governments alone cannot be expected to do the whole job,…¹⁰⁷

Whitlam acknowledged that the government could play a role in “raising consciousness”.¹⁰⁸ This included, not only removing forms of discrimination but in addressing “the deeply ingrained cultural assumption that every woman’s primary role is that of daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law, or grandmother; nurse, secretary, teacher or shop assistant: the deeply ingrained assumption that women are here to serve or assist”. Whitlam also acknowledged that women parliamentarians were not only few in number but encountered “a host of problems which women face and which they no doubt will continue to face until a woman politician is as everyday a phenomenon as a man politician”.¹⁰⁹

Whitlam (and Reid) seemed to hope that a Royal Commission into human relationships might help to address some of the more complex issues around gender relations.¹¹⁰ As Michelle Arrow has pointed out, the Royal Commission gave ordinary Australians an unprecedented opportunity to give evidence about personal relationship issues, both heterosexual and homosexual.¹¹¹ Whitlam argued it would also examine:

the stresses that society places upon relationships between people, in what ways inadequate housing, insufficient money, too many or too few children, the availability or otherwise of contraceptive counselling and the adequacy of medical care affect people and their relationships.¹¹²

However, the Commission’s report was not completed before the Whitlam government lost office and received a relatively hostile response from the subsequent Fraser government (despite the Commission having been proposed initially by Fraser as an Opposition backbencher in the narrower context of abortion policy).¹¹³

Meanwhile, the United Nations International Women’s year had also provided an opportunity to fund various women’s organisations involved in consciousness raising.¹¹⁴ Whitlam acknowledged that: We must challenge notions such as that of the breadwinner and the homemaker; values such as those of ambition, prestige, status and incessant promotion; dichotomies such as that between work and home; the hidden and usually unarticulated assumptions about women’s abilities, capacities, life patterns, needs, skills and desires. These affect women not only in their employment but in the whole range of their opportunities in life. Both men and women must be made aware of our habitual patterns of prejudice which we often do not see as such but whose existence manifests itself in our language and our behaviour. During this year, International Women’s Year, we must question, discuss and reassess the attitudes, assumptions, beliefs and prejudices that society holds about women. We must create a society in which a woman’s place is where she freely chooses to be, from which neither cultural prejudices, lack of education or lack of self-confidence will keep her.¹¹⁵

Whitlam was prepared to deliver such speeches but they also reflected the strongly held views of Elizabeth Reid. Reid’s views were perhaps best illustrated by a speech given, under the government’s imprimatur, at the United Nations World Conference of International Women’s Year. Reid denounced “sexism”, “patriarchal societies”, colonialism, violence against women, and gendered power relations and urged women in the developing world to be cautious about accepting western economic and social structures that disempowered women.¹¹⁶ She also noted the limitations of formal equality agendas in the absence of broader cultural and social change:

Equality is a limited and possible [sic] harmful goal. Associated with the struggle for equality have been some needed and just reforms: equal pay, equal access to formal education and vocational training, equality under the law and equal rights to vote and to run for public office.… But we can no longer delude ourselves with the hope that formal equality, once achieved, will eradicate sexist oppression - it could well merely legitimise it. For there is a real danger … that… the achievement of formal equality will encourage the belief that all problems are thereby solved. However even if formal equality were to be achieved, all else still remains to be done.¹¹⁷

It was a very radical statement, but Whitlam was at that stage still prepared to praise Reid’s contribution to women’s causes domestically and internationally.¹¹⁸ However, such public support was not to continue. Reid resigned when she was going to be moved sideways out of the prime minister’s office and made a public servant, therefore restricting her independent rights to speak.¹¹⁹ Reid felt that the Whitlam government no longer had the same commitment to women’s issues.¹²⁰ She has written retrospectively of how difficult her position had been:

the strains of achieving reform from the inside are truly immense and you are always compromising and how far you go in that act of compromising is a difficult decision to make. moral dilemmas and challenges were the ones that were always there for me, how do I move, when do I say no, or draw the line. What means do you use to achieve the end that you believe in.¹²¹

Significantly, it was not just the political economy that was causing problems but the ongoing cultural backlash. The government’s retreat on women’s issues was partly due to controversy after a particularly politically rambunctious Women and Politics conference, funded by the government, that achieved widespread media criticism and was seen as electorally damaging. (Amongst other incidents, the prime minister’s speech had been disrupted by Aboriginal women protesters, while lesbian activists daubed the men’s toilets with slogans.)¹²² A conference on women and the media, which was to address a wide range of issues to do with women, communication and culture was cancelled.¹²³ The cultural consciousness raising that was seen by feminists to be a particularly useful aspect of International Women’s Year was seen to have gone too far.

Whitlam Government Sacking

The Whitlam government was controversially sacked by the Governor-General in November 1975, shortly after Reid’s resignation, when the Opposition blocked the government’s budget and ongoing funding for government programmes and services. The Governor-General installed the Opposition as a caretaker Liberal-National Country Party Coalition government until an election could be held. The government’s dismissal stymied some projected reforms, including a proposed bill that would have prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual or marital status that WEL had long been calling for.¹²⁴ As Anne Summers points out, Whitlam, who had once been such an enthusiastic supporter, “made no promises to women” in the subsequent election campaign.¹²⁵ However, his 1975 election speech did claim that, under his government: “For the first time Australia had a government seriously concerned to give equality of opportunity to women and to remove all forms of discrimination against women. Every Federal department is now charged to take women’s interests into account”.¹²⁶

The Fraser Years 1975–1983

Whitlam’s Liberal opponent, Malcolm Fraser, did promise to “use example encouragement, administration and where necessary specific legislation to rid Australia of discrimination based on sex, race, colour, ethic or social origin”.¹²⁷ However, the Fraser years were to prove problematic for Australian feminists, with Summers arguing that “the Liberal government had virtually no commitment to women’s issues as they were defined by the women’s movement”.¹²⁸ Nonetheless, initially it looked as though Whitlam era reforms would survive and in some cases even be expanded, given the support both of public service femocrats and feminists within the Liberal Party, such as Beryl Beaurepaire. For example, Marian Sawer has noted that while there was federal government funding for 21 women’s refuges under the Whitlam government, by 1985 they numbered 170 with significant expansion occurring during the Fraser years (96 refuges by 1980). The Whitlam government had funded the Leichhardt women’s health centre in 1974, but by 1980 there were six women’s health centres.¹²⁹ The government also established a number of women’s policy units, reflecting WEL’s innovative “wheel” model, first proposed during the Whitlam years and later taken up internationally, of having “the hub at the Centre of government, spokes in line departments and a focus on policy advice and policy monitoring rather than program delivery”.¹³⁰ The government also appointed a Minister Assisting the Prime Minister in Women’s Affairs and established a National Women’s Advisory Council.¹³¹ Such moves were in line with Fraser’s view that “the Government’s policy that the special concerns of women - equality of opportunity, freedom from discrimination, equal status in society - should be stressed within the framework of individual policy areas”.¹³²

Fraser also expressed his personal support for improving childcare services for working women, rejecting conservative criticisms as well as arguing that Labor’s focus on preschools had not adequately served working mothers who needed full day care.¹³³ In 1977, the government converted the supporting mothers’ benefit, introduced during the Whitlam years, into a supporting parents’ benefit thereby acknowledging the potential parenting role of fathers, although as Sawer notes, unfortunately the Whitlam government’s paid paternity leave provision for the Commonwealth Public Service was abolished in the same year.¹³⁴ The government also ran a campaign encouraging women to take up apprenticeships in non-traditional occupations.¹³⁵ However, the focus was heavily on women being able to choose whether to work to support the family income and the government also offered a generous single-income spouse tax rebate “to make it easier for a mother to stay at home if that is what she wants to do…”.¹³⁶ The government was a signatory to the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms, of Discrimination Against Women, (although it was not ratified until the Hawke Labor government).¹³⁷ Fraser clearly saw such measures as compatible with Liberal Party beliefs, emphasising the long history of the party’s encouragement of female participation and its original support for equality of opportunity for women.¹³⁸

However, signs that progress might not be smooth soon began to develop. While there were calls for legislation against sex discrimination, the response was merely that this was a “complex” matter that was “under active consideration”.¹³⁹ By 1982, it was being announced that the government’s pre-budget consultations included not just the Women’s Action Alliance, the Women’s Electoral Lobby and the Young Women’s Christian Association of Australia but also Women Who Want to be Women.¹⁴⁰ Women Who Want to be Women was a conservative organisation, often drawing inspiration from conservative American organisations, that reflected a growing backlash against feminism. It increasingly mobilised against the National Women’s Advisory Council and against government-funded childcare, capturing the ears of more conservative members of the Liberal Party.¹⁴¹

At the same time as this cultural backlash, right-wing economics was also increasing its influence. Sawer has documented the growth of socially conservative neoliberal ideas within the Liberal Party and the impact this began to have on the party platform, where disagreement ensued between those supportive of liberal feminism (which saw a significant role for government in furthering equality) and social conservatives, including Fraser’s Treasurer and later Prime Minister, John Howard.¹⁴² The nature of neoliberalism and its implications for women will be discussed more in subsequent chapters. However, a key difference in policy framing lay in its support for a minimal state and for free markets rather than government provision and regulation. In short, a neoliberal policy framework involved ideas that were the exact opposite to Whitlam’s conception of positive equality which emphasised providing state services. Furthermore, many proponents of neoliberalism melded their economic views with socially conservative ones. The need for specific women’s policies or advisory units immediately came under threat. Increasingly, influential Liberal feminist women such as Beryl Beaurepaire, who held a number of key party roles as well as being convenor of the National Women’s Advisory Council, had to fight rearguard actions against proposed cuts to services and advisory functions. For example, a number of women’s advisory units were cut, with Beaurepaire and others only able to protect some; family allowances reduced in real value and some key areas of services, including the Community Health Program Funding of women’s refuges, rape crisis and health centres, were handed back to state governments in 1981.¹⁴³ There had already been issues over the 1977 transfer of the Women’s Affairs Office out of Prime Minister and Cabinet and into the lowly ranked new Department of Home Affairs, resulting in the resignation of its head, Sara Dowse.¹⁴⁴ Dowse was scathing in her arguments that “women had been demoted” from a location where they had easy access to all cabinet submissions. Instead: “Half the population became the responsibility of the newly created Department of Home Affairs, of Mr Robert Ellicott, a junior minister whose other concerns include museums, archives, shipwrecks, external territories, arts and the Australian Capital Territory”. Yet she pointed out that women were facing greater unemployment than men and a widening earnings gap amongst other issues.¹⁴⁵

There was no progress on issues such as anti-sex discrimination legislation, despite Fraser’s comments suggesting possible support in the 1975 election campaign, support from WEL, from the National Women’s Advisory Council and from some key Liberal politicians.¹⁴⁶ WEL and Liberal women supporters did have some successes, for example fighting off conservative Liberal politicians’ attempts to introduce income-splitting or family-unit taxation that would have tended to benefit male higher income earners while providing a disincentive for women to work.¹⁴⁷ They also saw off attempts to remove medical benefits funding from abortion services.¹⁴⁸ Anne Summers has written of the Fraser Years that “it is fair to say that this was a period in which very little was done to advance the equality project. In fact, considerable energy went into preserving what was already there”.¹⁴⁹

Conclusion

While the Whitlam government acknowledged that it had not addressed all the issues raised by groups such as the Women’s Electoral Lobby, it claimed significant progress.¹⁵⁰ It had brought in major reforms to women’s pay and also to work conditions in the public service. Whitlam’s conception of positive equality had also played a major role in policy framing, facilitating the funding of key services for women. However, we have seen that, by the end of the Whitlam government’s period in office, the economic underpinnings of providing greater government services were increasingly questioned. Furthermore, the framing model had been one that was originally designed to address issues of class inequality. While it facilitated some improved services for women, there had not really been a major rethink of the government’s policy framework from a feminist perspective. While many feminists had been calling for a radical reimagining of the political framework, the Whitlam government had tried to incorporate gender equality within its traditional equality agenda, adding on rather than totally transforming the agenda. It was major progress but still not enough.

Both the relative success and prospective failures were therefore present in the Whitlam government policy from the start. Anne Summers, who remembered such excitement at the Whitlam government’s first steps towards achieving women’s equality wrote that “In the 1970s it seemed self-evident that the way to achieve equality was to remove the legal and other barriers that prevented women from participating fully in society”.¹⁵¹ The Whitlam government had certainly taken significant steps in that direction, although Summers acknowledged that achieving such forms of equality had only ever been seen “as a short-term objective achievable principally through legislative and other government-supported measures that would be a mere stepping stone on the road to liberation” that would involve “a total transformation of society and of the roles of women and men”.¹⁵² Feminists had been expecting steady incremental advances not the “erratic progress” brought about partly by conservative Coalition governments.¹⁵³

While some of Whitlam’s speeches, albeit under the influence of advisers such as Elizabeth Reid, emphasised that a fundamental cultural rethinking was required, the true extent of this rethinking had not been fully grasped. While Whitlam’s speeches reflected a recognition that improving the position of women could not be achieved by government actions alone and would require major cultural change, the government’s perspectives overlooked some of the factors shoring up women’s subordinate position. These included not just the economic advantages some businesses gained by exploiting female labour, but also the extent to which particular models of femininity and masculinity were implicated in identity formation and the forms of self-esteem attached to it. Feminist groups had long attempted to use a “consciousness raising” model to transform women’s perspectives, however less thought was given to the implications for male self-esteem or how women would feel whose self-esteem was dependent upon having achieving the goals of traditional femininity from homemaking to childrearing to “catching” a suitable husband. More radical analyses, including Elizabeth Reid’s, did recognise that women’s subordination was related to gendered power relations. However, power is only part of the story, the other side of the story is constructions of forms of masculine and feminine self-esteem that are related to the socially approved performances of forms of masculinity and femininity, in other words, forms of gendered identity. In this respect, gender subordination may sometimes be experienced less as an open and explicit acknowledgement that power relations are occurring and more as an issue of self-esteem, including a sense of feeling good about oneself.¹⁵⁴

Government policy is deeply implicated in identity formation, assuming and encouraging particular forms of citizen identity. One of the issues that therefore needs to be addressed is what forms of identity the Whitlam government was encouraging? On the one hand, the Whitlam government was itself a male-dominated government. On the other hand, the Whitlam government was arguing that women should have the choice of pursuing any career they wanted and that traditional male attitudes towards women should change. Challenges to traditional identities, including gender and racial/ethnic ones, were to haunt the Australian Labor Party many years later as John Howard mobilised a politics of identity against Labor that was explicitly designed to split the so-called Whitlam coalition that combined the workers movement and progressive social movements. These issues will be addressed in later chapters of this book.

The end of the Whitlam period had already seen a changing political economy as the Keynesian outlook that had supported a significant public sector and that had underpinned Whitlam’s conception of positive equality began to be challenged. Those challenges had only increased during the Fraser years, when the combination of a rising neoliberalism and a growing social conservatism had stymied the momentum of the Whitlam years, despite some successes achieved by the women’s movement, femocrats and liberal feminists within the Liberal Party.

Significantly Sara Dowse, who had resigned so forcefully during the Fraser years, has argued that the Fraser government had still not fully abandoned Keynesianism, citing measures such as its support for government-funded childcare rather than commercial centres. Rather, she argues, “it was the Hawke Labor government elected in 1983 that was wholly committed to the new economics” that we now know as neoliberalism.¹⁵⁵ It is to an analysis of that government, and the implications of its policy framing, that the discussion will now turn.