The Women’s Movement is so often misrepresented that, unfortunately, women are often persuaded that the distorted view is reality. Today, the notion that feminism is a ‘bad’ word is touted frequently – as if that were never the case in the past. Rebecca West spoke out against the proposition that to be a feminist was something of which one ought to be ashamed. In the 1970s, despite contentions today, feminism and feminists were decried, abused, and scorned. There never has been a time when feminism and feminists were applauded by ‘the world’, yet at all times, in all eras, there have been women proud of bearing the appellation, proud to stand forward and forthright as members of the Women’s Movement, and determined to push for women’s rights, whatever the cost.

Then,  as now and in the past, the notion abounded that women had more than sufficient rights and that selfishness and a desire to ‘rule’ underlay Women’s Movement activism. Women were told equal pay was a reality – over and over. The view that women’s rights are won, equal pay gained and emancipation here is not perennial. It is not isolated to any time or era. Nor is old guard resistance to new members or ideas. Yet new activists often assume they are first in promoting women’s cause (or more committed) so will change, single-handed, centuries of patriarchy.

In 1972, WEL tended toward notions of women winning the vote then doing nothing. Ruby Rich, Muriel Heagney, Eileen Powell, Jean Arnot, Florence Cluff were unknown or relegated to history. This relegation of women to the ranks of unknown happens in all cultures, all countries, all centuries. Women of the Americas, of Europe – Eastern and Western, Asia, Oceania, the Pacific, Africa – have been denounced, then renounced in an obliteration of history, so that the history of the world is half the history of the world only.

Joyce Stevens, ALLY member, later the EYL and CPA, recalls ‘many strong and encouraging women in … the ALLY and EYL [leadership] – Ethel Lewis, Ida Sheridan, Audrey Blake, Margaret Walker, Rivka Brilliant and Cath Olive – to name but some’. Stevens’ mother ‘dragged [her] along’ to UA and UAW meetings to meet:

‘… many of her contemporaries including Jessie Street and Lucy Woodcock. But … though many of them I admired, … with youthful arrogance I regarded their concerns as being only of interests to older women …’

This affects the equal pay struggle. The win of the Equal Pay Case 1969 was overlooked or considered no win at all. 1970s women saw equal pay as lacking history or one that didn’t count.

Youthful arrogance is not limited to eras, individuals or generations. It permeates political movements, particularly where past oppression and greater disadvantage colour the work and its record. History reflects this for women in all periods, all battles. Conventional history, ways of working, and recording herstory colour women’s demands through centuries and how women’s campaigns are seen.

Remembered Women – and Remembering Women

Some names make the record. Many more remain for restoration. Their absence lies as tribute to their numbers and the truth that individual effort is ever accompanied by collective effort, the backdrop to the work of those now prominent. Choices must be made in naming names, and choice leaves its own opportunity to others to name the unknown.

Ellen Violet Jordan (1913-1982) was first ALP woman to take her seat in the Queensland Parliament, following her election to the (then) safe seat of Ipswich West in 1966. She was the sole female member throughout the entirety of her career and, although another woman (Ellen Longman) had preceded her into Parliament from 1929-1932, when Ellen Jordan arrived, ‘they didn’t even have a lavatory for me …’ she protested, and ‘they treated me as if I were a porcupine’. A teacher and musician, Ellen Jordan joined the ALP in 1946. Ten years later she was elected a delegate to the Labor-in-Politics Convention. Nominated by the Convention as inaugural president of the Women’s Central Committee, she served in that post from 1956 to 1967, then was president of the Australian ALP Women’s Executive from 1974 to 1976. Combining her ALP activism with a commitment to women’s organisations, she was president of her local branch of the CWA and a member of the Queensland BPW. Ever an advocate and agitator for equal pay, in 1966 she presented her report, Equal Pay for Women, to the Queensland Parliament, a protest at the lack of progress toward pay justice for women, particularly compared with other countries. She identified Australia as having ‘long been one of the most backward of the world’s more civilised countries’, with Queensland ‘lagging behind’ even in the Australian stakes. An impetus to her report was the failure of the Parliament to debate a motion she had put before it, stating: ‘That to remove a grave injustice which has been perpetrated on women for many years, this House resolves (a) that action should be taken during the current session to introduce legislation to provide for equal pay for equal work, irrespective of sex;  and (b) that such legislation incorporates the abolition of discrimination against women in the Public Service.’ We in Australia have failed, she said ‘to treat women as “people”’.

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Reclaiming Women in Progress …

Jocelynne A. Scutt (c) August 2006

The Hon. Dr Jocelynne A. Scutt is Visiting Professor at Penn State U (The Dickinson Law School). A former Judge and Judge of Appeal of the High Court of Fiji, Chief Judge of the Family Court Division and Employment Judge of the High Court, she is a Cambridgeshire County Councillor. Wage Rage – The Long, Long Struggle for Equal Payis her forthcoming book.