Members of the fifty-plus generation have lived through the bushfire of the feminist movement and the important re-growth that followed it. Some will have been part of its prelude during World War 2, when women in large numbers played significant roles in the armed forces and coped well with previously masculine jobs in industry and essential services.
These were late phases in the struggle for civil and political recognition of ‘the gentler sex’. For the current exhibition at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, material from a range of women’s movements illustrates the slow but successful struggle for equal rights during the past century and a bit. There were notable protests and protesters. Readers will probably have connections with organisations which were part of the action then and part of the effort now to tell the story. They include The League of Women Voters, Drug Free Australia, The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, The Union of Australian Women, The Women’s Electoral Lobby, The Women’s Participation in Local Government Project and The National Council of Women.
From a small presence elsewhere, the exhibition has been amplified by the inclusion of three banners carried by The National Council of Women in the Melbourne Centenary of Federation March on 6 May 2001. Each features a women ‘notable’ in Australian history. There is Vida Goldstein, the first of her sex in Australia to stand for parliament; Muriel Heagney, champion of equal pay; and Dame Ada Norris, who battled for laws to give women equal property rights and defence against family violence. Strikingly painted in the non-violent feminist colours of green, white and purple, the banners alone are worth a visit.
Also expressing the feminine agenda are books, pamphlets, programs and marvellous ephemera, like tickets for functions and junk mail leaflets. There is a copy of a section of the monster petition, which contained 33,000 signatures, supporting the Women’s Suffrage movement in 1891. Vida Goldstein’s first work for the woman’s suffrage was canvassing for this petition. It brought no positive response from the male parliament. Women were not given the vote until 1908, and first exercised it, in a Victorian election, in 1911 – way behind the Commonwealth and the other states.
The Royal Historical Society of Victoria has added photographs from its collection to round out the displays. There are also short biographies of heroines like Helen Hart who began open air preaching against slavery and drink in Birmingham as a teenager in the late 1850s. In Melbourne in the 1880s, this fiercely independent firebrand campaigned for temperance and women’s rights.
That’s just an appetiser for your visit to the exhibition at the Royal Historical Society, 239 A’Beckett St., Melbourne (cnr William & A’Beckett Sts). It is open until 31 July 2004. Entry $4.
