The Australian Women's Register

8 sound tape reels (ca. 97 min.) Julia Ryan, feminist, speaks of the National Foundation for Australian Women; its history and aim to promote feminist ideas into the far future; how the composition of members has changed over the years; the changes to home-based women; the advent of “second-wave” feminism; the history of the women’s movement in Canberra starting formally in June 1978; the women’s movement in Canberra operating informally from 1969 as an off-shoot from the Sydney group lead by Lyndal Ryan; how the movement grew through networking; why their meetings were closed to men; how 1972 saw an increase in political involvement with their support of the Aboriginal Embassy tent and the establishment of the Women’s Electoral Lobby; their resistance to takeovers by both moderate and extreme political groups; the opportunity feminists had during the Whitlam years to gain influence in the bureaucracy with the appointment of Elizabeth Reid in 1973 as Whitlam’s adviser on women’s issues; how the group engaged in consciousness-raising; the emergence of femocrats like Mary Menange and Anne Somers threatened to depower women by transferring too much responsibility to government bodies. Ryan recalls the highlights of 1975 as International Women’s Year and its contribution to the Labor Government dismissal; how feminism eventually influenced the right-wing of politics; the relationship between gender and class in social oppression; the move from Marxist politics to post-modern Foucault models for change and the emergence of women’s studies as a discipline.