• Entry type: Organisation
  • Entry ID: AWE3977

Militant Women’s Movement

  • Also known as Militant Women's Group
    Also known as Central Women's Department of the Communist Party of Australia
(From 1926 – )
  • Occupation Feminist organisation, Social action organisation

Summary

The Militant Women’s Movement was the preferred name of the Central Women’s department of the Communist Party of Australia. It’s official publication was the newsletter/journal The Working Woman. was first published in 1928.

The Movement’s activities included: organising women’s conferences in Sydney and Melbourne; organising demonstrations and disrupting public meetings convened by bourgeois women’s organisations; activity in the Women’s Unemployed Worker’s Movement and the Militant Minority Movement and running candidates for municipal and State elections. They organised the first Australian International Women’s Day rally in Sydney on March 25, 1928.

Membership included such women as Jean Thompson, Joy Higgins, Edna Ryan, Hetty Weitzel (Ross), Mary Lamm (Wright), Edna Cavanagh and Alice McConville.

Archival resources

  • National Library of Australia, Oral History and Folklore Collection
    • Mary Wright interviewed by Richard Raxworthy in the Labor Council of New South Wales oral history project [sound recording]

Published resources

Related entries


  • Membership
    • Ryan, Edna Minna (1904 - 1997)
  • Related Events
    • International Women's Day (1928 - )
  • Member
    • Wright, Mary (1903 - 1993)