- Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the revolution, edited by Michelle Arrow. NewSouth, $34.99.
The reforms of the Whitlam era are monumental. Free tertiary education, open relations with China, the inception of Australian environmental law, native title law, Medibank, family law, and more. These advancements are dizzying in their significance for contemporary Australia, yet they are so densely numerous - piling one atop the other, weeks apart, between December 5, 1972 and November 6, 1975 - that they become simply atomic - taken for granted as mundane or essential.
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On November 25, 2019, at Old Parliament House, the Whitlam Institute hosted the inaugural Revisiting the Revolution conference, bringing together women activists from across generations to consider the legacy of the advancements for Australian women broached during the term of the Whitlam government.
From this conference emerged Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution, a collection of essays discussing this plethora of remarkable reforms and the women's movements and upsurge of political engagement which precipitated them. The book coincides with the 50th anniversary of the appointment of Elizabeth Reid as women's adviser to the Prime Minister - the first such position of its kind in the world.
Featuring contributions from 25 leading Australian feminist voices, including politicians, academics, artists, lawyers, and the women who were there instigating the revolutions in the 1970s, Women and Whitlam is a compendium of lessons and warnings from the Australian feminist cause.
Some entries are predominately historical or analytical - crash-course educations on Whitlam-era programs. The essay by Camilla Nelson, fellow of the Whitlam Institute, for example, tracks the development and controversy surrounding the Family Law Act 1975, which reformed divorce law and introduced the Family Court system. Her essay details the history of matrimony law in Australia, in all its shocking callousness.
Others, particularly those by women who lived through the changes, foreground autobiography and their distinct, personal reflections on the project of political reform. Reid's essay on Whitlam and the Women's Liberation Movement, for example, combines her personal recount of her unprecedented role, with observations on the successes and features of the movements of the time.
A thread of disappointment runs through many of the essays, as contributors reflect on how the lacklustre or antagonistic political will that followed Whitlam-era reforms undermined and chipped away at them. Yet the abiding voice of this collection is more persistently of conviction.
The autobiographical conceit of many essays shows the commonalities, and also the differences, in contributors' experiences which underscore the urgency for reforms. The essay by Cathy Eatock entitled "The personal is the political", comprised in part by the writings of her mother, Pat Eatock, especially thematises the fusion of personal experience and political commentary in highlighting Pat Eatock's life and activism as an Aboriginal woman, often disappointed by the predominately white, middle-class activism of mainstream women's movements.
Moreover, where some essays appear reserved, even diplomatic, in their critique of reforms that may have lacked ambition, others foreground these failings: name them, analyse, and excoriate. These conflicts provide a glimpse into the irreducible politics behind the politics which complicates movements for reform.
Ultimately, as centrally as this collection is a reflection on historical advancements, it deliberates on the challenge of political action in Australia today. This is most explicit in essays in the final chapter, such as that of Sara Dowse, a writer and first head of the Office of the Status of Women, entitled "Then, now and what might come: A writer's take". This essay considers the changes to the modes of political engagement in the neoliberal paradigm, asking how the personal can be the political if the political is the economic.
Women and Whitlam seeks more generally however to muster a guide for the revolutionaries of the present and future. Collective action and the rejection of economic individualism and celebrity feminism are an abiding vision, but each contributor provides their own "lessons", derived from their own experiences and positions.
Today, as Tanya Plibersek observes in the foreword, women hold over 40 per cent of the seats in both Houses of Parliament, and the "radical" reforms of the Whitlam government can seem to be "common sense". Yet, policy addressing domestic violence remains unresolved, social support for women has slid backwards, and many issues remain untouched.
Contributors to this collection underscore that it cannot be forgotten how far there is to go.
