Gender Equality and Difference in Australia

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles of males and females. The stereotypical woman is one that stays at home raising the children and cooks. Whereas males are the strong, hardworking, decision making providers. Historically Australia’s social structure has contributed to significant differences in opportunity and outcome between the genders, resulting in prejudice and discrimination against more women than men over time. It is the areas of family, education and work that these differences are most pronounced.

Since settlement, Australia’s population was dominated by males. There were little female convicts sent to Australia, so little that the British Government in 1800 ran advertisements to attract women. They even offered to pay females to immigrate to Australia. Males dominated every aspect of life. From the micro world of their own families and household, to the macro world of education and job opportunities.

As women finally received suffrage in 1902, it paved the way for the decades ahead as it was the first step in a long road towards receiving rights and freedom that were the same for the opposite sex.

Vida Goldstein is Australia’s heroine of the first women movement. Feminists, campaigner for the suffrage, firm believer in the justice and necessity of equal rights for women with men. She was also the first women anywhere in the world to stand for a national parliament, when in 1903 she stood for election to the Australian Senate. Both supporters and oppositions followed her every move.

Vida Goldstein formed a number of organisations for and on behalf of women, including the Women’s Political Association in 1905. This was originally formed to organise the women’s vote for Labour, but it rapidly became a vehicle for her opinions.

During the Second World War, women were required to take on jobs that were previously occupied by men. Women worked in factories and drove buses; and upon the men’s return from war, many women refused to relinquish this new found freedom.

The radical politics of the 1960s gave rise to Women’s Liberation. It was from these years that feminists campaigned for equal pay, equal opportunities, anti-discrimination, child and maternity welfare, divorce laws and childcare. They also demanded freedom of choice for women, not only for education and employment, but for marriage, contraception and abortion. The Feminist Movement shocked many older, conservative women’s organisations, such as the Country Women’s Association.

Like the suffragists and many groups who try to achieve change, the Women Liberation movement had a radical minority and a more moderate majority. The radicals said that women would achieve their liberation only though revolution, although there was a lot of discussion about what form this would take. For some groups this meant a violent political over through of the capitalist system. Despite an economic downfall and the election of a conservative federal government, the Feminist Movement continued to grow and make significant gains for women in the 1970s.