By Angela Luvera
BRISBANE — The 1997 Network of Women Students Australia conference, held at the Queensland University of Technology July 7-12, was attended by around 600 women.
Plenary panels included Feminisms; Women in Struggle; Women, Work and Education; and Our Bodies, Our Lives. Workshops ranged from aromatherapy, to dealing with the media, to Marxist feminism.
The theme for NOWSA 1997 was "Looking In, Speaking Out". Women were encouraged to take knowledge from the outside, look within and speak out about it. This encouraged a very individual approach to the conference, but sharing experiences and stories was seen by many as only a starting point.
The mood was very open and eager to find ways to challenge sexism. Conference participants were acutely aware that the election of the Liberal government spells further attacks on the rights of women to abortion, education, child-care and work, and a renewed ideological offensive to push women back into traditional roles.
There was a strong recognition that women face many other oppressions, such as racism and homophobia, and of the need to question the functioning of society in general.
Karen Fletcher, a member of the Democratic Socialist Party who was involved in the first NOWSA conference in 1987, spoke during the first plenary about "do-it-yourself feminism", where the implication is that women can be anything they want to be, and the best thing that you can do as a feminist is climb the career ladder.
"We have to be wary about all the publicity around women who have 'made it' — because it is being used as a screen for the fact that the vast majority of women in Australia are still working for no pay in the home or working for low pay in the same types of occupations their grandmothers were concentrated in", Fletcher said.
On another panel, author and academic Dale Spender reflected this notion by stating that we are now living in an "information age" and the best thing that women can do is to become computer literate.
Comments from the floor pointed out that this is not an option available to all women (particularly in the Third World), and questioned the idea that technology is always good (citing the example of internet technology being used to replace lecturers and cut jobs at universities).
NOWSA was involved in two actions during the week. On July 8, 300 people attended a Resistance-organised rally and speak-out against recent attacks on abortion in Queensland and funding cuts to Children by Choice. The following day, 100 women attended a speak-out in Queen Street Mall against the exploitation of outworkers in the clothing and footwear industries.
The final day of the conference was allocated for decision making. The University of Western Sydney (Nepean) will host next year's NOWSA. A collective of around 25 women volunteered to host the conference, supported by women from all other Sydney metropolitan campuses, Wollongong, Newcastle and Canberra.
The collective stated that it wanted to bring the concerns of working-class women into NOWSA, and make links with women in regional areas.
Resolutions supported by the delegates included support for campaigns against Australian backing for the Indonesian dictatorship; opposition to Pauline Hanson and all forms of racism; and supporting Children by Choice in its struggle for funding.
A motion supporting women-only campus newspaper editions was hotly debated but eventually adopted. In a related debate around men holding women's officer positions on some campuses, the point was made that women need to lead the movement for their own liberation.
Motions were also adopted supporting the organisation of International Women's Day next March and Blue Stocking Week (to be coordinated nationally by the National Union of Students, August 25-29).
The urgency of the need for a strong women's movement is becoming more apparent, and should lead to more activity by women students around feminist issues this year.