A wealth of history
"That word 'history' is unnervingly accurate", one feminist historian wryly noted in 1975.
At around the same time, uncovering the role of women in Australian history became a large-scale feminist project. It has led to a proliferation of women's studies courses in high schools, higher education institutions and community centres, and the publication of countless books and journals of feminist historical research and writing.
At the recent "History of Australian Feminisms Conference", some 30 papers, presented mainly by academics or history students, covered political, labour and cultural history from the viewpoint of "first-wave" equal rights feminism, (which began in the late 1890s with the struggle for women's suffrage), through to the emergence of "second wave" feminism, or women's liberation, in the late 1960s.
Radical women always saw the women's history project as much more than just a quest to slot into the historical record individual "extraordinary" women who'd been "left out". Equating feminism with a politics of individual achievement would mean a failure to learn from the vibrant collectivist tradition of working-class and socialist feminism in particular.
Hence radical women argued for documenting and analysing the everyday lives of "ordinary" women, both as workers and political activists and as mothers, daughters and housewives.
They said that historical change is a matter of social practices, and it is within these practices that the interests and capacities of individuals are shaped.
The rewards of much feminist historiography have been great. What a delight to discover just how extensive, varied and adventurous were women's ideas and actions in the past. And how comforting, in a way, to see the similarities and continuities in women's lives from the past to the present.
Perhaps the most important political lesson has been that there are many histories to be told; that the unity of women is a differentiated one because women's lives vary a lot depending on the class, racial or ethnic group they belong to, whether they're young, old, single, married or lesbian.
The question of difference was the common thread throughout the conference, and it was repeatedly stressed that there are many "feminisms", all of which are valid and necessary parts of the whole truth about women's position.
This sense of a "multiplicity of feminisms" was matched by a concern not to prioritise, or form any sort of "hierarchy" of eneral category. However, I obviously wasn't alone in becoming more than a little uneasy about the implications of an overriding emphasis on this question.
Overdosing on "pluralism" can contribute to a lack of urgency among white, middle-class feminists about the marginalisation and lack of attention to the needs and concerns of other — yes, "more oppressed" — women, within dominant feminist theory and practice.
Secondly, if power is seen to be endlessly fragmented, including between and among women, with no clear sense of the enemies we have in common, then there are huge political problems for us in terms of united action. For the more fragmented we make ourselves politically, the easier we are to ignore.
By Rose McCann