Comment by Vivienne Porzsolt
The Women's Electoral Lobby held its 20th national conference in Canberra over the long weekend. "Entitled Looking Back — Moving Forwards", it very much posed the question "Whereto now?" Looking at all the clippings displayed reporting the impact of WEL in its heyday, I was aware how much the political energy has waned from those heady times.
While WEL adopted an unashamedly reformist stance — change through the ballot box and through lobbying politicians on "women's issues" regardless of political party (as if women's issues could be treated as if they stood apart from other political issues!) — they took some pretty direct action.
Beatrice Faust, a foundation member of WEL, recalled how WEL forced the desegregation of the Victorian public service. At that time, women were not admitted to the Administrative Division of the service. The National Council of Women had written screeds of letters on the issue to no avail.
WEL tracked down some women who had the prerequisites and would have been eligible to sit the exam if they had been male, selected as many as they could find with non-gendered names and prevailed on them to sit the exam ostensibly as men. Naturally, a good number of them passed, which placed the government in an intolerable position; it was forced to change the regulations. Great stuff!
Labor cabinet member Wendy Fatin stated categorically that governments could not make the necessary structural changes and that more basic changes were needed. But she saw these as changes in perception, which is problematic.
Democrat Janet Powell, on the other hand, said she did not think it was a coincidence that compliance with the requirements of the Affirmative Action Act was made a condition of the awards of government contracts in Victoria, governed by a woman premier, Joan Kirner, and that the ACTU had adopted a similar policy with a woman assistant secretary, Jenny George. Who could argue with that?
However, the community is increasingly cynical about parliamentary politics, and this cynicism has depleted the energies available to WEL. While the first conference 20 years ago drew 600 women, this year attracted just over 200. The nostalgia evident in the press clippings and in the playing of "I am Woman" — a real blast from the past, this! — together with the high average age of those attending the conference, suggests that there was more looking back than moving forward.
Opposition spokesperson on women's affairs Jocelyn Newman, apart from some tasteless politicking, posed some challenging questions to the conference. Why were so few Aboriginal women or women of non-English speaking backgrounds there? Clearly, because the aspirations of those who give their energies to WEL are not the same as those who stay away. The individualistic, personal success goals of the middle-class women's movement do not address the collective needs of those from oppressed cultures. The latter need to fight racism and poverty.
The vast gap between the experiences of most of the WEL women and those of most Aboriginal women was highlighted by Betty Little, an Aboriginal health promotion officer. Playing guitar and singing at the conference dinner, Betty shared the experiences of racism and poverty of some of her kin. For someone like her, defence against these social evils takes a much higher priority than exclusive sexual politics or deconstructing the nurturing maternal role.
Despite the relative decline of the women' movement, WEL still displays remarkable energy. While looking backward attracted more interest than moving forward, the proposal for a coalition of Australian women's organisations seems really positive. It aims to allow women to work more closely together, to share resources without treading on anyone's autonomy. This seems very much the way to go in the current climate, using the energies that people have for their one or two issue group to build greater strength and unity.
And WEL's great strength is its uncompromisingly political orientation and its commitment to organisation. Despite the limitations of a parliamentary approach, this is still way —ahead of the lifestyle, consciousness orientation of most of the rest of the women's movement.