Feminists discuss how to fight back
By Zanny Begg
BRISBANE — Thirty women attended a meeting of the International Women's Day Collective on November 10 to hear several speakers and to formulate demands for the 1998 IWD rally.
Shannon Murphy, a year 11 high school student, said it was important for feminist committees to organise high school students. She said that a religion teacher at her school had told her class women deserved domestic violence because Eve had caused Adam to be thrown out of the garden of Eden. The teacher was asked to leave after Murphy organised students to complain to the school administration.
"During the 1970s, there were compulsory motherhood courses for grade nine girls", Murphy pointed out. While this has changed, underlying sexist attitudes had not, and the struggle was "far from over".
Janette Hull, a student from the University of Queensland active in the eating disorders awareness collective, explained that fat is still a feminist issue. There are more than 40,000 cases of bulimia and anorexia in Queensland, and these diseases have a death rate of 19%.
Beverly Johnson from Link Up gave a heart-wrenching account of the struggle of Aboriginal women to keep their families together. She told stories about mothers who had waited in vain for children to return home from school, only to find out later they had been taken by the Aboriginal Protection Board.
Shane Wilde, a gay and lesbian activist, gave a humorous and informative report on the ways in which government legislation continues to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Despite gays and lesbians being written into the 1992 Anti-Discrimination Act, it remains lawful to discriminate against them if they work with children or in public health.
In 1997, minister for health Mike Horan introduced a regulation which required every community health service in Queensland to agree not to "promote a certain lifestyle" to receive government funding. It was made clear this referred to homosexuality. The hepatitis C council refused to sign and lost its funding.
Wilde went to Canberra to lobby federal ALP members to oppose discriminatory sections of industrial relations legislation but was told this would make the amendments "gay bills" and would divert attention from the "real issues".
Other speakers included Helen Kerr from Children by Choice and a representative from the Childcare Union. The forum was chaired by Ruth Ratcliffe from the International Women's Day Committee.
Ratcliffe concluded the meeting by explaining, "All the speakers here tonight have shown the many battles women still have to fight to achieve equality. We hope that the International Women's Day Collective will not just organise a rally next year but be part of a feminist fight back all year round."