HIST30004 A History of Sexualities: Second Wave Feminism and Lesbian Feminism

Communist Party

The Communist Party of Australia formed in 1920.  During the 1930s Depression its membership increased as people sought alternatives to industrial capitalism.  It reached the peak of its influence post WWII, when its membership was at its largest, and a number of its members held key trade union positions.  Several prominent academics have also featured amongst its members.  In 1949 the Menzies government conducted a Royal Commission into the CPA, and in 1950 a national referendum to outlaw the CPA was defeated.  In 1963 it split over the Sino- Soviet issue, and a splinter CPA (Marxist-Leninist) was formed.  In 1970 and 1984 there were other ideological splits, all of which weakened the Party and it disbanded in 1989-1991.

Lilith Collective

The Lilith Collective grew from a fourth year undergraduate seminar 'Women and the Family in American and Australian Society 1788- 1980' conducted in the History Department of the University of Melbourne in 1983. With encouragement from the Department the seminar papers were published as 'Lilith: a Women's History Journal' No.1, Winter 1984. By 1985 the Collective affirmed its committment to feminist informed history and changed the Journal's name accordingly. The Collective has funded the Journal and gathered articles by organising feminist history conferences. Membership of the  Collective has passed between post- graduate feminist history students at the major Melbourne Universities.

Sugar and Snails Co-Operative

Sugar & Snails Press began life as the Women's Movement Childrens' Literature Co-operative Ltd in 1974. It was started by a group of women from the Box Hill Women's Liberation Branch who were concerned about sexism in children's literature, and began to publish and write their own books. The company was closed in 1991 as its members believed that mainstream publishers had accepted the need for non-sexist literature.

Sisters Publishing

Sisters Publishing was established in 1979 by five women publishers: Diana Gribble, Hilary McPhee, Sally Milner, Anne O'Donovan and Joyce Nicholson. It was a feminist company whose purpose was to publish fiction, non-fiction and poetry by and for women. To limit the problems of distribution, they also ran a mail-order organisation, Sisters Bookclub, which provided its members with a quarterly newsletter and books by female authors as well as its own publications at discount prices. The company had considerable success; they published eleven titles, including first works by Beverley Farmer and Jean Bedford, and bookclub membership reached 3000 subscribers from all parts of Australia. However its policy of offering discounted books meant that the company had little long-term viability and in 1984 it ceased operation.

University of Melbourne Student Union

The Melbourne University Union was established in 1884 on the instigation of John Monash. Its objectives were to promote the common interests of students, provide means for practice in writing and speaking  and to provide a meeting place for all members of the University, including, to a lesser extent, staff and graduates. After years of makeshift accomodation, a Union House was achieved chiefly through the efforts of Raymond Priestley, Vice-Chancellor in 1937. By the 1950s the Union was no longer meeting the needs of its three user groups. In 1952 staff retreated to their own club, University House, and the Graduate Union was constituted as a separate entity and eventually set up Graduate House in Leicester Street in 1962. The Union became a centre for student life and activity only. By 1965 the Union building had become inadequate and most of the remnants of the old Museum building were demolished to allow for expansion.

In Melbourne, the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) was closely connected to trade unions and the workers’ movement. By the early 1970s a Women’s Liberation Group had become affiliated with the Student Union at the University of Melbourne. Just as universities provided a haven for anti-war and radical ideas, they proved favourable for the ideas and activism of the women’s movement. Indeed, the women’s movement grew when women active in trade unions, the Communist Party, anti-conscription and anti-war movements perceived that the talk of a new society mostly included the old sexism.3

At the University of Melbourne, the University Assembly formed a Women’s Working Group, which first reported on the status of women at the university in 1975; this report was instrumental in forcing the university to adopt equal opportunity policies. In the Student Union, members of the Women’s Liberation Group organised on campus and participated in wider demonstrations reported in Farrago.

Jeannie Zakharov

This material represents records and other memorabilia coll- ected by Jeannie while she was a student at the University of Melb- ourne from 1979 to 1983. JZ was active in the S.R.C., the A.U.S. and the A.L.P. Club, and also active generally in leftist and feminist student politics.