Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Gender and sexuality in Australian politics
and gay liberation movements and the expanding mobilisation of LGBTIQ+ people
these issues would not be visible or addressed within politics or political science.
Feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements in Australia have been responsible for
expanding civil and political rights, raising new issues for consideration within
formal politics, achieving reforms and building new organisational forms.
In Australia, the mainstream (white) story of the women’s movement has its
roots in the struggles surrounding the vote, responsibility for children and military
conscription that took place towards the end of the 19th century and in the early
20th century. 14 It is important to acknowledge that the movement was created
within a colonial context and carried ideas of progress that were embedded in
colonialism – an intertwined history that is now the subject of interventions from
Indigenous and decolonial feminisms. 15
In the UK, USA, Australia and western Europe, these earlier mobilisations are
often called the ‘first wave’. The ‘second wave’ of feminist mobilisations occurred in
the same countries from the 1960s until roughly the 1980s. 16 The ‘waves’ metaphor
is useful in that it identifies highly visible surges of mobilisation, but it can be
misleading in that it obscures the less visible work done ‘in between the waves’
– which includes policy advocacy, work within institutions, institution building,
community building, informal networks and artistic affinities. 17
The ‘first wave’ women’s movements were largely white, heterosexual and
middle/upper class, oriented towards experiences of womanhood that excluded
the issues faced by other women. 18 As women’s liberation and gay and lesbian
rights movements mobilised on larger scales from the 1960s onwards, the groups
seen as central to the movements continued to be those that were comprised of
white middle/upper class people. However, alongside these movements have been
a range of other mobilisations, including Aboriginal women’s collective efforts for
rights and wellbeing, separate from the feminist movement, 19 women’s mobilisation
within trade unions, 20 white working-class Marxist-socialist feminist movements,
human rights activism by and for women with disabilities, 21 and migrant and
refugee women’s mobilisations and community building. 22
While the account given here centres on the gender dimension of the women’s
movement and other movements, this is not to say that gender (or at least gender
as understood by those in the ‘mainstream’ of the women’s movement) is, in reality,
the most salient feature or ‘axis’ of oppression/privilege for the people involved.
14 Andrew 2008.
15 If this was written by Aboriginal women, the story of women’s politics and feminist movements
would undoubtedly be different.
16 van Acker 1999, 7.
17 Katzenstein 1990; Staggenborg and Taylor 2005.
18 van Acker 1999, 7.
19 Behrendt 1993.
20 Francis 2014.
21 Henningham 2014, 157–61.
22 Pallotta-Chiarolli 1998.
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