Understanding our current gender order:

1
Understanding our current gender order

• an historical account of gender(ed) relations in
  Australia

2
Late 1700s

• Colonisation and the division of labour
• The public/private split

• The reinforcement of the masculine/ feminine
  binary

3
Before 1900

• The gendered process of Colonisation

• Colonial and neo-colonial societies

4
Before 1900
5
Late 1800s

• Marriage, wages and
• The notion of the male breadwinner

6
Late 1800s early 1900s

• The first feminists

• Suffrage societies

7
1914-1918 WWI

• Womens positioning during the war
• War-Time Propaganda

8
1920s

• The Modern Housewife
• Motherhood as science
• Obsession with birthrate

9
1930s

• The Depression
• Unemployment
• Policy banning married women from working
• Are Women taking mens jobs?
• Continued concern with birthrate

10
1939-1945 WWII

• Employment
• Labour shortages in the defence forces
• Recruiting campaigns
• At the end of the war

11
1950s

• Post-war atmosphere increasingly anti-feminist

12
1950s

• Propaganda aimed at keeping womens concerns
  centred on domesticity reasserted itself
• Suburban dream flourished

13
1950s
Advertisements and magazines continued to depict
the kitchen and the laundry as the centre of
womans world
14
1960s

• A dramatic change in womens employment patterns
• The two income family an increasing economic
  necessity
• Availability of new contraceptives
• Equal pay at last?

15
1970s

• Womens liberation movement
• 1972 one rate for the job no more female
  and male rates
• 1974 female minimum wage became the same as the
  male minimum wage

16
1970s
Womens liberation movement consciousness
raising of private issues such as

• Sexual harassment and rape
• Domestic violence
• Challenged issues such as
• The concept of work
• Contraception and abortion

17
1980s

• National Wage Case
• Elimination of all forms of discrimination
  against women
• The Affirmative Action Act
• Child Support Agency established

18
1990s

• 1993 The National Strategy on Violence against
  women was launched
• 1995 No Discrimination potential pregnancies
• 1999 female labour force participation rate of
  almost 55

19
2000-2002

• The Qld Judiciary
• Supreme Court
• 31 of justices are female
• District Court
• 17 of judges are female
• Magistrates
• 11 are female

• Politics
• State Parliament
• 35 of members are female
• Federal Parliament
• 26 of members are female (house of
  representatives
• 31 of senators are female
• 14 of ministers are female

Business Managerial positions overwhelmingly
dominated by males
20
2000-2002

• What is the message here?
• How is womens legitimate success socially
  determined?
• What about the status of the traditionally
  feminine?
• What about promoting mens access to
  non-traditional areas?

21
Theoretical summary

• Gender identities are
• Not fixed or pre-determined
• Historically contingent
• Multiple and complex
• Fluid
• Changing and dynamic
• Contextual
• Gender identities constructed in relation to
  oppositional (male/female) binaries are
  restrictive and limiting