Archives Lecture7 September 2012

Feminism for the 21st Century

Marian Sawer

School of Politics and International Relations

The Australian National University

What a feminist looks like

The fortunes of feminism

What a feminist looks like 2

• Harold Bird, Poster for

the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage 1912

What an anti-feminist looks like

• ‘Votes for women bogies’, anon. Suffrage Atelier 1912.

• The bogies conjured up include petticoat government, the unwashed babe and the unsexed woman.

Political power = trousers

• Vida Goldstein trying to persuade women of Anti-Suffrage League to try on men’s trousers: ‘Take away the horrid things’.

• Punch 1900, Age 28 Dec 1984, p.11.

IWD Germany 1914

• Vida Goldstein ‘first woman to stand for parliament’ - Victorian candidate for the Senate 1903

What a feminist looks like3

IWD Germany 1914• Larry Pickering, 20

January 2012• (one of series of

cartoons of Julia Gillard wielding or wearing a dildo)

Political power = trousers2

Governor General swearing in PM 2010

• Governor General wears her grandmother’s corsage to swear in Australia’s first woman PM, 24 June 2010.

• See comments on Facebook page ‘Julia Gillard Australia’s Worst PM’

Tasmanian Cabinet February 1992

DOWN WITH BOURGEOIS FEMINISM

• IWD, GERMANY 1914

A visual jolt

• Robin Morgan logo from Miss America demo 1968, being used by Norwegian Women’s Front 2008.

WEL banner with logo

IWY symbol

• Symbol combining equality, peace and women, later used by UN Commission on the Status of Women

and Unifem.

IWD TAKES ON BOURGEOIS COLOURS

• SYDNEY IWD 1984

What a feminist looks like? 4

• Front cover Ms magazine, January 2009

UN Women

• The peace dove has disappeared from the new UN Women logo but it still contains hope for women and equality.

Archives Lecture, 13 September

Feminism for the 21st Century

Marian Sawer

School of Politics and International Relations

The Australian National University