Women catapulted into a different social order: women in East Germany1

The collapse of the ‘socialist' system in East Germany in October 1989 was welcomed by women and men of all social strata as desirous of putting an end to a police state and replacing it by a really democratic society. It enabled numerous independent women's groups affiliated to the Independent Women's Federation founded in November 1989 to place women in all important decision-making bodies. In a few months, however, portentous changes began to take place. The stagnating and declining, although still viable, economy was destroyed. Mass unemployment, hitherto unknown, soared, affecting women particularly badly. The financial, social, political, educational, cultural and legal structures were replaced by the respective West German ones. Most of the social achievements enjoyed by women have been eliminated or replaced by inferior legislation. Women's groups figure prominently among those who resist the ruthless dismantling of their rights     

Colonising motherhood: evangelical social reformers and Koorie women in Victoria,Australia, 1880s to the early 1900s

Abstract

This article examines the separate worlds of evangelical social reformers of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union and mission-based Indigenous women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the colony of Victoria. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) activists, characterising themselves as the organised motherhood of the world, claimed maternal moral authority to promote for their sex a legitimate place in public life and full citizenship. Simultaneously Koorie women on the scattered mission stations of the colony, their lives under increasingly intrusive surveillance, were forced on painfully unequal terms to negotiate with mission managers and colonial officials for the right even to raise their own children. Unable to perceive the plight of Koorie mothers, the WCTU reformers, characterising themselves as the organised motherhood of the world, aligned themselves with the so-called ‘civilising’ endeavours of their fellow evangelicals, the missionaries, oblivious to their collusion in the colonial state's grievous assaults on Koorie human rights and civil liberties     

Women and power in Ireland: Problems,progress, practice

A major problem confronting Irish feminists centres on how the transition from a first phase of consciousness-raising and more or less separatist analysis and action to a second phase of broad-based mobilisation for policy-change is to be achieved, without losing sight of, or faith in, the long-term goal of a radical transformation of sexual power relations. As part of the necessary reappraisal of our present position, fundamental to the development of new strategies, this paper describes the extent to which women in Ireland are chronically and grossly underrepresented in power élites, and analyses some of the barriers which have precluded—and in large measure continue to preclude—women's equal participation in the decision and policy-making processes. More optimistically, the conclusion briefly indicates the challenge to traditional forms of political organisation represented by the emergence of alternative forms of political activism, initiated and developed by women over the past several years.     

Enabling Citizenship: Gender,disability and citizenship in Australia

This paper queries the absence of disabled voices in contemporary citizenship literature. It argues that the language and imagery of the citizen is imbued with hegemonic normalcy and as such excludes disability. Feminist perspectives, such as those which argue for a form of maternal citizenship, largely fail to acknowledge disability experiences. Exclusionary practices are charted and links are made between gender, race and disability in this process. A citizenship which acknowledges disability is fundamental to re-imaging local, national and international collectivities.