‘She Said,He Said’: Credibility and sexual harassment cases in Australia

Feminist research and theory show how substance and process of law are substantially affected by its patriarchal context. Accordingly, a number of Australian studies have identified how gendered myths and other factors impact on the assessment of victim credibility in sexual assault hearings. In this article we look at sexual harassment cases in Australia lodged under the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) between 2000 and 2006 and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Discrimination Act from 2001 to 2005 to see if similar variables to those in rape cases play a role in the perception of witness believability. We find that credibility is more likely to correlate with being Anglo, very young, a rational (masculine) demeanor/presentation in giving evidence, corroborative witnesses and legal representation. In addition, respondents' counsel in federal harassment hearings or respondents themselves in correspondence to the ACT Commissioner, just as defence barristers in rape trials, attempt to make the victim appear as an incredible witness through highlighting evidentiary inconsistencies and/or delayed reporting. Also evidence about sexual history or behavior that evokes an image of provocation may be adduced. We identify a varied response to these myths and to measurement of credibility by the individual ‘gatekeepers’ — the Federal Magistrates, judges and the ACT Discrimination Commissioner.     

‘First wave’ feminism in nineteenth-century France: Class, family and religion

The history of ‘first wave’ feminism in France raises several questions of relevance to the contemporary women's movement. Organized French feminism began during the struggle to replace a Catholic monarchy with a rationalistic, republican form of government. Because of the allegiance of most Frenchwomen to the church, however, even the republican and socialist supporters of feminist reform in educational institutions and in civil rights opposed political participation by women. Feminists, who themselves emphasized reforms in family law and economic opportunities, formed numerous organizations, published journals and held national and international meetings, but remained less a movement than a mosaic of leaders and groups divided by class, religion and personal rivalry. More importantly, they were estranged from the majority of Frenchwomen by questions pertaining to the relationship of women to the traditional patriarchal family, which continued to play a dominant role in the religious, economic and social life of the country. Internal conflict developed over protective legislation and women's ‘right to work’, while external opposition centered about the politically reactionary potential of religious women, and the alleged ‘anti-patriotic’ individualism of those who rejected motherhood as the ‘natural vocation’ and only career of women. By pitting feminism against a particular form of the family, antifeminists obscured the reality of women's oppression and succeeded in alienating the potential support for feminism of most Frenchwomen.     

Orwell's despair,Burdekin's hope: Gender and power in dystopia

George Orwell's 1984 bears a striking resemblance to a little-known anti-fascist dystopia, Swastika Night, that was published twelve years earlier. While the similarities between the two books are in some cases remarkable, of even greater interest is the different treatment of political domination and gender ideology in the two novels. Orwell's critique of power worship is inherently limited by his inability to perceive that preoccupations with power and domination are specifically associated with the male gender role. By contrast, Katherine Burdekin, a feminist writer who published Swastika Night using the pseudonym ‘Murray Constantine’, focuses her critique on the ‘cult of masculinity’ and the fascist dictatorship to which it can lead. Her novel is set 700 years in the future, after Hitlerism has been established in Europe as the official creed, and with it a ‘Reduction of Women’ to an animal level. This essay analyses the relationship between gender and power as understood by these two writers, one world-famous, the other forgotten.     

“Girl talk”: gender, equity, and identity discourses in a school-based computer culture

This article describes how a feminist intervention project in Canada focused on girls' more equitable access to and use of computers created significant opportunities for girls to develop and experience new identities as technology ‘experts’ within their school. In addition to a significant increase in participants' own technological expertise, there was a marked shift in the ways in which they talked about and negotiated their own gender identities with teachers and other students. Most significantly, the participants in the project became increasingly vocal about what they saw as inequitable practices in the daily operation of the school as well as those they were subject to by their teachers. This created, within the otherwise resilient macro-culture of the school, a more supportive climate for the advancement of gender equity well beyond the confines of its computer labs. We suggest that while equity-oriented school-level change is notoriously difficult to sustain, its most enduring impact might rather be participants' initiation into a discourse to which they had not previously experienced school-sanctioned access: a discourse in which to give voice to gender-specific inequities too long quieted by complacent discourses of “equality for all.”     

Poems: The swimmer; Aphrodite,your curly hair; Wedding dress; The frog prince

On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World, by Peter Stansky. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Beyond the Homefront: Women's Autobiographical Writing of the Two World Wars, edited by Yvonne M. Klein. London: Macmillan Press, 1997.

From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism, by Philip Auslander. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Writing as Resistance: Four Women Confronting the Holocaust, by Rachel Feldhay Brenner. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West, by Frieda Knobloch. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, by Cristina Bacchilega. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Sex, Nation, and Dissent in Irish Writing, edited by Eibhear Walshe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Beauty's Body: Femininity and Representation in British Aestheticism, by Kathy Alexis Psomiades. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Sexualities in Victorian Britain, edited by Andrew H. Miller and James Eli Adams. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions, edited by Dale Salwak. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996.