Women's Refuges and the State in Victoria,Australia: a campaign for secrecy of address

The development of women's refuges in Victoria, Australia emerged within the context of emergency accommodation for women being the province of charity-based organisations, whose interventions into women's lives were often disempowering and autocratic. Feminist refuges argued against this charity-based approach to women and drove a process of conceptualising and responding to domestic violence in new ways. Following a formal request for the addresses of Victorian refuges by the Minister for Community Services in October 1979, the refuge movement united to keep their addresses secret, and launched a much publicised and protracted campaign in opposition to the state's demands. This resulted in a commitment from the then Department of Community Welfare Services (DCWS) to support the refuge program to operate in unique and radical ways, and in doing so gave recognition to the importance of gender in the provision of welfare.     

Women's Citizenship and the First World War: general remarks and a case study of women's enfranchisement in Austria and Germany

Historians' views about the impact of World War I on women's citizenship have diverged. Some scholars have emphasized that the war changed cultural understandings of suffrage due to women's patriotism and dedication to the war effort. Others have underlined that the politics of electoral reform determined whether or not women attained voting rights. Based on the cases of Austria and Germany where women were enfranchised in the context of revolutionary unrest triggered by the war, this article argues that the political process was in fact crucial. However, the claim of women's suffrage during the war is to be contextualized within a general understanding of republican citizenship and the concept of the ‘citizen soldier’. This discourse was essential to keeping the issue alive during the war. Nonetheless, further studies are still required to assess the war's impact on women and citizenship in the subjective sense of participation.     

Merging with the metals: an analysis of the role micro-political relationships played in the merger of the Printing and Kindred Industries Union with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union

ABSTRACT

In the spring of 1987, the Printing and Kindred Industries Union (PKIU), Federal Executive Committee, reluctantly concluded that membership decline and the resultant fall in income meant that the union needed to find an amalgamation partner. In common with many Australian unions, which felt similarly compelled to merge, there was initially a lack of consensus over a preferred merger partner. In most other unions these disagreements were eventually resolved, an amalgamation deal negotiated, and membership endorsement of the merger secured. This was not the case in the PKIU. Instead the union remained in intense internal conflict, throughout the seven-year amalgamation process. Scholars have suggested that the PKIU’s amalgamation fissures were caused by political, economic, industrial and institutional disagreements. Other authors have gone further and argue that dramatic shifts in the PKIU’s and other unions amalgamation policies, during the 1980s and 1990s, were the result of alterations in the strengths of different internal political factions, or the rejection of a union’s merger policy by the membership. This article, while accepting that political, economic, industrial and institutional factors all influenced the PKIU’s internal debate, puts forward an alternative hypothesis. It asserts that micro-political factors, specifically personal animosities, friendships and loyalties, played a significant role in determining the eventual choice of an amalgamation partner, and the contrasting results of its two merger ballots.