The Australian National Council of Women

This article describes the political style and practice of the Australian National Council of Women (ANCW) as it developed up to 1975. The historical significance of this lies in the fact that, during the first three quarters of the last century, the ANCW was effectively the peak body representing the great majority of women's groups in this country: groups whose activities focused on politics, religion, morality, health, education, the media, philanthropy and also peace, women's economic and political rights, child welfare and legal reform. The Council spoke on behalf of these constituents to all levels of government, and internationally through the International Council of Women. It generally did not represent women associated with trade unions and the Australian Labor Party, and the politically active women amongst its leaders tended to be members of the Liberal Party. The conduct of the Council avoided party politics; its leaders co-operated with trade unionists on issues of women's rights such as equal pay, and worked as willingly with Labor governments as with non-Labor ones. An assessment of the effectiveness of the Council's political activities is therefore an assessment of the political practice and achievements of mainstream Australian feminism before the advent of radical feminism in the 1970s.     

Women's history: a study in continuity and change

In this response to Bridget Hill's viewpoint published inWomen's History Review, 2, pp. 5-22, Judith Bennett argues that her position is more subtle and more nuanced than Hill's critique would suggest. Bennett defends the historiographical importance of re-assessing the place of continuity in women's history; she emphasizes the legitimate place of generalization in women's history; and she argues that patriarchy is a critical subject of investigation for feminist historians.     

Rationalizing pay inequity: women engineers,pervasive patriarchy and the neoliberal chimera

This article argues that neoliberalism with its pervasive patriarchy and co-option of feminism, renders women tacitly complicit in gendered pay inequalities. We show that in New Zealand, one of the world’s most neoliberal nations, women who might precisely be best equipped to argue for equal pay – engineers – do not do so because neoliberalism makes many feel responsible for, and accepting of, their lower salaries. In interviews and focus groups, many women engineers talk of deserving less pay than men because of their ‘choices’, their ‘personality’ and their lack of ‘responsibility’. In a disempowering environment, some women show agency by disavowing gender as a reason for the pay gap. Such narratives of individualized shortcomings reduce hope of collective action that might uncover and dismantle the systemic causes of pay inequity, which are not due to a woman’s choice or personality but rather what we frame as the neoliberal chimera.     

Analysing contractual environments: lessons from Indigenous health in Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Contracting in health care is a mechanism used by the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand to improve the participation of marginalized populations in primary health care and improve responsiveness to local needs. As a result, complex contractual environments have emerged. The literature on contracting in health has tended to focus on the pros and cons of classical versus relational contracts from the funder's perspective. This article proposes an analytical framework to explore the strengths and weaknesses of contractual environments that depend on a number of classical contracts, a single relational contract or a mix of the two. Examples from indigenous contracting environments are used to inform the elaboration of the framework. Results show that contractual environments that rely on a multiplicity of specific contracts are administratively onerous, while constraining opportunities for local responsiveness. Contractual environments dominated by a single relational contract produce a more flexible and administratively streamlined system.     

Validating policy indicators

Although validity of an indicator, that is, whether it means what it purports to, is critical to its legitimate use in policy, there are few systematic approaches to validation. The reason lies largely in the traditions of positivist social science which require the separation of fact and theory and allow no place for meaning and valuation. The paper proposes approaches to test the validity of both indicators and the conceptual frameworks on which they are based. The most powerful forms of validation require the application of a priori concepts and models. Validation is partly judgmental and never simply mechanical. The validity of a measure is dependent on the context of its use. Social and political processes are an important part of validation, particularly in determining the appropriateness of the assumptions. If an indicator is to be valid, it should be chosen or designed iteratively with the policies it will help to shape.The author wishes to thank Sir Geoffrey Vickers, Professor Martin Krieger and Dr. Norman Shulman for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper.