United or divided? Women ‘inside’ and women ‘outside’ against male lawmakers in Australia

Is it possible, under patriarchy, for women's liberationists and feminists to instigate and control the direction of law reforms, particularly in areas of law directly affecting women's daily lives—such as rape laws?This article covers one instance, in New South Wales, Australia, where women agitated for law reform and played a large part, at least for a time, in formulating a new law on rape. At the end, however, women's liberation women and feminists lost control because women in the bureaucracy sided with men in the bureaucracy, despite their stance of ‘sisterhood’.Will women ‘outside’ inevitably be sold out by women ‘inside’ the bureaucracy? Once inside, does an allegiance to the establishment (the patriarchy) develop which ousts allegiance to women's liberationism? Or is it true that women inside the system ultimately recognise the system is not ‘of them’, or ‘for them’, and therefore when the barricades are up, will align themselves with women outside, rather than with the true insiders, men?