By Gay Walsh
The women's movement must embrace women from all social classes, races, origins. Yet it will survive only if its class analysis does not sit prettily with an accommodation of the bourgeoisie. It will mean nothing if it does not embrace the fight against racism and poverty as essential and integral to the genuine liberation of all women.
Our sisters fighting in Pakistan, the Middle East, south-east Asia, eastern Europe, Africa are also connected to us — their fight is our fight.
Whilst we do not have formal "axioms" such as "Women, children and dogs are worthy of beating", as is the case in India, implicitly we maintain this slogan for Aboriginal and Asian women if we do not fight racism. Such racism is sadly expressed through the naive yet strident offerings of another woman: Pauline Hanson.
Her views must be challenged. For all of our sakes, they must be overturned.
We must not leave an epitaph to this century:
Here lies a great country;
Denuded of justice;
Diminished by xenophobia;
Bereft of fairness;
Consumed by hatred;
Divided by class, race, gender;
Informed by ignorance;
Extinguished by our own hands.
If you were standing here 25 years ago, you would have witnessed the largest demonstration this state has ever seen in protest against the Vietnam War. Inside the building behind me, you would have been hard pressed to find a woman parliamentarian. Aboriginal women were being separated from their children by the white arm of paternalistic capitalism.
There was: no rape crisis centre; no working women's centre; no women's health centre; no women's information switchboard; no women's art movement; no feminist women shelters; no women's studies; no women's studies resource centre; no women's community centres; no government-funded women's organisations; no women's advisers; no EEO legislation; no rape in marriage legislation; no affirmative action legislation; no sexism in education projects.
It was time when marriage meant the death knell of your career.
There were: no family law courts — you did battle on pernicious grounds in the courts; no rights to your children if you were a lesbian mother. It was a time when shock therapy was used to "treat" lesbians, or your family could have you committed to Glenside Hospital.
There was no maternity leave, no parental leave, no four weeks' annual leave.
In the basement of Trades Hall there was no women's standing committee and virtually no women's presence. Publicly funded child-care did not exist.
There was no Aboriginal legal rights organisation, no Aboriginal studies, no Mabo, no Wik and (thank Aphrodite) no Hindmarsh Island bridge.
There were no projects on outwork — the term hadn't even been invented.
This is the 30th anniversary of the right to vote for our indigenous people. Only five years on, if you worked at GM-H you would have had to fight to stop the proposed stand-downs of married women.
We should never lose sight of our past. It's too easy to take what we have for granted. Women gave their lives for me to be able to tell you about this today. Yet where are we today? Where must we go in the pursuit of women's liberation?
We must, in the first instance, defend what we have achieved. Gains can be and are rolled back. Women still do not have equal pay — we earn less in over-award payments and superannuation. We are working longer and for relatively less than in the past.
Enterprise bargaining and the new Workplace Relations Act present a serious danger to working women, and Costello's cuts threaten unemployed women, women students, women with families living in poverty and dependent on the social wage.
Women's studies was one of the first areas attacked in the higher education cuts, and the same can happen to Aboriginal studies. The attack on so-called "political correctness" is an attack on feminism, and a licence to vilify with immunity.
We must fight the sale of our assets, the out-sourcing and privatisation of public services. Women are badly hurt by these cuts.
We must not allow young people to lose hope. Thus 40% youth unemployment must be fought and overcome.
We must not drop our guard. We must never again allow women to expect second best. We must not second-guess the political agenda; we must help set the political agenda.
Let's build alliances with all social movements. Let's make absolutely sure that the next 25 years are marked by even more extraordinary changes than the past 25 years. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to all the women who went before us. We owe it to all the women who will come after us.
[Abridged from a speech to the International Women's Day rally in Adelaide.]