Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism, and Gender in Australia, 1890-1955

Joy Damousi

Oxford University Press, 1994 - History - 272 pages

Women have played an important but little known part in Australian socialist and Communist movement. This book documents the activity and vision of those women who fought against capitalism, oppression and injustice, in the hope of establishing a more humane social order. But this book goes beyond merely documenting the deeds of female activists and restoring their place in history. It also attempts to explore the subtle and often hidden ways in which issues relating to gender can define and influence politics and poltical life. The main focus of the book is an examination of gender relations within left wing organisations. It critiques the ways in which those are legitimized and reinforced, and considers how gendered concepts and meanings are constructed and reproduced within a historical context. The construction and representation of masculinity and femininity within the labour movement forms the basis of this analysis. A critical study of the language, ideas, iconography and traditions of the left can unravel ways in which gendered meanings and relations between men and women are reinforced and maintained. These themes are encapsulated and reflected in autobiographics by communists, which suggest the ways in which radical politics was a different social, cultural and political experience for men and for women. By exploring the relationship between gender and leftwing politics, this book attemps to show that firstly, women were not mere appendages of their male comrades, but were active participants in their own right, and secondly, how and why their activism was restricted by the existence of particular gender relations within the movement.

Contents

• Part: 5
• THE WOMEN WHO RALLIED: 15
• WOMEN AND SOCIALIst Culture: 34

About the author

Joy Damousi was born on June 17, 1961 in Melbourne, Australia. She is a graduate of La Trobe University, BA (Honours) and Australian National University, PhD in history. She has held various positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University in women's studies and history. Her books include Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, Living with the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-War Australia, The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia, Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia, 1840-1940, and Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism, and Gender in Australia, 1890-1955
• Author: Joy Damousi
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1994
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Oct 14, 2009
• ISBN: 0195533151, 9780195533156
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: History / General; Political Science / General; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism; Social Science / Women's Studies