School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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Start date: 1990 × End date: 1999 × Subject: Australia × Subject: feminism × Subject: women immigrants ×

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    Contesting feminist spaces: immigrant and refugee women write history
    Murdolo, Adele ( 1999)
    Within the dominant History of Australian feminism, immigrant and refugee women are constructed as inherently non-feminist, uninterested in feminist activity, and unable to involve themselves in feminism because of a range of barriers such as their class or race oppression. Where their presence in feminist activism has been acknowledged, either their specificity as immigrant or refugee women is not taken into account, or they are relegated to a separate and marginalised sphere of political action. Moreover, immigrant and refugee women are located in the margins of Australian national identity, and of ‘Australian feminism’. As a corollary, anglo-Australian women are positioned firmly in the centre of Australian female national identity. Unlike immigrant and refugee women, anglo-Australian women have been represented as active agents and subjects of a nationalised (Australian) feminist History. Notwithstanding this absence and marginalisation from the established and well-recognised History of Australian feminism, and from the designation ‘Australian’, immigrant and refugee women have been active as feminists, and they have theorised their feminism in complex ways. This theorisation includes the problematisation of a nationalised identity. Two ‘case studies’ are presented to demonstrate and explore the activism of immigrant and refugee women, and the theoretical contentions of the thesis. First, the activism of immigrant and refugee women in the Victorian refuge movement is explored. The second case study analyses the involvement of immigrant and refugee women in the four Women and Labour Conferences, held around Australia since 1978. Through both case studies, the construction of Historical evidence is also explored. In this regard, the findings of these case studies raise a clear challenge to the current Historical narrative and they broaden current concepts of what constitutes feminist activism in Australia.