The importance of women in the protest movement

Audio

Ceci Cairns

I think women were important in all kinds of ways, whether it was just a woman in a family who brought into that family a breath of fresh air about what was going on, and said, “Look, I’m standing up for this,” and whether their husbands said, “No, you can’t,” or whatever, it was a kind of changing dynamic all through. …

But, yes, I think, of course they did. They did, but in all sorts of ways. In being awakened to what could be done. And also that there’s such a marvellous history of women taking to the streets, and, you know, suffragettes and women during the War who stood up and did things. And, you know, I think that being reminded of those past sort of heroines was really helpful.

Alexandra

I asked most of the women I interviewed whether they thought that women played an important or a significant role in the protest movement against the Vietnam War and conscription, and I got some quite different answers, as you might expect. Some of the women I spoke to said that they had paid almost no attention to gender issues at the time and couldn’t really remember whether there had been many women at all. Others suggested that the question was sort of irrelevant, because there was no gender aspect to their protesting. An important bit of context here is that the Women’s Liberation Movement, in Australia at least, really started in a big way in the 1970s, so the end of the period we’re discussing here, and indeed there were certainly women who went from protesting the Vietnam War to then being involved in Women’s Lib.

On the other hand, other women said that women played very significant roles in a variety of ways. I want to make it clear that I’m not pushing a particular agenda here, in terms of a feminist analysis or anything like that. Well, aside from the fact that I think women’s voices in general in history deserve to be recorded for posterity and their contributions deserve to be acknowledged, which I guess is a feminist agenda. That one I’m fine with acknowledging. Anyway, my point is that I am not trying to say women were more important than men or anything like that. What I do want to show, and what I hope I have shown across these many episodes, is the myriad ways that women contributed during this important era of public protest. So in this episode I’m going to let the women speak for themselves without too much editorialising from me. I have loosely grouped these excerpts into three, what seemed like relevant sets to me, but there’s overlap between some of them as well. You’ll find a complete list of who is speaking in this episode on the website, women conscription war dot com.

We begin with women who discuss how women were crucial to the organisation of the protests:

Alexandra

Do you feel like there were lots of women at those marches?

Caroline Hogg

Oh, yes, yes, Heavens yes. And there were a lot of women organising too. And there were a lot of women who didn't give a damn if they didn't get their names in the paper. They were just gonna keep on doing what they were doing. …

Alexandra

Overall, do you feel like women had – do you feel like you, and Vera, and so on, had an important role to play in the movement? Had you not been there, do you think it would have been different?

Diana Crunden

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there was so much work to do, you know? Getting posters up, and handing out leaflets, and all of those things.

Alexandra

Yep. And you were doing a lot of that?

Diana Crunden

Yeah, yeah. So, yes, it would have – it did make a difference. In fact, I think it was central, really. Because, you know, a lot of the men were fly-by-nights. Whereas the women were there, and stuck with it.

Alexandra

So when we were communicating earlier, you said that you thought women were crucial to the anti-Vietnam and anti-conscription activities. I mean, you've already talked about what you were involved in, and so on. But can you tell me why you think women more generally were so important in the movement?

Jan Muller

Because we did all the grunt work.

Alexandra

Like the pamphlets and the typing and the printing.

Jan Muller

And the organizing and the sewing of the banners, the making of the banners, the sewing of the flags. I don't know whether we sourced the flag poles. I think the boys might have gone to McEwen’s – not Bunnings, because that didn't exist. It was McEwen’s. I don't know. I think … probably the minimum, the blokes did the minimum, I can tell you that.

Well, sorry. Most of them did the minimum. There were a few that were – there were a few that were a bit more – but they were all sexist bastards. Absolutely. Look, I mean, we didn't realize it at the time. But in discussions I've had with women and men since those days, and I've seen some of the feminist women sort of writing about their experiences, and I'm thinking, yeah, she's actually – she's actually right. We didn't really see it that way.

But I do remember when we had a big left conference, and some of the more vocal women were complaining that they never get to speak at the rallies, and, you know, men are dominating the movement, this is not right and it should be, you know, women hold up half the sky stuff. I do remember another man, who I had great respect for, get up and say, well, "It's not so much that the men are dominating, it's more that the women are submissive. You don't take – you don't take the opportunities."

Well, I was still a pretty mousy sort of a person then. And I remember one of the more stronger women getting up and saying, "How dare you say that we're submissive? We do this, this, this and this. It's you fellows that don't allow us to take the lead roles."

Yeah, so it was it was very – the movement was quite male dominated. And the men argued and justified that because, "We're the ones that are threatened by conscription. You're not," you know, and it's like, hang on. The women, the ones that were providing the refuges, and with, which made them just as much threatened by conscription and the aftermath.

Alexandra

Do you - were women, were other women involved in protesting against Vietnam, that you were aware of?

Lyn Hovey

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were big - yeah, there was sort of a big crossover between the growth of the women's movement and the Vietnam War activists, and, and feminist politics were argued out in, you know, various groups within the anti Vietnam, you know, organising groups, there was always a lot of argument about who was going to speak. And, you know, it was the beginning of women, finding their voices and all that stuff. So...

Alexandra

And do you think women's involvement in the protest movement was important?

Lyn Hovey

Oh yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah, it was. It was. A lot of - lot of organisations were held together by women's presence, you know, like the Union of Australian Women and other - and CICD, the Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament, and the movement against uranium mining, all of those groups were, you know - they often had a male spokesperson, but they were all held together, and the glue that held them together, were always women, and particularly the older women's groups, you know, that Union of Australian Women who were really involved with the anti Vietnam things - that were, well they were all women, and they were, you know, they were the sort of the bedrock of often a lot of demonstrations, they would come early and get themselves chained to something and stand there all day.

Alexandra

How important do you think women were in the movement to protest against Vietnam and conscription?

Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo

Totally instrumental. I mean, there were some women on the organising committee, there was Jean, I can't remember who else - there weren't many. There might have been only one other; maybe Coxsedge, I can't remember. But those two I think were - and I was ex officio. But apart from that, I don't think there were other women. But by the same token, well Save Our Sons was absolutely critical to the whole conscription part of the thing. And in the local groups, they were most often - their secretaries were, I don't mean typists, but organisational secretary or president, whatever - they were almost entirely women, if not definitely entirely women. The groups themselves were mixed genders. But I think women were the main people who were instrumental in holding them together. I mean, you can't have 100,000 people who are all Labor and Communist Party voters, that's not going to happen. And part of the reason I think was apart from any moral issues, the sons of women across the political spectrum were dying. And there was the potential for more to die and they didn't want their son - most of them didn't believe in that war - didn't want their sons to go to a foreign war and be killed, for what?

In contrast, some women I spoke to either thought women didn’t have a particularly important role, for a variety of reasons, or don’t particularly remember gender being an issue.

Martha Kinsman

…I mean, there's a danger in doing a project just on women. That the interest becomes, well, how did the men treat you? And I don't, I mean, I don't, they were too young to start telling people to go into the washing up and all that sort of thing. They weren't, you know, they hadn't sort of - if there were misogynists it hadn't yet sort of coagulated to that point. And the women were perfectly happy to say go and do it yourself. I don't remember there being that flavour among the groups that I moved in, but they were certainly far more male than female in terms of their mix. And certainly the men more than the women - more than most of the women - were concerned with working out theories of socialism and Australian capitalism and, the people I knew, also of internationalism, and far more men than women were involved in those sorts of discussions, but the two Melbourne women that I've mentioned to you, Jill Jolliffe and Helen Hill, they were certainly as involved if not more involved than I was in those sorts of discussions. And there were other women.

Alexandra

So did you - do you feel like at Monash there was an important place for women in protesting against Vietnam?

Christine Ross

Not really. I think they - it was all still very much the patriarchy, you know, the men sort of took control. The women were there but it was like, you know, behind every revolutionary there's a good woman, you know, that kind of stuff. You know, there was - women were highly regarded, because there was plenty of sex around. But I don't think - you know, the men made the decisions, mostly. They weren't, they weren't...  what can I say? They weren't intentionally dismissive, I don't think - it's just that that was what life was like, in those days, you know, like, it was still - feminism was just sort of starting to rear its head. We were - I mean, most of us, were perfectly happy to say our piece and we wouldn't back down and the men were okay, you know, but I don't think that they sat down and had too many meetings and said, I wonder what the women think, you know.

Alexandra

From your memory, did you get a sense that there were a lot of women? Like, would you have said it would have been about half or less, in terms of people doing things?

Sue McCulloch

Absolutely. Yes, I do, I think there were at least half who were women. And I – we were not acknowledged. And I think a number of the men, now, these days, would say that, too. We were regarded as, you know, the sort of – the help maids, you know, the people who did the typical kind of role of women. And it was, at the time, when women were also, you know, it did really go hand in hand with the women’s movement.

And I think women within the anti-war movement were facing the same struggles of recognition and autonomy as women in general. So, you know, the fact that we were in an anti-war movement didn’t necessarily – in fact, it didn’t give us any greater presence or voice.

In terms of our power in that movement, I think we had less power. You know, there were very strong – the main people in the anti-war movement like Jim Cairns, was sort of the figurehead, the people on the executives of various things were largely all men, except for Jean McLean. Oh, maybe Joan Coxsedge. And one or two others.

But I don’t think the number of women in those powerful positions reflected by any means the actual number of women who were involved in the entire movement. So it was very frustrating at the time. And I think there were people who actually left the anti-war movement, who found themselves frustrated as women in that movement. They joined the women’s liberation movement more – you know, to be their main focus of activity. Because they just felt that they were not, you know, it was endlessly frustrating for them to be in this movement where they weren’t being given an equal say.

Alexandra

Finally, these are reflections that are a bit more general:

Alexandra

Do you think that women being involved was important for the overall anti-Vietnam and anti-conscription movement?

Fran Newell

What I would say there is that, to me, the success of the anti-war and anti-conscription movement, and to me, the success of the civil disobedience, nonviolent tactic was, that a huge swathe of Australians became at least opposed to the war if not actively involved in opposing it. And so 50% of the population is female - women - so clearly, from my point of view, if it's going to be a democratic movement and a democratic change, then women's participation is key.

Alexandra

Do you think that women being involved in protesting was an important part of the protest movement?

Carol Goldson

Yes, I do. Because well, getting back to the talking about that sort of mass feeling of the moratorium, I think the leadership shown by the women like the Save Our Sons movement, and the really strong feelings that those people had, because they were women who had grown up sons, who were in real danger of being sent off and getting killed. And I think that really hit people where it really meant something. A lot of people who, who weren't political and who weren't necessarily involved from a political angle, still didn't, it didn't feel right for them. They weren't convinced that the country was a) right to get involved in the struggle at all. And b) they definitely felt it wasn't right to just send off 18 year old young men without any sort of consent at all. Or - I think felt as if there hadn't been even any consultation before those things happened. And yeah, I think the fact that women in particular, were prepared to, to make a fuss when maybe men were a bit more reluctant to do so.

Alexandra

Do you think that the involvement of women in the protest movement was important?

Fiona Lindsay

Oh, absolutely. Yes. Really important. I mean, SOS - which was the earliest sort of manifestation of it, I suppose, in large scale - it really did enable so many women to stand up and be counted in a pretty safe way. And I think that's really important to be able to do that. I guess there was that mutuality among women. I mean it was... the meetings were mostly women, that I attended. Women knew what to do. I mean, women of my mother's vintage and older were very experienced in, in politics of one form or another, in the union movement, some of them, and in professions. They weren't inexperienced.

Alexandra

How important do you think women were in that whole demonstrating defiance, I guess, demonstrating dislike, of Vietnam?

Judy Maddigan 

No, I think it was very important, because if it had only been guys, they would have said oh those people don't want to go and fight, so take no notice of them. But once women were in before, a) it dragged in a lot more family members, or as I said it didn't have much effect on my family. But I think it just broadened... that people saw it wasn't just some guys who didn't want to go to fight, it was a community had a strong pull against it. And the fact - and like, I know people say university marches, oh well they're just uni students, but the fact there were a lot of older people in those marches the whole way through and it increased as more guys got killed in Vietnam of course - some of them probably the parents of some poor souls - but so I think that really had a significant difference. Certainly, for elections anyway, people saw that, you know, half the crew were women marching down the street, looking at in political terms, I would have thought there'd be a fairly strong message there - we're not, this is not helping the Liberal cause. I think it was quite significant. And I think it probably gave some women - not me so much, because as I said I'd been a  spoiled brat, so I'd done whatever I wanted to anyway. But I think for some women, it probably did open up a broader field from them, especially those who'd been in a very traditional family. And I think it probably gave the opportunity to just be - feel a bit freer and talk a bit more, perhaps, too. Yeah.

Alexandra

Why did it matter that women were protesting alongside with men in the protest movement, do you think?

Helen Hill 

Well, I think it, it had an influence on the movement itself, because it showed that the Vietnam War movement was a broadly based movement and had people you know, when you think of the Save Our Sons women from different backgrounds, and you have people from the middle class and educated women. And, you know, it wasn't just a self centred thing, it wasn't just people who could be drafted, would go, you know, because they were not conscripting women. But women could see an ethical reason to oppose the war.

Alexandra

Do you think women's actions during this period, anti war, anti conscription, were necessary? were important to the movement as a whole?

Tony Dalton

Yeah - oh, absolutely. Fundamental.