History, Cultural Studies, and Another Look at First-Wave Feminism in Australia

Abstract

Another look at first-wave feminism, one that considers cultural productions as well as the materials usually accepted by historians as 'sources', offers a new, revisionist, account of the 'Woman Movement', focused less on motherhood and/or work than on (hetero)sex. This account also suggests that Australian feminism was not only born modern but was a force for modernism, at least two decades sooner than anywhere else.