Between the 1890s and the 1930s at least three Protestant women's groups in Australia waged a campaign in the community which confounded contemporary views that Christian women were insular on the one hand or unworldly on the other. Despite social codes of behaviour that discouraged the frank discussion of sex, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Young Women's Christian Association and the Mothers' Union campaigned for children to be taught about sex, reproduction and venereal disease in order to 'clean up' Australian society and to inculcate a healthier attitude towards sex. This article argues that in the 50 years studied, churchwomen both tried to change and were themselves significantly changed by modern attitudes towards sex.
This article examines the gendered dimensions of relationships in the conduct of a major academic Australian social survey in Melbourne in the early years of the Second World War. Despite its grounding in methodology current in Britain at the time, its execution and outcomes mirrored the gendered and classed nature of the survey, with its male direction, middleclass female interviewers, and largely working-class respondents. The value of 'women's conversations' was reflected in the fullness of the findings that were made publicly available in subsequent years.
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