Writing Gender into History and History in Gender: Creating A Nation and Australian Historiography

Abstract

The creation of nations has traditionally been seen as men's business', write the authors of Creating A Nation. 'We wish to challenge this view of history', they state boldly, 'by asserting the agency and creativity of women in the process of national generation'. 1 By declaring this aim of interrogating the frameworks within which national history has been understood and women's role within it, Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly were breaking new ground in writing Australian national history.While previous works had questioned the absence of women in the national landscape, this project sought to rewrite the enterprise of national history itself: This book starts from the premise that gender is integral to the processes that comprise the history of Australia -that political and economic as well as social and cultural history are constituted in gendered terms … It explores the appropriation of women's procreative powers by men in their assertion that they gave birth to the nation … It also considers the difficulty encountered by women who attempted to carve a place for non-party women's interests in a political system organised around the conflict between capital and labour, between employers and workers. 2 This approach signified an important departure point from national histories written before or since, because it not only diverged from existing accounts of adding 'women to Australian history', but, more boldly, unsettled received notions of how national histories could be imagined. Women's agency is situated at the centre of a range of contexts and situations. The process of nation building is examined, whether 'giving birth to babies, or in refusing to do so, in sustaining families and multi-cultural communities, creating wealth, shaping a maternalist welfare state or in inscribing the meanings of our experience in culture '. 3

Feminism and Political History

“…In this way, as Joy Damousi has noted, Creating a Nation sought to transform the enterprise of national history itself, transcending the standard political histories that were "written by men, for men, and consisting of boring anecdotes about Parkes, Deakin, Hughes, Federation and conscription". 58 The authors understood national "creation" as being the result not merely of masculine actions, but of women's agency in many arenas of life, including biological reproduction but also sustaining communities, contributing to national wealth, carving out a place for a different kind of politics, and influencing the process by which the new Commonwealth would be defined as a protectionist welfare state. It showed how women had shaped the nation alongside men, as "self-conscious nation-builders" and national subjects.…”

‘Door Bitches of Club Feminism’?: Academia and Feminist Competency

“…As yet, Australian feminist academia has not experienced high profile repudiations from within (as with Daphne Patai in the United States for instance), though Indigenous scholars such as Jackie Huggins and Aileen Moreton-Robinson have directed much of their negative (and persuasive) critique of feminism towards the academy (Huggins, 1998; Moreton-Robinson, 2000). There have been retreats or returns to disciplines or origin (Curthoys, 2000), renewed commitments to scholarly projects informed by feminist theory though not bound by it or necessarily originating from it (Matthews, 1996) and depressing assessments of the limited impact of feminist scholarship on established disciplines such as history (Damousi, 1999). Feminist scholars who have ventured outside of the academy – into the media, for example – have expressed mixed feelings about the experience.…”

“…Those who have analysed the 'femocrat' phenomenon generally state that their influence has been over-stated or misunderstood (Watson, 1990;Eisenstein, 1996). depressing assessments of the limited impact of feminist scholarship on established disciplines such as history (Damousi, 1999). Feminist scholars who have ventured outside of the academy -into the media, for example -have expressed mixed feelings about the experience.…”

“…Those who have analysed the 'femocrat' phenomenon generally state that their influence has been over-stated or misunderstood (Watson, 1990;Eisenstein, 1996). depressing assessments of the limited impact of feminist scholarship on established disciplines such as history (Damousi, 1999 teaching a subject about which anyone can have an opinion. What is the point of reading through dense texts, conducting research and trying to formulate decent arguments about gender issues if it's the loudest, most publicly voiced opinion that gets to count?…”