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auswhn.bsky.social
Australian Women's History Network
@auswhn.bsky.social
1K followers 1.2K following 63 posts
~ https://www.auswhn.com.au/ ~ the Australian Women’s History Network (AWHN) promotes research, writing + advocacy in feminist, gender + women's history + publishes the peer-reviewed Lilith: A Feminist History Journal + #VIDAblog ~
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auswhn.bsky.social
On the 50th anniversary of the Dismissal, revisit the career and achievements of Elizabeth Reid, the world’s first advisor on women’s affairs advisor to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, at #VIDAblog.

Read more here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/revisit...
Book cover: Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution, edited by Michelle Arrow (NewSouth Publishing, 2023).
November 11, 2025 at 1:20 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
In our latest blog Margaret Allen reflects on an exhibition and research project exploring the academic working lives of women in South Australia since 1970. #UniversityofAdelaide #WiseandWonderfulWomen

Find it here: www.auswhn.com.au/blog/wise-an...
Dr Carol Bacchi and Professor Alison MacKinnon – History, c. 1988, University of Adelaide, Special Collections, Archives, Series 695, Item 951. Image via Special Collections and Archives. Professor Margaret Allen
September 30, 2025 at 7:13 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
In our latest blog, prominent LGBTQIA+ Rights Activist Bill Rutkin (OAM) and Contributing Editor Michael Stockwell explore how Queensland’s gay community flouted convention and defied the odds to hold the world’s longest running LGBTQIA+ event, the Queens Ball.

www.auswhn.com.au/blog/the-que...
Bambi Sheridan. Image via QNews. Dame Sybil Von Thorndyke (aka Laurie Dean). Photo from the personal collection of Bill Rutkin. The Queens Ball circa 1975. Image via QNews.
August 1, 2025 at 11:06 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
Many Australian Women's History Network members had a beautiful week in Townsville for the 2025 @austhistassoc.bsky.social Conference.

Highlights included the fantastic presentations in the AWHN stream, a plenary panel cultivating solidarity against academic precarity and our feminist dance party 👯‍♀️
A photograph of downtown Townsville, Queensland, featuring Ross Creek and views of Flinders Street on Wulgurukaba country.
July 4, 2025 at 7:00 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
NEW at #VIDAblog!

@clemloz.bsky.social adds to the "Colour" series, exploring the colour white and its links with the #tradwife movement and white supremacy.

Find out more ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/colour-...
An eighteenth-century milkmaid. Robert Dighton, Spring and Winter / Le Printemps et l’Hiver (1785-1786). Image via the British Museum. A 1950s housewife wearing a white apron, alongside a white fridge, with her daughter. Image via Wikimedia commons.
June 10, 2025 at 11:47 PM
auswhn.bsky.social
On the anniversary of Australia’s 1967 Referendum, revisit a #VIDAblog by Lucy Davies and Kate Laing.

For the Referendum's 50th anniversary, Davies and Laing highlighted the activism of Indigenous elder, Joyce Clague.

#NRW2025 #BridgingNowtoNext

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/indigen...
Badge – ‘Vote Yes for Aborigines’, 1967. Photographer: Jon Augier. Image courtesy of Museums Victoria.
May 27, 2025 at 12:34 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
In our latest blog Dr Cassandra Byrnes discusses Queensland’s historic use of the vilification of abortion as a political tool to support conservative values. #MyBodyMyChoice #ProChoice

Find it here: www.auswhn.com.au/blog/product...
Cassandra Byrnes is a historian that specialises in researching the gendered nature of reproductive rights and fertility control. Her past research examined reproduction regulation in Queensland in the mid-to-late twentieth century, illustrating how political, moral, and social control over contracepting bodies influenced broader attitudes regarding agency and autonomy. She researches and teaches Australian history, gender history, and histories of sexuality. Cassandra has published on the history of ‘gender’, the history of women’s higher education, and the family, household, and health in the nineteenth century. She was a National Library of Australia Summer Scholar and a Global Change Scholar at UQ, collaborating with peers in interdisciplinary networks. Front page of Brisbane’s now defunct afternoon paper ‘The Telegraph’ circa 1985. Image via Children by Choice website.
April 23, 2025 at 9:36 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
In our latest blog Dr Kate McAnelly explores the underpinnings of refrigerator mother theory and how it was incorrectly used to blame and vilify mothers as being the cause of their children's autism.

Find it here: www.auswhn.com.au/blog/unreal-...
Jean Gatlin and daughter Margaret Ellen. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Dr Kate McAnelly
March 18, 2025 at 1:55 PM
auswhn.bsky.social
In our latest blog VIDA editorial assistant and PhD candidate Michael Stockwell introduces a new series exploring historical and contemporary experiences of vilification through gender, sexual orientation and roles associated with them.

Fin it here: www.auswhn.com.au/blog/vilific...
Queer Straight Alliance Against Hate- DC Gay Pride Parade 2012. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Michael Stockwell: PhD candidate with the Centre for Heritage and Culture, and the School of Law and Justice at the University of Southern Queensland.
March 10, 2025 at 3:27 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
The Australian Women's History Network expresses dismay at the proposed cuts and redundancies impacting academic and professional staff at universities Australia-wide.

Read more ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/wp-content/u...
Australian Women's History Network logo
January 27, 2025 at 7:49 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
Our thanks to all the authors who contributed to #VIDAblog this year ✨

Check out our Top 10 for 2024!

Congratulations to #VIDAblog Managing Editor @paigedonaghy.bsky.social, whose “Premodern Gender’ – Rethinking Categories” series featured prominently!

Read more here ⬇️
auswhn.com.au/blog/
Top 10 for 2024 1. “Compiling an Oral History of Oral Contraceptives in Australia: It’s NOW or Never,” by Natasha Szuhan 2. “Regnant Queenship or Female Kingship? Gender, Power, and Legitimacy in Early Modern Europe,” by Tyler Horton 3. “Why should we challenge assumptions about second-wave feminism in Aotearoa New Zealand?” by Geena Carlisle 4. Series Introduction: “‘Premodern Gender’ – Rethinking Categories,” by Paige Donaghy 5. “‘Manly’ violence: rape, massacres, and white masculinity on the Queensland frontier,” by Zoe Smith 6. “Too much married: Bigamy and the Australian military,” by Alana Piper 7. “A Man-to-Man Whipping and a Promotion in Byzantium,” by Mark Masterson 8. “Our Best State Asset: Women, babies, and citizenship in World War I,” by Katherine Weiss 9. “A Cocktail of Academic Fervour and Dance Fever: My Experience of AHA 2024,” by Meg Graham 10. Series Introduction: “Gender, Biography & History,” by Malcolm Allbrook and Michelle Staff
December 20, 2024 at 2:15 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
Congratulations to Alana Piper on the launch of her new book, Yirranma Place: Stories of a #Darlinghurst Corner (NewSouth Publishing)!

Another one for the #holiday stockings!

Find out more in the latest #VIDAblog ⬇️

www.auswhn.com.au/blog/women-o...
Book cover: Alana Piper, Yirranma Place: Stories of a Darlinghurst Corner (NewSouth Publishing, 2024).
December 19, 2024 at 12:42 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
On #HumanRightsDay, we mark the end of the 2024 #16DaysOfActivism Against Gender-Based Violence.

The Australian Women's History Network reiterate our commitment to the fight against gender-based violence, with recommended readings.

Read the statement ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/wp-content/u...
Book cover: Alana Piper and Ana Stevenson, eds., Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2019). Book cover: Hannah McGlade, Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal Children and Human Rights (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012). Book cover: Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Our National Shame: Violence against Women (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2021). Book cover: Lisa Featherstone, Sexual Violence in Australia, 1970s –1980s: Rape and Child Sexual Abuse (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
December 10, 2024 at 5:58 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog where @senthorun.bsky.social discusses how pop culture stereotypes about homosexuality enable bureaucratic violence towards refugees.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/gay-eno...
THE REFUGEE ACTION COLLECTIVE OF VICTORIA’S 2012 VIGIL IN SOLIDARITY WITH TWO IRANIAN REFUGEES ON HUNGER STRIKE AT THE BROADMEADOWS IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTRE, MELBOURNE. PHOTOGRAPH BY TAKVER. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL COMMEMORATIVE STAMP, 1961-1986. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
December 9, 2024 at 6:47 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
Check out a new #VIDAblog from biographer Tessa Morris-Suzuki about the life of Ethel May Punshon.

Known to her friends as Monte, this extraordinary woman's 106-year life crossed many boundaries.

A great new book for the #Holiday stockings!

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/monte-p...
A Secretive Century: Monte Punshon’s Australia 1882-1989 (Melbourne University Publishing, 2024), by Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Monte Punshon c.1030s. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
December 8, 2024 at 4:11 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog about the the spirit of survival women demonstrated in the face of domestic violence at women’s shelters in Cold War Germany by @jecfree.bsky.social.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/writing...
FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, NOVEMBER 1989. PHOTOGRAPH BY RAPHAËL THIÉMARD. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. BERLIN WOMEN, 1972. PHOTOGRAPH BY RAINER MITTELSTÄDT. IMAGE VIA THE GERMAN FEDERAL ARCHIVES.
December 5, 2024 at 8:27 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog about the long history of domestic and family violence and its legal institutionalisation in early modern European courts by @dihall.bsky.social.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/domesti...
BARTHÉLÉMI HOPFER, PORTRAIT D’UNE FAMILLE STRASBOURGEOISE (C. 1660-1670). IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. A CABINET OF GRIEF: OR, THE FRENCH MIDWIFE’S MISERABLE MOAN FOR THE BARBAROUS MURTHER COMMITTED UPON THE BODY OF HER HUSBAND (LONDON, 1688). © ADAM MATTHEW DIGITAL LTD. FURTHER REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION.
December 4, 2024 at 8:38 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog about women’s experiences of militarised sexual abuse during the Asia-Pacific War by @veramackie.bsky.social.

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/grandmo...
MINIATURE REPLICA OF THE PEACE MONUMENT. PHOTOGRAPH BY VERA MACKIE. THE PEACE MONUMENT, SEOUL, SHOWING THE GRANDMOTHER’S ‘SHADOW’. PHOTOGRAPH BY VERA MACKIE.
December 3, 2024 at 9:48 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit Alana Piper's #VIDAblog about the history of financial abuse as a particular form of domestic violence, exploring how economics keeps women in violent situations.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/economi...
ROCKHAMPTON SUPREME COURT, C. 1890. IMAGE VIA QUEENSLAND STATE ARCHIVE. FEARFUL QUARRELS, AND BRUTAL VIOLENCE, ARE THE NATURAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE FREQUENT USE OF THE BOTTLE, PLATE VI FROM THE BOTTLE, GEORGE CRUICKSHANK, 1847. IMAGE VIA ONLINE ARCHIVE OF CALIFORNIA.
November 29, 2024 at 5:35 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog in which historian Susan Broomhall discusses emotional abuse through the story of a sixteenth-century French nun.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/psychic...
STANDING NUN, 1657, GESINA TER BORCH, WATERCOLOUR DRAWING. IMAGE VIA RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM. NO LONGER FACELESS OR INVISIBLE. STANDING AND SITTING FIGURES IN HABIT, JOHANNES BOSBOOM, 19TH CENTURY, PENCIL AND INK DRAWING, DETAIL. IMAGE VIA RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM.
November 28, 2024 at 8:00 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a #VIDAblog where @andykaladelfos.bsky.social examines the historical ability of the criminal justice system to respond to sexual abuse within the family.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/histori...
YOUNG WOMEN SPEAKING OUT ABOUT INCEST, KATH MCCANN, 1992. GIFT OF MEGALO ACCESS ARTS INC 1993, IMAGE VIA NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA COLLECTION. IS THERE LIFE AFTER INCEST?, CAROLE WILSON, 1988. IMAGE VIA STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA.
November 27, 2024 at 6:08 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit a blog by @tanyaevans.bsky.social in our #VIDAblog series exploring the role of family history in consciousness raising about domestic violence.

#16DaysofActivism

Read here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/fractur...
The cover to Tanya Evans's book, Fractured Families: Life on the Margins in Colonial NSW (NewSouth Publishing, 2015). ST VINCENT’S HOSPITAL, CIRCA 1900S. IMAGE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
November 26, 2024 at 7:00 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

To mark the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, revisit our #VIDAblog series about the history of gender violence in Australia.

Read @zorasimic.bsky.social's blog here ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au/blog/history...
A 2016 ART EXHIBITION TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HELD IN CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA. IMAGE COURTESY OF NAELA CHOHAN, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. STAMP OUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE BADGE, DONATED BY PETER STANLEY. IMAGE VIA MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY.
November 25, 2024 at 8:15 AM
auswhn.bsky.social
The Australian Women's History Network promotes research + writing in all fields of feminist, gender + women’s history, bringing scholars, students + professionals together to share ideas + resources 🚺⚧️

We're thrilled to join you on @bsky.app – give us a follow!

Find out more ⬇️
www.auswhn.com.au
Australian Women's History Network on purple and green geometric background.
November 25, 2024 at 12:55 AM