In the February 1934 edition of Das Blatt der Mutter, a monthly newspaper published by the Catholic Women’s Organisation (KFO) in the Archdiocese of Vienna, editor-in-chief Mina Wolfring gave a rapturous account of her visit to the offices of the National Organisation for Maternity and Childhood in Rome. Having been received personally by Benito Mussolini, she lavished praise on the dictator for elevating the protection of the family to the highest priority of the state: ‘‘mother and child are life, and life is the nation.’’  

Here, we can see the discomforting ambiguities which characterised the responses of Catholic women – in Austria, and elsewhere – to the rise of fascism in the 1930s. After decades of neglect, historians are recognising the centrality of the Church, and religion in general, to the story of interwar Europe. In the process, they are uncovering a story which is far more nuanced than a simple top-down narrative of pontiffs, prelates, and politicians. KFO publications such as Das Blatt der Mutter and Frauen-Briefe, written by and for women, offer a unique window into Catholic responses to the developing fascist ascendancy – and thereby into a much larger story of entanglement and cooperation.  

Turning to Fascism 

If many Catholics made what appears to be a Faustian bargain with the forces of fascism, they were certainly not alone. Fascist movements garnered widespread public support across much of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Faced with intense economic instability and political paralysis at home, as well as the sensationalised menace of Bolshevism emanating from the East, many turned to the authoritarian right for salvation. 

Despite the hypermasculine imagery and rhetoric associated with fascist politics, this appeal could also extend to women. Whether looking at Mussolini in Italy, or Dollfuss and Schuschnigg in Austria, the KFO championed these dictators as defenders of traditional order and the family.  

For example, one article from July 1933 presented Russia as an atheistic, ‘post-family’ dystopia. The author warned the ‘family-destroying elements’ (familienzerstörende Elemente) unleashed by the Russian Revolution of 1917 were threatening to erode the basis of Christian society in Austria. 

As in much conservative writing from this period, there is a strong tendency to tar all those on the left with the same brush. Viennese mothers attending demonstrations with small children in tow, for example, were scarcely better in the author’s eyes than the ‘brutalised’ (vertiert) women of the Soviet Union. 

In fact, for the columnists of the KFO, there seemed to be enemies advancing from all directions. The front page of the Österreichische Frauenzeitung from September 1936 issued a dire warning that the ‘Antichrist’ was on the march beneath the ‘red flag’ of Moscow. The Spanish Civil War (1936–39), which had broken out a few months prior, was seen by many European Catholics to pit Francisco Franco’s ‘righteous’ Nationalists against the murderously ‘anticlerical’ forces of the legitimate Republican government. 

The author paints a disturbingly vivid picture of the chaos: flames blazed, rivers of blood flowed, and devout Spaniards were butchered by the ‘agents’ (Sendlingen) of the Bolsheviks. In the face of this hostile encirclement, the only option for Austria was to unite with Italy and Germany in forming a ‘‘bulwark of Western Christendom.’’ 

Women at arms?

‘Mobilisation’ might not have meant taking part in an active civil war, as it did for many of their ‘sisters-in-arms’ in Spain, but members of the KFO considered themselves as participants in the same struggle against the forces of dissolution and disorder. As readers of its newspapers were perpetually reminded: every clean set of sheets, properly prepared meal, and loving-but-firm parental reprimand was a small victory won against the ‘Red Antichrist.’ 

In this ideological struggle, the KFO recognised that education (read: propaganda) would have a vital role to play. Its members were not only soldiers, but also educators and missionaries.

One letter written by a loyal reader, published in the December 1933 edition of Die Junge Mutter, lauded the educative influence (erzieherischen Einfluss) of the paper. Editor-in-chief, Mina Wolfring, was singled out for special praise, having overseen ‘‘true apostolic work at the grandest scale‘‘ (apostolische Arbeit im größten Format).  

Yet, far from simply preaching to the choir, the KFO sought to reach distinct ‘target audiences’ in subtly different ways. Poorer and less educated  women were believed by KFO members to be in dire need of practical advice and support, even if they did not necessarily adhere to Catholic dogma. These women were given free copies of Die Junge Mutter at meetings and support group sessions, in an effort to win them over to the cause. 

Such outreach was sponsored by the paper’s more affluent and educated subscribers – likely those already possessing a solid Catholic worldview (Weltanschauung) – who were encouraged to donate money where possible. The latter could also act as ‘Mustermütter’ (role models, or ‘template-mothers’), who set an example in the virtues of Christian motherhood. 

KFO and ‘women’s place’

Organisational and relational bonds between women were the driving force behind the Catholic women’s press. Despite their unabashed advocacy for a traditional model of ‘feminine domesticity’, KFO members straddled the line between the public and the private sphere. 

It was a tension they wrestled with in public. One front page headline from June 1932 summed it up crisply: ‘‘Political or non-political?’’ The fact that this question was debated frankly attests to the self-reflexivity of Catholic women in considering their own agency, and the place—guarding social and moral values from close to hearth and home—they envisaged for themselves in society. 

Yet, given that any participation in public life was ultimately subordinated to a woman’s ‘proper’ domestic duties, we can situate the Austrian Catholic women’s press within a broader, hostile backlash against the emancipatory (and therefore destabilising) promises of modernity. 

Historians of gender and sexuality are frequently left scratching their heads at such instances of “recently enfranchised women” lending their support to anti-feminist and anti-democratic political movements, with what seem like barely concealed ambitions of ‘turning back the clock.’

There is nothing intrinsically ‘fascistic’ in the frequent overtures to modesty (Schamhaftigkeit), responsibility (Verantwortungsbewusstsein), and other ‘traditional’ values which litter the pages of the KFO’s newspapers.

Yet, in the 1930s, all roads lead to Rome. The values and aspirations expressed in periodicals such as Das Blatt der Mutter and Frauen-Briefe undeniably harmonised with the deeply conservative moral and familial norms espoused by various fascist regimes across Europe. This shared cultural bedrock could often outweigh genuine ideological incompatibilities, including reservations vis-à-vis the use of political violence. 

Conclusion

Caught between the competing orbits of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, Austria’s own short-lived experiment with authoritarian rule – the self-consciously Catholic Ständestaat (corporatist state) of Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg – is often treated as a footnote to the eventual Anschluss with Germany. 

What this obscures is a lively battle in the years 1933-1938 for the hearts and mind (Denken and Fühlen) of the female population, in which overtures to the sanctity of the family and Christian values were channelled into support for fascist politics.   

In an era of self-professed ‘tradwives’, the resurgence of ‘traditionalist’ Catholicism, and ubiquitous talk of a new ‘culture war’, there is good reason to investigate the mutually constitutive relationship between right-wing political extremism and the often-performative embrace of ‘traditional’ family values.

Sifting through the largely forgotten pages of the Austrian Catholic women’s press is a way to converse with voices that have struggled to make themselves heard in the historical record. They deserve a fair hearing, although we might not like everything they have to tell us.  

Jesse Allen is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History at the University of Melbourne. His areas of interest focus on twentieth century Europe, including the Spanish Civil War and the history of Catholicism in the interwar years.

Who cooked in your family growing up? Chances are, it was your mum, or another maternal figure.

Home cooking, and housework more broadly, demonstrates how the concept of ‘women’s work,’ became embedded in Australian society, even as women entered the paid workforce en masse.

After the Second World War, when men returned to jobs that women had filled during the war, the ideal of a nuclear family with a breadwinning father and housewife mother was actively encouraged by government policy. A ‘family’ wage for men and tax deductions for dependent family members justified lower wages for women and made the nuclear model possible for more working class as well as middle class families.

The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine was one popular form of entertainment for those who were living or aspiring to the nuclear ideal. In Who Was that Woman? (2002) Susan Sheridan describes the Weekly’s imagined audience as a white, Anglo-Australian housewife with a breadwinning husband, and children. This imagined ‘everywoman’ ignored the diversity of its actual readership including working class, Indigenous and migrant women.

However, the content produced for this stereotyped reader does contain clues as to how the values and behaviours expected of women continue to divide domestic work along gender lines today.

Catering to the family: Husbands

The housewife’s main duty is in the title: to be a wife. She was supposed to provide nourishing meals for her working husband. Many recipes emphasised ‘man-sized portions’ for the head of the household. The husband’s preferences were always prioritised, as seen in a tip from 1946 suggesting wives ‘set breakfast tray and newspaper in a quiet spot for the man of the house.’ The husband’s relaxation was made possible by the wife preparing him breakfast and caring for the children elsewhere – taking the full load of domestic duties.

Maintaining a home for her husband was assumed to be more important than a woman’s professional ambitions. Women were expected—and, in professional contexts, often forced—to give up paid work outside the home after marriage, to dedicate their time to their husband and (future) children.

In reality, the percentage of Australian women in paid employment who were married was 33.8% in 1947, and grew to 38.3% by 1961. This sizable proportion of working women who were also married complicates the Weekly’s characterisation of its readers as full-time housewives. Within these figures, working class and migrant women were overrepresented, while Australian born middle class women were underrepresented. Despite the many women managing the double burden of paid and domestic work, all wives were expected to cook for their families.

Fathers were rarely depicted in domestic roles in the post-war Weekly. A 1961 ad for an electric frying pan shows a man cooking for himself, though he is clearly portrayed as a bachelor.

The next illustration shows a ‘home unit’ in which an aproned wife cooks for her husband, reaffirming the gendered nature of food preparation. The Sunbeam ad below is the only instance within the magazines I studied of a man cooking in a domestic setting.

However, over the postwar years, Australian society did expect fathers to be increasingly involved in family life, including in the kitchen. One recipe competition in 1955 had a category for ‘best entry submitted by a man in any section.’ The category suggested that men in the kitchen were common enough that there would be some entrants, but the clarification ‘in any section’ reveals they were not thought to be experienced cooks. The home kitchen remained a woman’s domain, and her husband was her primary client, rather than an equal partner.

Children, care, and food

The second recipient of women’s work in the kitchen was her children. The goal of raising healthy children with nutritious food was baked into the Weekly’s pages. Dieticians, doctors, and domestic economists were invoked as voices of authority to instruct the reader on how to improve her family’s health.

Energy, vitality, vitamins and minerals were not only displayed as positive aspects of nutritious food, but fear of deficiencies was used as a marketing tool. An ad for Horlick’s warned against ‘hidden hunger,’ implying that even when providing regular meals, a mother may be overlooking gaps in her children’s diets.

Naturally, in this intense period of consumerism, the solution was to buy a product; Horlick’s health drink, to be exact!

Self care?

When planning food for herself, a housewife was still supposed to prioritise her family. Following the late 1940s and early 1950s when shortages and rationing from the war continued to affect the nation’s diet, a woman’s focus when choosing food for herself was presumed to be how it affected her appearance.

Whereas nutritious foods and substantial ‘health’ drinks were marketed to women as providing their husbands and children with energy, women were expected to sustain their physically demanding housework tasks with tea and crackers. Lipton tea promised to cure ‘string bag blues’ and restore women’s ‘fight,’ while ads for Ryvita crackers explicitly focused on weight loss. Ryvita assured women that swapping ‘heavier breads’ for crackers, would help them to both ‘gain vitality’ and ‘lose weight.’ The blatant message across these examples was that women should restrict their diets, to appear physically attractive to men.

Mixed blessings: new technologies and old roles

While serving her family’s needs, a housewife was expected to get meals on the table in record time. Language about timesaving addressed housewives as consumers while reinforcing strict gender roles. From the late-nineteenth century until the interwar period, ‘domestic science’ values meant recipes generally focused on thrift and nutrition.

Then, as historian Lauren Samuelson shows, the rise in consumer culture and a growing middle class moved the focus to glamour and convenience foods. Less time in the kitchen was presented as an opportunity to take more time for pleasure. This ignored women’s competing responsibilities of childminding and other domestic duties, or paid work.

Ironically, much of the time women ‘saved’ was simply moved to another part of the day. Recipes for three course dinners ‘within the hour’ relied on most of the preparation being completed earlier, which would not have been particularly helpful for women working out of the home.

Physical-labour-saving technologies like mixers changed the nature of housework, without freeing women from the burden of completing these tasks. This is apparent in an ad for a pressure cooker in 1949. The illustration shows a mother and young daughter in the kitchen, reading; ‘you set the table mummy, I’ll do the Namco,’ implying that someone with no cooking experience could successfully operate the appliance.

The inexperienced person is notably represented by the daughter rather than the other adult in the house – the husband. In a similar way, a 1952 design suggestion for modern open kitchen shelving boasts it is ‘useful if there are children…it permits supervision of their meals while the mother is busy attending to other kitchen chores.’ These efficiency focused ads did not sell time-saving tools, but rather a dream of modern feminine perfection in which husbands were entirely absent.

The Australian Women’s Weekly and domestic labour today

Much has changed since the postwar peak of the breadwinner family model, and the gendered division of paid and unpaid labour is now less defined. However, research shows that Australian women continue to do significantly more unpaid housework and care work than their male partners.

The Weekly shows how the social expectations to demonstrate care for one’s husband and children through food, as well as the technologies that theoretically eased this process, combined to keep women cooking, even when they were winning bread as well as baking it.

Arwen Cropley graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History and Political Science and completing a concurrent diploma in French. She is particularly interested in the ways that social expectations and government policies affect women’s experiences of everyday life. Her research has included the history of public toilets in Melbourne, and how representations of domestic labour in The Australian Women’s Weekly magazines influenced domestic gender roles in the early postwar years.

Tell me, what might have been the most fashionable accessory a man might have in the late 16th century? Out of everything in the world, the last answer to the question would be syphilis. Yet that was exactly how Benvenuto Cellini, an acclaimed goldsmith and sculptor, presented it as in his autobiography dedicated to the heights of his artistic career. So, what exactly happened that made syphilis cool amongst certain male populations in early modern Italy?   

Syphilis makes its grand entrance in Italy 

Of course, the disease was not trendy when it was originally discovered. In fact, it was both socially and medically a death sentence. It was first observed in soldiers who fought in the French Invasion of Naples in the 1490’s, and was given the name of the French disease or morbus Gallicus by contemporary physicians. Its current name, syphilis, only appeared with physician Girolamo Francasto’s 1530 poem of the same name.  

The appearance of the French Disease also coincided with the belief that the turn of the 15th century would bring about the end of times. Large parts of Italy were experiencing famine, war, and various of natural disasters. Many people took the advent of the morbus Gallicus as another sign from God.  

A Ferrarese court physician wrote that the illness was sent by an angry God:  

We also see the Supreme Creator, now full of wrath against us for our dreadful sins, punishes us with this cruellest of ills, which has now spread everywhere not only through Italy but across almost the whole of Christendom.

The disease was also associated with the Italian loss of the French Invasion, casting the blame of the defeat onto so-called licentious and undisciplined soldiers. 

Dying Down

As the sixteenth the century progressed, and the second coming of Christ was nowhere to be seen, the stigma associated with the French disease also dissipated—at least for men.  

Historians have shown that, when important and prominent people increasingly began contracting the disease, this led to more research and treatments to combat the illness. As the scars of the French invasion faded, the mortality rates of the French disease also lessened.  

By the mid-16th century, historian Laura McGough argues that: “for men, acquisition of the French disease could serve as a badge of honour, indicating success on the sexual battlefield,” whereas women, especially the ‘unchaste’ and prostitutes, were blamed for its spread. 

One of the most explicit sources of the French disease as a positive masculine attribute appears in Cellini’s biography.  

Cellini and his Vita

Cellini dedicated his Vita to two things: honour and glory. It was during this time that Giorgio Vasari, a fellow artist who worked for the Medici court, had created his Vitae, that detailed the lives of the greatest Italian artists dead and alive, ranging from Michelangelo to Da Vinci. Cellini was notably absent.  

Thus, Cellini decided to pen his own memoir to glorify his legacy and establish himself as one of the greats. His autobiography not only included his artistic process and interactions with his patrons of the Papal and Ferrarese courts, but also tales of murder, assault, and of course, his contraction of the ‘French disease’.  

Many of Cellini’s accounts seem baffling to a modern audience. Yet, in context, his violent actions might have established him as a man defending his honour to his contemporaries, such was the times. It was also in these discussions that he admitted to contracting the morbus Gallicus. 

Cellini began his recollection with a confession:  

It was true indeed that I had got the sickness. 

The tone of the statement in English seems regretful, yet, in its original Italian, Cellini used guadagnare, meaning ‘to gain’ in Italian— as if contracting the morbus Gallicus was some sort of achievement.  

He claimed that he: “caught it from that fine young servant-girl whom I was keeping when my house was robbed,” where it lay dormant, until the symptoms flared up four months later.  

Yet. I believe it was more likely that he had caught the illness before, in a milder form. After sleeping with the servant girl of a prostitute named Faustina, Cellini experienced a mysterious illness that blessed him with a heinous headache and a mystery boil on his left arm.

By this time, the French disease had already embedded itself into Italian society. Cellini had recently completed a commission for Maestro Giacomo da Carpi, a doctor who made his wealth treating “the most desperate cases of the so-called French disease.”  

Luckily for Cellini, his apprentice at the time was the son of the cardinal’s physician.  His student’s father, upon seeing Cellini’s physical state, cried: “O traitor of a child, you’ve ruined me; how can I venture now into the Cardinal’s presence?” Here, Cellini insisted that it couldn’t have possibly been the French disease: the girl was definitely a virgin.

Despite the physician’s horror, Cellini himself seemed to care less about the latest infection, sardonically commenting that “in Rome this kind of illness is very partial to the priests, and especially to the richest of them.” 

Cellini’s account seems to follow McGough’s consensus: that contracting venereal disease was evidence of sexual prowess. In both instances, Cellini commented on the youth and attractiveness of the girls he had slept with.

It should also be noted, as historians have suggested, that “social status and sexual desirability were not strictly differentiated but echoed and amplified each other” during this time.  

Cellini’s ‘cool’ disease 

For Cellini, the contraction of the French disease could just be another aspect of his mythos that showcased his masculine prowess alongside his talents as an artist. In the context of Renaissance Italian culture, Cellini’s views on manhood and artistry were inherently tied together: his ability to mould and crave bronze and marble could be equated with his power over others, in wit, violence and sexuality.

His encounter with morbus Gallicus was just the physical evidence.

Ka Ying (Kelly) Liu is is an honours student in art history at the University of Melbourne. Her focus of study is in early modern and 18th century European art, particularly in relations to self-fashioning and the politics of representation. Her thesis is about the anatomical Venus, and how Enlightenment ideals impacted medical representations of women.

Little Lon’s reputation as a red-light district has always captured the imaginations of Melbournians. Thus, its salacious nature always seems to become a selling point for bars and walking tours. The Little Lon Distilling Company even named a gin ‘Miss Yoko’ in honour of a Chinese sex worker, ‘Yokohama’, who operated from the current day site in 1920. The website crudely suggests in response to the drink made in her ‘honour’ she might have said:

Honour all good, but if you want Little Miss Yoko, first you must pay.

This marketing ploy made me reflect on the way everyday people engage with the spaces of the past and how history can be exploited. So, when tasked with an undergraduate project which focused on public history, the history of sex work in Little Lon appealed to me. My project focused on Little Lon because, while ‘prostitution’ was not technically illegal, I was interested in the ways that policing potentially explained the presence of sex work in particular urban spaces. 

I wanted to make an art piece that could sit in a public space, such as a bar, and engage a public audience. To do this I created a series of screen prints to be viewed separately and layered in a single piece of artwork. The layered nature of the artwork was a practical method I hoped would require the audience to reflect on the different forces that exert themselves on this history and how they obscure our ability to interact with it.  

Keeping Vice Out of Sight: Policing Sex Work into Little Lon 

The first layer of the artwork sought to articulate how sex work was policed through charging women with ‘vagrancy’. This tactic sought to control the movements of sex workers, among others, and explains their presence in Little Lon.

The screenprint is composed of The City of Melbourne’s Detailed Plan no.1019 and historians’ Barbara Minchinton and Sarah Hayes’ graphs of hotels, known brothels and landlords known to rent to sex workers in 1881, and 1896.  

The consolidation of brothels in Little Lon between 1881 and 1896 can be explained by two conflicting beliefs of the time. Firstly, that men were entitled to sex work, and secondly, that sex work, a result of woman’s inherent propensity for vice, was both dangerous and ‘contagious’ and, as such, should be policed and contained. Public discourse of the time articulated these anxieties through the rhetoric of “respectable society” and concerned itself with the visibility of sin in the street.  

The role of the police was to control the movement of sex workers by corralling them into the less visible back streets of Melbourne, including Little Lon. Indeed, the Victorian Police Guide, written by Sandhurst Senior Constable J. Barry, explicitly stated that:

Prostitutes and keepers of brothels … are not generally interfered with … but on no account should they be allowed to reside in localities inhabited by respectable people.

In 1880 a series of brothel closures along Stephen (Exhibition) Street (but not in Little Lon) in advance of the Melbourne International Exhibition, reveals the constructed nature of the presence of sex work in Little Lon. The continued presence of high-end or ‘flash’ brothels in the front facing properties of Lonsdale Street during this time also reveals the classist nature of policing too. 

Imagining Little Lon: Sensationalising Melbourne’s ‘slums’ 

As sex work consolidated in Little Lon, so did Little Lon’s reputation as a slum. This reputation explained the presence of sex work in Little Lon to respectable society and, in turn, justified the policing of the district. Little Lon’s reputation was re-enforced in newspaper articles written by men who rose to fame by writing exposés on the ‘back slums’ of Melbourne.

This was a place which the prominent writer Marcus Clark called ‘Lower Bohemia’. Clarke was aided by the police as he entered ‘Lower Bohemia’ and took his readers on a journey:

Dante like through a real inferno where rags, and poverty, and drunkenness and crime and misery all huddle together.

The sensationalist tone of his journalism worked to sustain a public perception of Little Lon and reinforce a false dichotomy between civility and sin. The partnership between police and journalists further reveals the willingness of the police to view sex work within the circular logic that linked women, poverty, prostitution and pollution.  

The next three screen prints use artefacts from the 1987 and 2003 archaeological digs and discuss the policing of sex work within the bounds of Little Lon. This policing similarly focused on controlling the movement and visibility of sex work along classed lines of respectability.  

These artefacts include two oyster shells, a champagne bottle (commonly found in ‘flash’ brothels) and a beer bottle—the most common object excavated from Little Lon. These objects tell a story of class distinction within the trade of sex work.

Respectability politics were articulated in the legal jargon of ‘orderly’ versus “disorderly” houses or behaviour, which ultimately let brothels with high-end clientele operate with relative reprieve.  

Disorderly Drinking: Sex Work, Class and Policing 

Sex workers, whose practices fitted within the broader working-class culture of drinking and socialising in cramped quarters and back lanes, were more vulnerable to police harassment and surveillance. Police officers patrolled a ‘beat’ in which they would walk specific routes through Little Lon. This system more readily affected sex workers who operated in visible spaces such as gambling dens, hotels and on the street. 

They were charged with ‘Public Nuisance’ or ‘Drunk and Disorderly’ conduct. In overcrowded areas where people typically socialised, drank and danced in the street, police surveillance and the looming threat of such charges became an unavoidable reality for some in Little Lon.

The champagne and beer bottle represent the rituals of solicitation to which alcohol was integral, but the beer bottle relates to the culture which working-class sex workers operated in.  

Conversely, ’flash’ brothels catered towards wealthy clientele and styled their services, rooms and dress in accordance with Western European gender, race and class ideals. We can imagine the oysters and the champagne as actors in a performance of these sexual fantasies. This performance attracted wealthy clientele and contributed to an ‘orderly’ reputation, both of which mitigated police surveillance.  

The size of  ‘flash’ brothels, large enough for dining rooms, kitchens and bedrooms, contrasts the cramped confines of lower-classed brothels. ‘Flash’ brothels also tended to occupy front facing properties on Lonsdale Street, at the border of Little Lon. In a dismissed case against the infamous Madame Brussels, a magistrate remarked: 

 Do you think Melbourne would be improved if a large street like that [Lonsdale] were filled with Syrians, Hindus and Chinese, and the usual draggle-tailed crowd were there?

Thus, in Little Lon it seems that the maintenance of a Western European ideal, or at least its performance, was preferred by police and authorities.  

Public History and Sex Work 

Today sex work in Victoria, after becoming criminalised, was decriminalised in 2022/3. In Victoria, as in other places such as New Zealand, decriminalisation can has had a positive effect on interactions between sex workers and police. The removal of the threat of arrest, unlike in the nineteenth century, has improved sex workers access to the justice system.

This includes better rights when dealing with brothel keepers and higher rates of reporting victimisation, including against police officers. However, the current day dynamic between the police and sex workers still mirrors that of the nineteenth century.

Sex workers who work outside continue to face higher levels of harassment and criminalisation, this is the same for queer and, especially, trans sex workers. These groups, although not mutually exclusive, have long histories with both the over policing of their actions and the under-policing of their reports which has led to a continued district of the police.  

It was fulfilling to work in a creative medium as the focus on a visual representation encouraged me to highlight the ways power inscribed itself onto behaviour and space in Little Lon. This focus revealed how policing shaped the movement and behaviour of sex work, concentrating it in Little Lon by policing low-class sex workers into the back lanes of Little Lon while allowing more “Flash Brothels” to operate under the guise of “order” and refinement.

Policing contributed to the rhetoric of slumdom, a label designed to justify control and born from the same colonial ideals of class, gender, and race that structured the behaviour of sex workers. Hopefully the artwork encourages people to think about how policing inscribed itself onto and obscured the nature of sex work in the past and reframes how people think about sex work today. 

Pippa McEwen is completing her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History at The University of Melbourne. Her area of interest is in the histories of sex and sexuality. She is currently researching a thesis on women’s refuges in Melbourne, specifically in relation to welfare, gender and sexuality. All artworks reproduced in this blog are copyright of Pippa McEwen.

How can the life and the impact of one controversial activist be condensed into a short history? How do we evaluate her influence on feminism and social memory? Our collective memory of the American feminist movement has become deplorably homogenous and it has been compressed into a series of ‘waves’ of activism, that forgot the small but significant moments of Herstory.   

My project sought to question the historical narrative surrounding the (in)famous anti-pornography feminist, Andrea Dworkin, and evaluate why Herstory is so central in American feminist history. 

I evaluated what made her voice that little bit louder, by asking the question: was it Dworkin’s ability to effortlessly embody the Other (be unconventional to traditional femininity) or her polarising descriptions of intimacy, that propelled her popularity? Here, I summarise my findings about the originality of Dworkin’s anti-porn thesis and the consequential influence she had on the Women Against Pornography movement.  

Pornography wars  

Before examining Dworkin’s anti-pornography theories, it is important to contextualise her feminist trajectory. The American Pornography Wars, also known as the Feminist Sex Wars, took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, marking intense divisions between pro- and anti-pornography feminists. 

The American social landscape was alight with opposition to the government, feminism was fracturing, and contention was growing. Pornography itself was more accessible than it had ever been, even being labelled the Golden Age of Porn. With the popularity of Playboy and the normalisation of video porn with the likes of Deep Throat, the tension was ripe for anti-pornography activists to emerge.  

In the aptly named PorNO side, Dworkin stood at the frontlines demanding the legal banning of pornography and sex work for the liberty of all women, believing that porn was directly increasing rates of violence against women and rape. 

In the pro-pornography camp, PornYes supporters deeply opposed Dworkin’s claim that porn oppressed women, instead declaring that pornography was empowering for women to participate in and watch, as it liberated their sexual desire and personhood. 

Prior to her central role in these debates, Dworkin was a prominent voice within the Radical Cultural Feminist (RCF) movement of the 1960s, which critiqued patriarchy, class, and economic structures. This framework shaped her interpretation of pornography as a systemic tool “that conditioned, trained, educated, and inspired men to despise women, to use women, and to hurt women”.  

Dworkin later co-founded New York Women Against Pornography (WAP) (1977–85), arguing that pornography socialised men to demean and harm women. Under her influence, WAP advocated for legal restrictions on pornography, framing it as a violation of women’s civil rights. 

Dworkin on sex and pornography 

Dworkin wrote a plethora of publications in her life, one of these being a book titled Intercourse: In A Man-Made World. In this book Dworkin outlines her thesis that pornography “happens to women”, that the production, the purveying, and the purchasing of porn constituted direct acts of violence to all women.  

Intercourse is an imperative source of anti-pornography literature as it invites readers to become uncomfortable with even the most instinctual aspects of sexual intimacy, making them consider the power dynamic, even the inherent violence, at play in their own experiences. In Intercourse, Dworkin wrote:  

…his thrusting into her is taken to be her capitulation to him as a conqueror; it is a physical surrender of herself to him; he occupies and rules her, expresses his elemental dominance over her, by his possession of her in the fuck.   

Violence against women and the issue of sex 

Dworkin’s inflammatory approach to describing sexual relationships, as exampled above, was an illustrative method of repackaging existing RCF issues of patriarchal imbalances, while also implying her own agenda – that porn, as a category, is a form of a violence against women. Dworkin did not claim to have invented this idea that pornography equals violence against women.  

In fact, even before Dworkin’s fame, the phrase “pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice”, was favoured by anti-pornographers in the late 1960s, summarily capitulating this belief that erotic content that displayed women in constant submission and in brutalising sexual acts, did result in a heightened likelihood for sexual assault.  

Dworkin deliberated that the patriarchal subjugation of American women was a result of this violence, and examined how pornography inspires men (and women) to reinforce a male-dominated hierarchy of society. Through pornography, according to Dworkin, women learn to eroticize images of their own subordination. It was Dworkin’s belief that patriarchy and porn were inextricably linked. 

This amounted to a dog whistle to Radical Cultural Feminists, who were already deeply entrenched in the call to dismantle the patriarchy, to also join the anti-pornography movement. Once again, this was not an original theory, however, Dworkin’s inflammatory approach to describing the role that patriarchy played in porn, is what catapulted her voice and infamous image.  

Sex and civil rights 

At the core of Dworkin’s speeches, rallies, books, and manifestos, she approached women’s sexual degradation in pornography as a civil rights violation. She claimed that women’s stake to equality was genuinely hindered by the existence of erotic material, so much so, she demanded that this injustice was only mendable through a legislative action. 

Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women’s Equality was a relatively short book by Andrea Dworkin, and close friend and fellow radical feminist, Catharine MacKinnon. Written towards the end of the pornography wars, it was aimed at audiences familiar with the anti-pornography movement but unsure of the legal approach to ban porn.  

Despite Dworkin’s beloved status within the anti-porn movement, she was not always agreed with, not initially at least. WAP had no desire in pursuing legislative action for the banning of pornography before Dworkin and MacKinnon took to popularity. Eventually, WAP rallied around the MacKinnon-Dworkin battle.

As the battle to convince American citizens to boycott porn proved fruitless, WAP came to believe that legislative limitations on porn would be the only way to inhibit its dissemination. This would in turn improve the condition of women, and thus they entered a new era of the anti-pornography movement. 

Dworkin’s work in this field of civil rights is arguably her most influential contribution to WAP, however, her construction of this argument was greatly aided by the influence of MacKinnon. Without Dworkin and admittedly, MacKinnon, the debate over legislatively banning pornography might not exist, and the fight certainly would not look the way it does today without them.  

Dworkin today 

Reflecting on the present, Dworkin is still relevant, and her ideas continue to appeal to some feminists. For example, here in Australia, Teach Us Consent founder, Chantel Contos, quotes Dworkin in an interview to the Guardian, saying: “I think it’s a shame that Dworkin fell out of fashion,” referring to Dworkin’s controversial pornography ideologies. 

Pornography has innovated well beyond Andrea Dworkin’s time. The forms of erotic content and access to sex work is far more reachable now than it was then, and attitudes around discussing the potential effects of pornography are far more liberal, even Netflix documentaries are joining the discourse. 

Dworkin’s activism was polemical and theoretical, meaning her historical legacy is as complex as she is. During her life, she recognised that she wanted to shock people, she wanted to be polarising, and to be acknowledged as such. “My written work”, she said, “is not for a cowardly or passive or stupid reader”.  

I didn’t start my research trying to convince readers that that Dworkin was right or that she was wrong, just that she was largely influential in history, perhaps in your own life. Overall, it is impossible reach neat conclusions about Andrea Dworkin. Her influence to the anti-pornography movement is immeasurable and no one can truly deny that she embodied every aspect of PorNO during her plight against the sex work industry.  

Chloe Matthews is a recent graduate from the University of Melbourne’s Bachelor of Arts, History and Gender Studies program.  Chloe is particularly interested in exploring the experiences of women’s sexuality and sexual expression through time. Using manifestos and declarations of women to piece together the turbulent history of women’s pleasure, desire, and sex.

In 1997 online column The Drudge Report broke the news that United States President Bill Clinton had been having an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, kickstarting a two-year long political scandal that left few of its players unscathed.

Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was decried as a ‘fascist pig’ overly invested in the President’s private life for his extensive investigation into whether Clinton had had an affair and lied about it under oath.  

Whistleblower Linda Tripp was cast as a villain, seen to have betrayed former friend Lewinsky by secretly taping their conversations about the affair and supplying them to Starr. Even Clinton, despite his almost miraculous ability to rehabilitate his public image, was impeached by the House of Representatives, only narrowly avoiding a full conviction when the Senate acquitted him on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. 

However, as feminist author Andrea Dworkin had predicted in 1998, no one was more ‘destroyed’ by the scandal than Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky was relentlessly critiqued and mocked by all spheres of media, but nowhere more than in the comedy world, to which she was dsecribed as ‘like a gift from the gods’.  

Lewinsky, the media, and SNL 

My research considered how Lewinsky was depicted on the late-night sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live. Ever since Chevy Chase debuted his impression of President Gerald Ford in 1975, satirizing politics and current events has remained a cornerstone of SNL’s brand. By the 1990s, SNL had grown from its counter-cultural origins to become ‘comedy’s most enduring institution’. 

SNL’s jokes about Lewinsky were not unique within the broader media narrative surrounding her at the time. Because Lewinsky was subject to an immunity deal that largely restricted her ability to discuss the affair publicly, perceptions of her were primarily shaped by the findings of the Starr Report.

Starr’s investigation exposed deeply intimate sexual details of the affair to the public, with the New Yorker likening it to ‘[forced] verbal intercouse‘, while the Washington Post called it ‘history’s first simultaneous reading of smut’. 

The publicization of these details led to Lewinsky being characterised as naïve and sex-obsessed, a ‘bimbo’ who was, according to Vanity Fair, ‘sleeping her way to the bottom of the Revlon empire’. Lewinsky’s intelligence was a frequent SNL target; one sketch depicted Lewinsky (Molly Shannon) as clueless to Linda Tripp’s (John Goodman) obvious attempts to get Lewinsky to discuss her ‘numerous sexual trysts’ with Clinton on tape.

In a similar sketch depicting Tripp recording a phone conversation with Lewinsky, Lewinsky’s appearance and weight were mocked. ‘I don’t care about being beautiful,’ Lewinsky tells Tripp, whilst both eat copious amounts of junk food. ‘What I care about is being thin’. 

SNL did not create this narrative. I focused on SNL’s take on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal not because it was particularly ground-breaking, but because SNL’s position as a cultural juggernaut made its satire wider-reaching and more enduring than many of its contemporaries. Non-traditional mediums were becoming increasingly competitive during this time, and broadcast media, while still the dominant face of the American media landscape, was adopting an ‘infotainment’ approach in response. 

SNL’s subversive roots and history of political parody allowed it to capitalize on this market shift as the line between news and entertainment blurred. With an all-star cast and a few successful films that originated as sketches, the 90s were a golden age for SNL. 

SNL reinforced both negative and positive cultural attitudes towards the scandal. For Clinton, SNL’s initial lampooning quickly gave way to a far more ‘affectionate’ depiction of him as America’s ‘adolescent boy-king’. This mirrored the shift in public moods from ‘outrage’ over Clinton’s lying about the affair, to disapproval over attempts to impeach him for a seemingly private matter. This empathetic approach did not, for the most part, extend to Lewinsky. 

SNL, female sexuality, and sexism 

On SNL, Lewinsky (Molly Shannon) seemed barely aware of the political ramifications of the affair. ‘I just kept having sex with him,’ Lewinsky described in a Weekend Update segment, ‘a lot of sex’, before bursting into inappropriately-timed laughter.

Though SNL was explicitly critical of Lewinsky for lying under oath and holding up the investigations, the implicit message was that she should also be equally remorseful for exercising her sexuality so freely. Lewinsky’s choice to sleep with a married man — the President, no less — was seen to threaten the nuclear family on a national scale. 

By the late 90s, there was growing backlash to the successes of ‘second wave’ feminism in the United States. There were concerns that women had gained too much power in the workplace, in politics, and in their relationships.  

Lewinsky exemplified fears that women’s sexual liberation had gone ‘too far’. As Lewinsky explained in a 1998 cold open: ‘It’s called the nineties’; ‘It’s not like we were going to get married or anything!’ 

Most media outlets were unable to include Lewinsky’s perspective due to the terms of her immunity deal. This was perhaps convenient, as many journalists and editors seemed more interested in crafting a narrative based on stereotypes and speculation than investigating who Lewinsky actually was.

Here, SNL’s coverage was different in that Lewinsky herself was briefly included. In 1999, Lewinsky appeared in two sketches. Though not as explicitly disparaging as its earlier coverage, these sketches also did not try to rectify any negative characterisations SNL had made of Lewinsky in the past. 

Both sketches tied Lewinsky’s identity to her relationship with Clinton and the sexual acts she had performed during their time together (acts which had been publicized against her will by the Starr Report). There was little effort to interrogate who Lewinsky was outside of the parameters of this relationship.

In the oral history Live From New York (2002), former SNL writer Jim Downey revealed that he wrote several far more critical sketches for Lewinsky that didn’t air, including one where she would ‘[win] the presidential kneepads’. 

One sketch depicted Lewinsky as married to Clinton in a dream he had about his life post-presidency. He other saw Lewinsky co-star on the recurring The Ladies Man sketch with Tim Meadows, where she answered questions from callers about phone sex and relationships at work.

Writer Tom Shales called these appearances a ‘protracted romp’ on ‘Slutterday Night Live’, whilst journalist Maureen Dowd described Lewinsky as ‘indefatigably exhibitionistic’. Comments like these, whilst superficially criticizing Lewinsky for ‘taking advantage’ of her celebrity, exposed a deeper culture of misogyny that sought to punish Lewinsky for having agency over her sexuality. 

Lewinsky’s attempts to take control of the media narrative, whether through her SNL appearances, her famous interview with Barabara Walters, or her authorised biography, were willfully misconstrued as cash grabs and attempts to extend her fame. 

Lewinsky’s legacy  

In recent years, Lewinsky has been significantly more successful at reorienting public opinion of herself. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, greater emphasis has been placed on the power imbalance inherent to Clinton’s relationship with Lewinsky, and the unfair ways in which the public overlooked this questionably consensual affair to place significantly more blame on Lewinsky for her role in it. 

Lewinsky’s forays back into the public eye — including writing several articles for Vanity Fair, giving a TED talk, and hosting a podcast — and her anti-bullying activism have sparked a reassessment of Lewinsky’s role in the scandal. Much has been written about Lewinsky’s mistreatment by the media, particularly by comedians.  

Some have publicly apologised for targeting Lewinsky, including then-SNL head writer Adam McKay, who acknowledged that ‘[the] whole period plays much, much darker’ in hindsight. However, despite this shift, jokes about Lewinsky remain in the public consciousness.

Though they may not have been as widely satirised as she was, Lewinsky has publicly spoken at length about how many other women have been subject to online harassment campaigns since she was ‘patient zero’ back in 1997. 

Conclusion

As historian Andrea Friedman discusses in her 2021 essay ‘The Price of Shame’ , the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal is difficult for historians to analyse because it is still ‘living’ history. Lewinsky has recently recounted her own previous interpretations of her relationship with Clinton as being completely consensual. 

 SNL’s comedy has increasingly bled into real-life political coverage in the last two decades. The question becomes: did individuals who witnessed the scandal back in 1997 have their perceptions of Lewinsky shaped by the comedic depictions they saw on SNL?

In spite of its subversive image, SNL promoted a narrative of Lewinsky and the scandal that was largely synonymous with the one pushed by traditional media. While Clinton was empathized with, seen as a victim of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy‘ to penalize him for a private affair, Lewinsky’s own victim status – both of a relationship with a significant power-differential and a media maelstrom – was not recognized. 

Mia Ruddock is an undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne in her final semester, studying a Bachelor of Arts and majoring in History and Politics and International Studies. Her main area of research has been American politics and  history, with a particular focus on the intersections between modern day politics and culture, and historical developments of the 20th century.

As the Second World War raged, and tens of thousands of men shipped off to serve overseas, Australia faced a growing crisis on its homefront: who would feed the nation and supply its troops?

This task would fall to the brave and trailblazing women of the Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA). Land Girls were armed not with rifles, but with rakes and shovels.

Their story survives most vividly through the pages of the Queensland Land Army Gazette, a monthly newspaper distributed among AWLA members between 1942 and 1945. Preserved today by the State Library of Queensland, the Gazette offers a window into the daily lives of AWLA members, as well as the priorities of the Manpower Directorate that mediated its contents.

The AWLA and Recruitment

In early 1942, the Manpower Directorate was created to oversee and manage Australia’s labour resources. Soon, most women, including those married with children, were mobilised for the war effort.

To counteract the growing shortage of farmers and rural labourers, the Australian Women’s Land Army was established in July 1942.

The AWLA was often referred to as Australia’s ‘fourth service,’ despite being an ‘entirely civilian operation’. This distinction would later prove important to the AWLA’s postwar status. The nickname nevertheless likened the AWLA to other women’s auxiliary services operating during the war: WANS (National Service), WAAAFS (Air Force), and AWAS (Army Service).

AWLA recruitment began with newspaper articles, billboards and posters designed to encourage young women to enrol. Land Army posters often depicted idealised countryside scenes and enticing captions (Fig. 1).

As the war worsened and ‘patriotic fervour’ seeped into the homefront, many women flocked to AWLA Headquarters, eager ‘to do their bit’ and join.

Historians note how the Land Army girls ‘came from all walks of life’. Before the war, some worked as typists, some in department stores or factories, and others never at all.

It is a common misconception that all Land Girls came from White Australian backgrounds. While the extract numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women who joined are unknown, later recollections suggest that many worked the land ‘outside the structure of the AWLA’. One Aboriginal Land Girl, Elvie Hutchinson, recalls that she ‘only’ met two other Aboriginal Land Girls whilst stationed in Queensland.

Many Aboriginal women were already ‘engaged in farm work as a second job or as part-time labour’, because of children and housework responsibilities, contributing to familial and community sustenance on the homefront.

By July 1945, there were over 3,000 women in the AWLA, with more still enrolled in seasonal work. This news was ‘rejoice[d]’ in the Gazette, with the Duchess of Gloucester writing that while membership ‘had not reached a spectacular figure,’ the small but mighty force of the AWLA had aided Australia ‘very materially’ in its wartime commitments.

The Land Army Gazette

The Land Army Gazette was created in 1943 to help boost morale and ‘allay’ members’ feelings of isolation. Framed from the first issue as the girls’ ‘own paper’, it encouraged submissions from AWLA members – letters, poetry, and the ‘latest parody’.

However, the Gazette also functioned in an official capacity – communicating AWLA messages, news and information directly to members.

This provides an interesting point of tension. Despite supposedly belonging to the Land Girls, the Gazette was a ‘highly mediated’ document, with the Manpower Directorate approving the contents and messaging of each issue.

It is likely that the Manpower Directorate viewed this paper as a platform to ‘express their ambitions for how AWLA members should behave’ and ‘understand their role in the war effort.’

Working the land

Far from the glamourous ‘open-air life’ portrayed in recruitment posters, the working conditions and labour in the AWLA were tough, especially in the beginning. Initially, many Land Girls faced issues in attaining proper uniforms and had to rely on clothing they brought with them. Uniform delays led to practical and safety issues, with Land Girls experiencing sickness, fatigue and injury.

Historian Sue Hardisty argues that such delays resulted from the ‘low value placed on women’s work’ and prioritisation of other auxiliary services by the Manpower Directorate. Eventually, working conditions improved and full uniforms were distributed amongst all AWLA members – the news of which was celebrated in the Gazette’s third issue.

Uniforms provided the girls with a pride of ‘belonging’ to the AWLA, as well as public recognition and respect (see Fig. 2).

Kath Finch, an AWLA member based in Western Australia,  recalled:

I was awfully thrilled when my uniform came…I go to town all decked in khaki and feel very proud of myself.

However, these uniforms were also used by the Manpower Directorate ‘as justification to hold AWLA members to stricter standards,’ reinforcing the ‘illusion’ that they were an officially recognised auxiliary service.

In the Gazette, girls were instructed to ‘live up to the standard [their] uniform sets.’ They were reminded that the ‘good name of the Land Army’ rested upon their behaviour.

Such reminders reflected wartime anxieties about single women’s newfound economic, social and sexual freedom in Australia. Janet Wakefield, a Land Girl stationed in New South Wales, referred to the ‘moral climate surrounding sexuality’ throughout the war as ‘practically puritan.’

Women’s wartime freedom was therefore ‘doubled edged’ and often intruded upon ‘their civil liberties.’

However, after adjusting to AWLA life, many Land Girls wrote to the Gazette about how much they were enjoying their interesting work (e.g. Fig. 3). These letters were compiled into a regular column titled ‘Our Mail Bag.’

The Gazette also included a ‘Tributes from Employers’ section to encourage the Land Girls in their work and recognise their achievements.

Despite this, some Land Girls did not enjoy their work or find meaning within their positions. These experiences largely went unreported by the Gazette, reflecting its purpose as a propaganda outlet rather than a journalistic endeavour.

Friendships and Fundraisers

Although Land Girls were spread across the country, the Gazette fostered a unique sense of community and solidarity among the AWLA.

In its ‘Social Notes’ column, the Gazette frequently chronicled AWLA birthdays, fundraisers, sports days, ‘pen friend’ notices, dances with servicemen, and even romances.

This sense of community was crucial. Many girls experienced homesickness or grief whilst stationed in camps, and the friendships they formed likely carried them through the hardships and loss of wartime.

Disbanded and Disillusioned

In the Gazette’s final issue, the President of the ALWA Welfare Committee, Jessie E. Farmer wrote:

I know that when the history of the World War is written the work of the AWLA will not be forgotten, and due tribute paid to you all.

Unfortunately for the AWLA girls, this was not the case.

When the war ended in September 1945, Land Girls were expected to ‘make way for the men whose places they took,’ and many were dismissed from their posts. Heartfelt farewell messages appeared in the Gazette’s final issue, with AWLA leadership expressing their appreciation and best wishes.

By December 1945, the AWLA had officially disbanded.

However, despite the AWLA’s status as Australia’s unofficial ‘fourth auxiliary’ service, Land Girls were denied the benefits afforded to the other Women’s Services. The Government declared that as a civilian operation, ‘members of the Land Army could not be placed upon the same footing as members of the Services.’

Peggy Hull, a Land Girl who had worked in New South Wales, wrote to her father about her disappointment:

You can imagine how all the girls are feeling about getting out with not even a bean & every day we hear of WAAAFS & AWAS with £50 or £100 deferred pay.

Medals and Marches

For over forty years, the AWLA was barred from marching in the Sydney and Melbourne Anzac Day parades. Many Land Girls preferred to host their own intimate ceremonies on Anzac Eve to celebrate their ‘invaluable contributions’ to the war effort.

Yet, following the lobbying efforts of AWLA members, the RSL finally conceded, inviting the AWLA to the Anzac Day march in 1985. For many, this was a great achievement. For others, it was too little, too late – they were ‘no longer young and many [Land Girls] would be absent.’

In November 1994, Prime Minister Paul Keating introduced the Civilian Service Medal 1939–45 to honour the wartime contributions of civilian groups like the AWLA (see Fig. 4).

This recognition – hard fought for and incredibly delayed – reflects the wartime experience of countless women, and the correlation between ‘duty, relentless labour and invisibility’ that dictated the experiences of Land Girls in World War II.

The Land Army Gazette stands today as a powerful testament to the courage, humour and endurance that defined the Australian Women’s Land Army. Through its ephemeral pages, we hear the voices and spirit and tireless labour of Australia’s ‘gallant girls on the land.’

At the same time however, the Gazette was a mediating force – carefully shaping the ways in which Land Girls related to their experiences, labour and identity, both throughout the war and in its aftermath.

In many ways, the AWLA was undervalued precisely because women’s labour was undervalued, even when the nation relied directly upon it. Their belated recognition should also be considered in light of later feminist struggles over work, gender and pay equity that, even if the Land Girls were not participants in, they nonetheless found recognition through.

When formal recognition finally came, it affirmed what the Land Girls already knew; that their service mattered deeply. These women not only fed the homefront, but left a legacy that redefined it, ‘changing for the better, the role of women in Australian society.’

Eloise Coughlin is a Juris Doctor candidate at The University of Melbourne. She recently graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History. In her final semester, she focused her research on the inspiring and largely untold story of the Australian Women’s Land Army throughout the Second World War. More broadly, her research interests lie in women’s history, Cold War politics, and the intersection between history and law.