National President of the United Nations Association of Australia

I am not sure if my presentation today will be a sentimental journey or a strident call to return to the barricades. Looking back twenty years to the halcyon days of equal opportunity reform after women had taken to the streets to demand change it is hard to imagine that we should still be engaged in so many of the same debates we thought were being progressed in the 1980’s. During the second wave of feminism an uncompromising agenda was set so that women activists like myself went into the parliament assuming we could change the world! While there were only small numbers of women parliamentarians most of us were proud to identify as being feminists. Imagine the media circus today if newly elected women parliamentarians outlined their goals from a feminist perspective! In addition the Federal public service in the early 1980’s had a large number of femocrats in key positions ready to build on the new directions of the new Hawke Labor Government. Not all our male colleagues were supportive of these strange new intruders in to the macho domain of Old Parliament House. Within a few weeks of the 1983 election Susan Ryan just voted Australia’s first woman Cabinet Minister hosted a dinner for her sisters in the Parliamentary Dinin