The Politics of consumption: the Housewives Associations in Southeastern Australia before 1950

Seeking to redirect working-class women's discontent but also genuinely outraged by post-World War I profiteering, Australian Housewives' Associations engaged in boycotts, cooperative buying, concessional agreements with businesses, and, increasingly, lobbying for representation Of women in parliament and on all boards, tribunals, and committees Of inquiry concerned with the home and the cost of living. Liberal and progressive women in Melbourne formed the first Australian Housewives' Association in 1915, but by the 1920s politically conservative women had reinvigorated the movement. This article examines the models these groups drew on for organization and strategy, and the visions of the ideal society that evolved in their work up to 1950. It argues that the Housewives' Associations demonstrate the permeability of boundaries between radical and conservative ideas and strategies in many feminist-or "female collectivist" -organizations