A femocrat's story, 1970s style

In April 1973, five months after Gough Whitlam was elected prime minister, a woman I admired for the talks she gave on women\u27s liberation became his women\u27s adviser. Elizabeth Reid had been one of ten on the short list. The others, including Susan Ryan, Anne Summers, Eva Cox and Lyndall Ryan, would become some of Australia\u27s most accomplished women, but the publicity leading up to Reid\u27s appointment was a farce. It would take decades before the media could handle issues concerning women with maturity, about the same time it took for Reid\u27s significance to sink in. Oddly, Reid did not see herself as a reformer, but believed that government action would be integral to a longer, more significant revolution in attitudes. In the beginning she sought advice from a small informal circle of public servants, several of whom had been appointed to senior positions never before occupied by women. Most were bone-hard pragmatists, but this was tempered by Reid\u27s presence, and, raw as it was, my own. The others guided us on what might actually be achieved in government and advised which people we needed to get on side. Thus developed the strange amalgam of hard political thinking and socialist-feminist analysis that was to characterise Australian feminist involvement in government for years to come