Wives and mothers like ourselves? Exploring white women's intervention in the politics of race, 1920s-1940s

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 117, 2001, Pages 292-310

  Holland, Alison ^a  

^a MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABORIGINE; ADOLESCENT; ARTICLE; AUSTRALIA; CHILD; CHILD WELFARE; CULTURAL FACTOR; CUSTODY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; FEMINISM; GOVERNMENT; HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATION; HISTORY; HUMAN; INFANT; LEGAL ASPECT; ORGANIZATION; POLICY; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL PROBLEM; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIOECONOMICS; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

ACCULTURATION; ADOLESCENT; AUSTRALIA; CHILD; CHILD CUSTODY; CHILD WELFARE; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; FEMINISM; GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INFANT; OCEANIC ANCESTRY GROUP; ORGANIZATIONS; PREJUDICE; PUBLIC POLICY; RACE RELATIONS; SOCIETIES; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WOMEN; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

EID: 34547577407     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314610108596166     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (63)

1. see Luanda Aberdeen, 'Australian Scientific Research, "Aboriginal Blood" and the Racial Imaginary', in A Race for a Place: Eugenics, Darwinism and Social Thought and Practice in Australia: Proceedings of the History & Sociology of Eugenics Conference, eds Martin Crotty, John Germov and Grant Rodwell (Newcastle: Faculty of Arts and Social Science, University of Newcastle, 2000)
2. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997)
3. Victoria Haskins, 'My One Bright Spot: A Personal Insight into Relationships Between White Women and Aboriginal Women Under the NSW Aborigines Protection Board Apprenticeship Policy 1920-1942' (PhD thesis. University of Sydney, 1998), 47
4. Suzanne Parry, 'Identifying the Process: The Removal of "Half-Caste" Children from Aboriginal Mothers', Aboriginal History 19, nos 1-2 (1995), 141-53
5. Richard White, Inventing Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 110-24; 140-4
6. Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999)
7. See also Lake, 'Feminist History as National History: Writing the Political History of Women', Australian Historical Studies 27, no. 106 (April 1996): 154-69
8. S. Koven and S. Michel, eds. Mothers of a New World: Matemalist Politics and The Origins of the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 1993)
9. Dr Georgina Sweet, 'Women and International Relationships', Second Pan Pacific Conference, Honolulu, 1930, 336
10. Both historians have written extensively on this as the following references indicate. See, in particular, Fiona Paisley, 'Ideas Have Wings: White Women Challenge Aboriginal Policy 1920-1937' (PhD thesis. La Trobe University, 1995)
11. Loving Protection? Australian Feminism and Aboriginal Women's Rights 1919-1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000)
12. "Don't Tell England!": Women of Empire Campaign to Change Aboriginal Policy in Australia Between the Wars', Lilith, no. 8 (Summer 1993): 139-52
13. 'Feminist Challenges to White Australia, 1900-1930s', in Sex Power and Justice: Historical Perspectives of Law in Australia
14. 'White Women in the Field: Feminism, Cultural Relativism and Aboriginal Rights, 1920-1937', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 52 (1997): 113-25
15. 'No Back Streets in the Bush: 1920s and 1930s Pro-Aboriginal White Women's Activism and the Trans-Australia Railway', Australian Feminist Studies 12, no. 25 (1997): 119-37
16. Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal, 122-32
17. 'Colonised and Colonising: The White Australian Feminist Subject', Women's History Review 2, no. 3 (1993): 377-86
18. 'Frontier Feminism and the Marauding White Man', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 49 (1996): 12-20
19. 'Feminisrru and the Gendered Politics of Antiracism, Australia 1927-1957: From Maternal Protectionism to Leftist Assimilationism', Australian Historical Studies 29, no. 110 (1998): 91-108
20. Paisley, 'Feminist Challenges', 259; "Don't Tell England!"', 147
21. Paisley, 'Feminist Challenges', 253; 'Ideas Have Wings', 5, 139-43, 318, 326
22. Lake, Getting Equal, 122
23. Lake, 'Colonised and Colonising', 383; and 'Feminism and the Gendered Polities', 100-1
24. For context about Bennett see Alison Holland, 'Feminism, Colonialism and Aboriginal Workers: An Anti-Slavery Crusade'; in Aboriginal Workers, eds Ann McGrath and Kay Saunders with Jackie Huggins (Sydney: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 1995), 52-64
25. Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in Our Hearts (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 216-44
26. Alison Holland, 'Saving the Aborigines. The White Woman's Crusade: A Study of Gender, Race and the Australian Frontier, 1920s-1960s' (PhD thesis. University of New South Wales, 1999)
27. For discussion of interwar humanitarianism see Andrew Markus, Governing Savages (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 158-72
28. Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. 1997)
29. Henry Reynolds, This Whispering, 216-44
30. Edith Jones, 'Evidence before the Conference of Representatives of Missions, Societies and Associations interested in the Welfare of Aboriginals to Consider the Report and Recommendations submitted to the government by J.W. Bleakley', Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004/12/506-511, National Library Australia (NLA)
31. Alison Holland. The Campaign for Women Protectors: Gender, Race and Frontier Between the Wars', Australian Feminist Studies 16, no. 34 (March 2001): 27-42
32. Dorothea Cass, Letter to the Editor, the West Australian, June 1929, Rischbieth Papers, MS 2004, Series 12, Box 30, NLA
33. Pat Jacobs, Mister Neville: A Biography (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1990), 131
34. For context see Michael Roe, 'A Model Aboriginal State', Aboriginal History 10, (Part 1, 1986): 40-4
35. For a comprehensive coverage of feminists' relationship to the British Commonwealth League in these years see Paisley, 'Ideas Have Wings', ch. 2, 85-111
36. See also Paisley, Loving Protection?
37. Mr John Harris, 'Some Servitudes of Women', British Commonwealth League, Report of Conference, (June 1927), 23
38. Mary Bennett, The Condition of the Aborigines of Australia Under the Federal Government (n.p. 1929), 17
39. Mary Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal as a Human Being. (London: Alston Rivers, 1930)
40. Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940 (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1988), 261
41. see Mrinalini Sinha, 'Refashioning Mother India: Gender, Caste and National Identity in India in the 1920s and 1930s' (paper presented at the Conference of the International Federation For Research in Women's History, Melbourne, June/July, 1998)
42. Mary Bennett, 'The Aboriginal Mother in Western Australia in 1933', Elkin Papers, Box 23, Item 8, University of Sydney Archives
43. See Holland, 'Saving the Aborigines'
44. British Commonwealth League, Report of Conference, June 1932, 38
45. Renate Howe and Shurlee Swain, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 112-22
46. Mrs Carlile McDonnell, 'The Unmarried Mother and Her Child', The Dawn, 19 July 1927, 11
47. Ann McGrath, 'Born in the Cattle': Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 68-70
48. A.O. Neville, Australia's Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community (Sydney: Currawong Publishing Co., 1948), 51
49. Parliament of Australia, Aboriginal Welfare: Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities (Canberra: L.R Johnston, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1937), 11-12, 17
50. Pat Jacobs, 'Science and Veiled Assumptions: Miscegenation in Western Australia, 1930-1937', Australian Aboriginal Studies no. 2, 1986, 16
51. Ann Stoler, 'Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth- century Colonial Cultures', American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (November 1989): 647
52. Gail Reekie, Measuring Immorality: Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 69
53. Pat Jacobs, 'Science and Veiled Assumptions', 17
54. See also Haebich, For Their Own Good, 318-21
55. Kay Daniels and Mary Murnane, Uphill all the Way: A Documentary History of Women in Australia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1977), 76
56. Herbert Basedow, The Australian Aboriginal (Adelaide: F.W. Preece and Sons, 1925), 58. For historical context see McGregor, 156-61
57. Constance Cooke, 'Paper to the British Commonwealth League', British Commonwealth League, A Report of Conference, June 1927, 29
58. May Vallance, Statement for Royal Commission: Welfare of Aborigines, Perth, 1934, from the Women's Service Guilds, Women's Service Guilds of Western Australia, Welfare of Aborigines, February-November 1937, Acc 1949A/62, MN 393, SAWA
59. Australian Federation of Women Voters, Annual Report (June 1937 - May 1938), 'Welfare of the Aborigines and Race Culture', Papers of the United Associations of Women, ML MS 2160, Box Y789, Mitchell Library
60. Mary Bennett, 'Notes on Aboriginal Policy', Duguid Papers, MS 5068, Series 11, NLA
61. Renate Howe and Shurlee Swain, 'Saving the Child and Punishing the Mother: Single Mothers and the State 1912-1942', in Women and the State: Australian Perspectives
62. Heather Radi, 'Whose Child? Custody of children in NSW 1854-1934', in In Pursuit of Justice: Australian Women and the Law 1788-1979
63. Susan Sheridan, Along the Faultlines: Sex, Race and Nation in Australian Women's Writing 1880s-l930s (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 122