In 1972 an Australian woman could not even open a bank account without the backing of a man. This is the inside story of how a group of feminists forced political change.
At ten o'clock on the morning of Sunday February 27, 1972, feminist activist Beatrice Faust gathered with nine hand-picked women in the upstairs room of her home in Melbourne as morning sunlight streamed through the window.
Bea had already hosted a couple of meetings at her home in Drummond Street to talk about women-friendly political reforms. The idea behind what came to be known as the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL) was to find out the positions of parliamentary candidates on a range of issues relevant to women, and then publicise them in the lead-up to the 1972 election. She had a plan, and the burgeoning women's movement promised willing hands. This February 27 meeting was where Bea first laid out her strategy.
She already knew some of the women. Sheila Wynne, an active member of the Abortion Law Reform Association. Sally White and Iola Hack were journalists at the Age. Getting publicity was part of the plan and they would be crucial to WEL's success.
The others at that first meeting were Carmen Lawrence, a tutor in the psychology department at Melbourne University (later the Labor premier of Western Australia and then a federal MP), Jan Harper, Diana Heath, Sue Fisher and Gail Hobbes.
A federal election was due at the end of the year.
And change was in the air.
The Coalition government, in power since 1949, was tired and flailing. Prime Minister William McMahon was struggling for traction against the man of the moment, Labor's leader Gough Whitlam.
The forthcoming election was an ideal opportunity to lobby for practical, achievable reforms to improve women's lives.
Bea brought to the meeting a copy of a US magazine article that rated the candidates in the primaries for the presidential election due in November.
The candidate rankings were based on a wide-ranging questionnaire, with follow-up interviews and a survey of the candidates' voting records. The questionnaire asked not just what the candidates thought about women and their concerns, but also how dependent they were on their "masculine" role, and their track record on legislation that affected women.
Richard Nixon, who was the defending US president, "seems to be nowhere when it comes to women's issues."
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," he said. "I wouldn't want to wake up next to a lady pipefitter."
The ten women sat in a circle on the floor in Melbourne, and after a few pleasantries Bea got down to business.
A political form guide
Australian women had had the vote since 1902. So how could they use that vote to advance their demands — for equal pay, equal opportunity, day care, abortion and contraception?
The meeting came up with a three-part strategy.
First, it would produce a "form guide" based on a questionnaire and interviews with as many candidates as possible.
Second, it would publicise the initiative and publish the form guide close to election day.
Third, it would campaign for the candidates who made "the best offers in return for that vital commodity — the Women's Vote", though this last part of the strategy later fell somewhat by the wayside.
A small survey-construction committee was formed: Carmen Lawrence, Helen Glezer and Pat Strong, who was a student counsellor at RMIT. Sally and Iola would handle publicity.
Bea had an ambitious plan for small action groups to research issues of special concern to women: community childcare, fertility control, local government, Indigenous issues, education, welfare, industry, finance, legal guarantees, divorce and alimony, and pollution.
Bea was always on top of the facts and her self-confidence irritated some women. Challenged at WEL's first meeting in Sydney — "Why is it that you are always right?" — Bea later replied, "Because I do my homework and keep my cool."
"These are male chauvinist characteristics" hissed her challenger. Bea was adamant they were not.
From outrage to feminism
WEL's first public meeting was held at the Women's Liberation Centre at 16 Little Latrobe Street, on April 30. The meeting was advertised in Nation Review and the Age and scores of women turned up. Mostly they were young and tertiary educated. Some were already committed feminists and women's libbers, agitating against the patriarchy and exploring their oppression in small consciousness-raising groups, such as the South Yarra Women's Lib Group, which included Diana Gribble, Jocelyn Mitchell, Judy Morton and Sandy Turnbull.
Jocelyn had lived in the United States with her husband for five years and was outraged to find when they came back to Australia that she could not open an account at Myer, let alone a bank account, without her husband's signature. She was a shy person, but the outrage made her a feminist.
Intrigued by the new feminist ideas, the women who turned up wanted to know more. There were mothers of young children, frustrated by the scarcity of childcare and unwilling to accept the home-centred lives of their mothers and grandmothers; and older women like Joyce Nicholson, born in 1919, who was managing the family-owned publishing firm D W Thorpe and bridling against the constraints of motherhood and marriage.
For many of the women who joined WEL, it was their first engagement with the women's movement and it changed their lives: new friends, new confidence and sense of purpose, new understandings of who they were and who they might become, along with the realisation that they were not alone. Joyce Nicholson remembered the exhilaration of "finding other women with the same feelings, experiences and fears, willing to admit that they had been 'had' by the system."
Bea had no idea who would join. She was aware of women's difficulties juggling their many responsibilities, but thought many could find a few hours for discrete tasks like collating a newsletter, stuffing envelopes, making some phone calls, or attending a candidates' meeting. Breaking down the work into small manageable tasks was one of the secrets of WEL's early success, and membership grew rapidly.
The first formal meeting decided on a modest membership fee of one dollar to pay for printing and postage. Diana Gribble, Joyce Nicholson and Jocelyn Mitchell took responsibility for the newsletter, Broadsheet.
To produce a newsletter or flyer one first typed it onto a wax sheet, which was run through a roneo machine one page at a time. Then the newsletter had to be collated, stapled and put into envelopes for bulk posting. By August WEL's Melbourne members were producing a thousand Broadsheets per issue. La Trobe sociologist Katy Richmond, who was WEL's first secretary, estimated this involved ten or more days of work.
If the survey was to be national, WEL would need to reach beyond Melbourne. Bea flew to Canberra, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane to establish branches, again using her networks and paying for the expensive airfares herself.
The first Sydney meeting was in May in the home of Julia Freebury, whom Bea knew through the Sydney Abortion Law Reform Association. Feminists Eva Cox, Jan Aitkin, Ann Summers and Wendy McCarthy were there.
There was a lot happening that year. Protests against the Vietnam War continued and a burgeoning counterculture was attacking everything associated with the conservative establishment.
Personal friendships were the basis of WEL, but as it expanded beyond the early members, arguments erupted over organisation and procedure. Many in the women's movement were committed to consensus decision-making. They were suspicious of leadership and regarded constitutions and formal meeting procedures as inherently patriarchal, acting to oppress women and silence their voices.
Campaigning began
Bea agreed that WEL should be a place where women felt able to speak, non-hierarchical and flexible enough for women to follow up on an idea — like organising a demonstration in a hurry — without needing the approval of a formal meeting. However she did think that WEL needed a constitution. Without a constitution, it could not sign a lease, operate a bank account or endorse electoral material, nor could it affiliate with other organisations. The issue drove some of the more radical women away from WEL.
By June, Bea's views had prevailed. The anti-organisation women's libbers had left, the lawyer Eve Mahlab had come on board, and a constitution was drafted and agreed to. It was also agreed that WEL would not stand candidates at the forthcoming election but confine itself to lobbying and advocacy. It was to be non-partisan, with no party alignment.
The non-partisan strategy was difficult for active ALP members, but Bea hoped to forge alliances with more conservative women's groups like the YWCA and the National Council of Women. WEL would tell women which candidate would be the best in terms of furthering women's interests, but it would not tell them how to vote. Bea was also adamant that WEL should only be concerned with women's issues: discrimination, equality, and women's sexuality and reproductive rights.
An issue like pollution, although of special salience to women with young children, was not in itself a women's issue.
As well as the survey, Melbourne WEL women were busy that first year. They wrote to politicians and the press, and attended political meetings where they asked questions about family planning, sex education, abortion and equal pay. And they participated in three successful campaigns.
WEL women were supporters rather than initiators in a campaign for women tram drivers. Although there were many women tram conductors, pushing through the crowds with their leather bags to sell tickets, the unionised male drivers refused to train women. Women tram conductors had been asking to be eligible for the better-paid position of driver for years. Management was supportive, but the union was obdurate.
WEL staged a WEL Day on Trams action on Friday August 25, handing out leaflets and talking with passengers. Eventually the male unionists gave in, and on December 5, 1975 Joyce Barry became the first woman to drive a Melbourne tram.
WEL also campaigned for the advertising of contraceptives, which was a responsibility of state governments. Melbourne WEL women marched on the Victorian Parliament waving condoms on sticks.
'Nice Girls Do!'
As the federal election approached, media coverage of women's issues increased. Nation Review published its women's issue on October 14 with Botticelli's Venus on the cover and Minister for the Army Sir John Cramer's answer to the WEL survey question on sex education issuing in a bubble from her pubes: "A woman must be taught that virginity is the most valuable thing she possesses".
Bea had an article: 'Nice Girls Do! They do have sex and they do enjoy it. Sexuality needs to be seen as a normal part of life and freed from guilt'.
The issue also published a confessional advertisement: "We have had an abortion and are willing to admit it in the interests of legislative change" above handwritten signatures, including of the novelist Glenda Adams, writer and folk singer Glen Tomasetti, and feminist activists Eva Cox and Wendy McCarthy.
The simple, direct wording was Bea's. There was to be nothing apologetic or defensive and Bea's signature was first, with a three after it.
A pilot survey was drawn up with 14 short questions. It was a market-research-type survey with structured responses in which politicians were asked to respond as if they had a free vote on a piece of legislation.
In early May the questionnaire was mailed to all sitting members of the House of Representatives and the Senate with a covering letter explaining what WEL was all about. Only two responded, Moss Cass and Tom Uren, both Labor members.
This poor response was not publicly admitted at the time. In fact, in a piece Helen Glezer and Pat Strong wrote the following year, they pretended there were far more.
A different strategy was clearly needed. Candidates would be interviewed in person by pairs of WEL women, one to conduct the interview and the other to take notes. This ambitious plan would require many more women.
By the end of 1972 there were 75 WEL branches across Australia.
Some training was provided before the interviewers set out, but it was a formidable challenge for many of these young women to front up to a crusty old politician used to calling the shots.
The interviews aimed to reveal candidates' knowledge and attitudes and how prepared they were to commit to action, such as supporting women-friendly legislation.
The questions were very specific and many were prefaced with a short explanatory sentence.
Some examples:
At the moment the display and advertisement of contraceptives is illegal in the Australian territories. How would you vote in a bill to remove the prohibition from:
1. The advertisement of contraceptives?
2. The display of contraceptives?
At the moment unmarried mothers, deserted de-facto wives, the de-facto wives of prisoners and fathers rearing dependent children are not entitled to the Class A Widows pension and the benefits which go with it such as concessional fares on public transport. Would you support or oppose any attempts to amend the term ‘widow' in the Commonwealth Social Services Act (1947, Section 59) to include:
1. Unmarried mothers?
2. Deserted de-facto wives with dependent children?
3. The de-facto wives of prisoners with dependent children?
4. Fathers rearing dependent children alone?
Some were shorter:
Would you support or oppose any moves to make the cost of child minding tax deductible? If oppose, Why?
Victorian WEL members managed to interview 75 per cent of the 120 candidates standing in that state.
Once the interviews were returned they had to be coded. Candidates were rated in four areas: planned parenthood, childcare, equality in work and education, and general awareness of women's issues and cooperation in the interview.
By the time the election approached, Bea's decision to draw skilled journalists Sally White and Iola Hack into WEL from the outset had paid off handsomely. The Australian media, which had generally treated women's issues rather flippantly, gave WEL extensive favourable coverage. During 1972 there were more than 150 press articles on WEL, only three of them hostile, as well as a Four Corners program, The Hand that Rocks the Ballot Box.
A remarkable achievement
Sally White convinced the assistant editor of the Age, Creighton Burns, himself a former academic political scientist, to run a four-page lift-out. The 'Women's Electoral Lobby Guide to the Polls' was a special feature on green paper 12 days before the December 2 election.
White's lead article, 'Think WEL before you vote', explained the background to the survey, and the middle pages scored the Victorian candidates, as well as the cabinet and shadow cabinet. Labor candidates did notably better than Liberal and Country Party candidates, most scoring in the 30s out of a possible 40. DLP candidates had mostly refused to be interviewed. Prime Minister Billy McMahon scored one, and opposition leader Gough Whitlam 33.
WEL's efforts even made the New York Times: "Australian women, long considered a passive element in a largely male-oriented political scene, have emerged suddenly as an organised and formidable factor in the campaigning for the election', wrote Robert Trumbull in an article titled 'Women Emerge as a Force in Australian Elections".
Whitlam had been preparing his reform program since 1967, when he became leader of the ALP. As the women's movement fired up in the early 1970s he added many of its demands, and after Labor won, nearly every reform WEL asked for was achieved. The equal pay case before the Arbitration Commission was reopened and won, funds were put into family planning, the various imposts removed from contraceptives. This last was a direct result of action by WEL Canberra, which, with the assistance of experienced tariff lobbyists, prepared a submission to the Tariff Board arguing for the tariff to be removed, as a precedent for the removal of the sales and luxury taxes. The ALP adopted it as policy, and when Labor won federal government not only were the tariff, the luxury and sales tax removed, but contraceptives supplied on prescription became free.
As well, Labor introduced no-fault divorce, created family law courts and established a single mother's benefit. A women's affairs section was installed in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and a special women's affairs adviser appointed. The abolition of university fees, though not overtly a women's issue, enabled many older women to attend university without affecting the family budget.
Many of the reforms followed the specific wording of WEL's questionnaire. It was a remarkable achievement for a lobby group less than a year old to have government act on almost everything it advocated.
Views on women's role were shifting fast, not least among younger women, but too often political change lags behind public opinion. Labor still had a long way to go as a party hospitable to women. Tellingly, there was not a single Labor woman in the House or the Senate. The two women in the Senate were both Liberals.
There was nothing utopian or revolutionary about WEL. It was to be a respectable organisation, so that conservative women would not be frightened away, and its policy advocacy was to be well informed and evidence-based, so that it would be taken seriously. Which it was.
Bea's initiative unleashed a wave of activist energy. The success of WEL empowered women who had been housewives to study, work, organise and stand for office, especially in local government, and so continue to work for the improvement of women's lives. Bea herself moved into the background and returned to the wellspring of her political activism: the decriminalisation of abortion.
Bea, who died October 2019, aged 80, never saw the results of her fight for abortion rights. It was not until March 2024 that abortion was no longer a criminal offence in all Australian states. WEL and the 1970s women's movement of which abortion rights was part put women’s issues firmly on Australia’s political agenda, where they have stayed.
As we head into another federal election, no candidate can afford to be as blithely ignorant of the issues affecting women as so many candidates were in 1972.
This is an edited extract from Judith Brett's forthcoming book Fearless Beatrice Faust, published by Text Publishing on April 23.
Credits
Words: Judith Brett
Editor: Catherine Taylor
Photographs: Main image of Beatrice Faust in 1979 by Ben Lewin
