On 8 April 1973, a thirty-year-old philosophy tutor from the Australian National University walked into the Prime Minister’s Office and made history. Elizabeth Reid, newly appointed as women’s adviser to Gough Whitlam, was the first person in the world to hold such a position—an adviser on women’s affairs attached directly to a head of government. The appointment was unprecedented, and it signalled something profound: after decades of marginalisation, women’s issues had finally arrived at the centre of Australian political life .
Reid’s appointment was not an isolated gesture but part of a broader wave of reform that would transform the lives of Australian women. In its three years in office, the Whitlam government introduced the Supporting Mother’s Benefit for single parents, removed sales tax from the contraceptive pill, funded women’s refuges and health centres, and finally delivered equal pay for female workers. It established a women’s policy unit within the public service, appointed women to positions of influence, and made gender equality a matter of national policy for the first time .
These achievements were not gifts bestowed by a benevolent government. They were the product of years of agitation by the women’s liberation movement, which had emerged at the end of the 1960s and gathered momentum through the early 1970s. Organisations like the Women’s Electoral Lobby had surveyed candidates in the lead-up to the 1972 election, making clear that women’s votes would depend on politicians’ commitment to their concerns . When Whitlam won, the movement was ready to hold him to his promises.
This article examines the relationship between the women’s movement and the Whitlam government, tracing the reforms that were achieved, the tensions that emerged between activists and officials, and the lasting legacy of those tumultuous years. It argues that the Whitlam period marked a turning point in Australian women’s history—a moment when decades of feminist organising finally bore fruit, and when the state began to be seen not merely as an instrument of oppression but as a potential vehicle for liberation.
The Movement Before the Government
The women’s liberation movement did not begin with Whitlam. Its origins lay in the late 1960s, when small groups of women began meeting in each other’s living rooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and other cities. They were influenced by the American and British women’s movements, whose texts and ideas circulated through personal networks and publications. They were also shaped by their own experiences—of being excluded from decision-making in the anti-war movement, of juggling work and family with little support, of feeling that their lives were constrained in ways that had no name .
The movement’s first public actions were small but symbolically significant. In March 1970, a group of Adelaide women picketed the “Miss Fresher” pageant at the University of Adelaide, carrying placards that read “It’s a Weigh-In, Not a Beauty Contest” . Later that year, after police raided the Heatherbrae Clinic—an abortion referral facility in Sydney—Women’s Liberation activists organised protests and demonstrated outside the courthouse during the trial . These actions announced that a new force had entered Australian politics: a movement that would not confine itself to polite lobbying but would take its demands directly to the streets.
The movement grew rapidly. By May 1970, the first national conference on Women’s Liberation had been held in Melbourne. Consciousness-raising groups formed across the country, enabling women to discover that experiences they had thought were personal—sexual coercion, domestic violence, the exhaustion of combining paid work with unpaid domestic labour—were in fact shared and systemic. The slogan “the personal is political” captured this insight: what happened in bedrooms and kitchens was not merely private but a matter of power and politics .
The movement also produced its own literature. Journals like MeJane in Sydney and Liberaction in Hobart provided forums for debate and discussion . Books like Anne Summers’ Damned Whores and God’s Police (1975) offered sweeping analyses of women’s place in Australian history and society. These publications circulated widely, spreading feminist ideas beyond the initial circles of activists and into the broader culture .
But the movement was not without its tensions. As historian Isobelle Barrett Meyering has documented, the women’s liberationists who gathered in those early years were predominantly white, middle-class, and university-educated. Migrant women, Indigenous women, and working-class women often found their concerns marginalised or ignored. The movement’s priorities—childcare, abortion, equal pay—reflected the experiences of those who shaped its agenda, and it would take years of internal critique and external pressure to broaden its focus .
The Electoral Turn – WEL and the 1972 Election
The Women’s Electoral Lobby was born of a recognition that consciousness-raising and street protests, while essential, were not enough. If the movement wanted legislative change, it needed to engage with the electoral process. In early 1972, two Melbourne Women’s Liberation groups met to strategise about the upcoming federal election. Out of those meetings, WEL was founded .
WEL’s strategy was simple but devastatingly effective. It surveyed candidates for parliament on their attitudes to childcare, equal pay, abortion, and other women’s issues. The results were published and publicised, giving voters clear information about where candidates stood. Candidates who had never been asked to take a position on women’s rights suddenly found themselves having to answer .
The survey revealed sharp differences between the parties. Labor candidates were generally supportive; Liberal and Country Party candidates ranged from indifferent to openly hostile. WEL did not formally endorse any party, but its published ratings made clear which side women should support if they wanted change. When Whitlam won—after twenty-three years of Coalition government—women who had worked for his election expected to be heard .
The relationship between the movement and the government was never simple. Many women’s liberationists were deeply suspicious of the state, which they saw as an instrument of patriarchal power. Working within government risked co-optation—being absorbed into the very structures one sought to transform. When Elizabeth Reid was appointed as Whitlam’s women’s adviser, the Sydney Women’s Liberation journal MeJane published a statement denouncing “the illegitimacy of a man choosing a woman to be a spokesperson for women” . The appointment of a single woman, however well qualified, could not represent the diversity of women’s experience or the radicalism of the movement’s demands .
Reid herself was acutely aware of these tensions. She described herself as “a revolutionary in a reformist job,” caught between the movement’s transformative vision and the practical constraints of government. Her approach was to use her position to amplify voices that would otherwise not be heard. She travelled the country, meeting with women in their communities, hearing firsthand about the issues that mattered to them. She received thousands of letters from women who had never written to a government minister before, who felt that someone finally was listening .
The Reforms – What Was Won
The Whitlam government’s achievements in women’s policy were substantial and lasting. They touched almost every aspect of women’s lives: work, family, health, education, and law.
Equal Pay had been a central demand of the women’s movement from the beginning. The basic wage had been set at a male rate since 1907, when the Harvester Judgment established that a man was entitled to a wage sufficient to support a wife and three children. Women’s wages were fixed at a percentage of the male rate—54 per cent in 1912, rising to 75 per cent by 1950. The rationale was explicit: women were not expected to support families, therefore they did not need the same wage as men .
The 1969 Equal Pay Case had begun to shift this framework, ruling that women should receive equal pay when doing the same work as men. But the ruling was limited: it applied only where women were doing “work of the same or like nature” as men, which excluded the overwhelmingly female occupations of teaching, nursing, and clerical work. One of the Whitlam government’s first acts was to seek to reopen the case. In 1972, the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission extended the principle to “work of equal value,” and in May 1974, the adult minimum wage was extended to women workers for the first time. Half a million women became eligible for full pay, and women’s wages rose by around 30 per cent as a result .
Childcare was another priority. The movement had long argued that women’s workforce participation depended on accessible, affordable care for children. The slogan “Free Mum, Free Dad, Free Me, Free Childcare” captured the demand that childcare should be a collective responsibility, not an individual burden . The Whitlam government responded by establishing the first government-funded community childcare centres, creating a model of non-profit, parent-controlled care that would expand in subsequent decades. The 1976-77 Budget, shaped by the work of Reid and her colleagues, included dedicated funding for long-day care—a crucial step in building the infrastructure of childcare provision .
The Supporting Mother’s Benefit, introduced in 1973, provided financial assistance to single parents who did not qualify for the widow’s pension. Before this, women raising children alone had been forced into dependence on family, charity, or relationships they might otherwise have left. The benefit recognised that single motherhood was not a moral failing but a social reality, and that women raising children alone deserved the same support as widows. The benefit was later extended to all single parents, becoming a cornerstone of the social security system .
Reproductive rights were advanced on multiple fronts. Within its first week in power, the Whitlam government removed sales tax from the contraceptive pill and made it available through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, dramatically reducing its cost. The ban on advertising the pill in the Australian Capital Territory was also lifted. These changes recognised that women’s ability to control their fertility was essential to their participation in education, work, and public life .
Support services for women received unprecedented funding. The government provided grants to establish women’s refuges, health centres, and rape crisis centres—organisations run by women for women, providing services that the state had never offered. The Leichhardt Women’s Health Centre, the Liverpool Women’s Health Centre, the Sydney Rape Crisis Centre, and eleven women’s refuges across the country all received government support. These institutions were not imposed from above but emerged from grassroots activism; the government’s role was to resource what the movement had already built .
International Women’s Year – A Moment of Visibility
The year 1975, designated by the United Nations as International Women’s Year, provided an opportunity to consolidate and celebrate these achievements. The Whitlam government appointed Elizabeth Reid to distribute $3 million in funding for events and projects—a significant sum, equivalent to more than $20 million today .
The funding supported a major conference on women’s health, the establishment of new women’s services, programs for victims of domestic violence, and cultural projects including a women’s film festival and performances highlighting the contributions of creative Australian women. It made visible a women’s movement that had grown enormously in confidence and reach .
Margaret Whitlam, the Prime Minister’s wife, was heavily involved in International Women’s Year. She served on the Australian National Advisory Committee and was a delegate to the World Conference in Mexico City. In public speeches, she advocated strongly for improved opportunities, rights, and recognition for women—a striking departure from the conventional role of political spouse. The contrast with previous prime ministers’ wives, who had been expected to remain firmly in the background, could not have been sharper .
International Women’s Year also revealed the limits of what had been achieved. Aboriginal women, migrant women, and working-class women continued to point out that the movement’s priorities did not always reflect their experiences. The National Advisory Committee, like the movement itself, was dominated by white, middle-class women. These critiques did not invalidate the gains that had been made, but they underscored how much work remained to be done .
The Fissures – Movement and Government
The relationship between the women’s movement and the Whitlam government was never entirely comfortable. For activists who had cut their teeth on consciousness-raising and street protests, the idea of working within government structures was deeply problematic. The state was not a neutral instrument but a site of power—and power, in feminist analysis, was precisely what needed to be transformed .
These tensions came to a head around the appointment of Elizabeth Reid. The MeJane collective’s denunciation of Reid’s appointment reflected a deeper anxiety: that the movement’s radical edge would be blunted by incorporation into government, that its demands would be translated into the safe language of policy, that its activists would become experts rather than organisers .
Reid herself was sympathetic to these concerns. She had been active in the women’s liberation movement in Canberra and understood the suspicion with which many activists viewed government. Her strategy was to use her position to open doors, not to close them. She travelled constantly, meeting with women in their communities, hearing their stories, bringing their concerns back to the policy process. She saw herself as a conduit between the movement and the state, not as a representative of either .
But the structural tensions could not be fully resolved. The government needed to produce policy, to allocate resources, to make decisions. The movement needed to maintain its autonomy, its capacity for critique, its willingness to oppose as well as support. These were not always compatible requirements. As the decade wore on, the relationship between movement and government became more institutionalised and, for some activists, less satisfying .
The fissures extended beyond the question of engagement with government. Within the movement itself, there were growing debates about who spoke for women and whose concerns should be prioritised. Migrant women, organised through groups like the Association of Non-English Speaking Background Women of Australia (established in 1987), argued that the movement had failed to address their specific experiences of exploitation and exclusion . Aboriginal women pointed out that land rights and self-determinationSelf-Determination Full Description:Self-Determination became the rallying cry for anti-colonial movements worldwide. While enshrined in the UN Charter, its application was initially fiercely contested. Colonial powers argued it did not apply to their imperial possessions, while independence movements used the UN’s own language to demand the end of empire. Critical Perspective:There is a fundamental tension in the UN’s history regarding this term. While the organization theoretically supported freedom, its most powerful members were often actively fighting brutal wars to suppress self-determination movements in their colonies. The realization of this right was not granted by the UN, but seized by colonized peoples through struggle. were as urgent for them as childcare and equal pay. Lesbians, who had been active in women’s liberation from the beginning, found their concerns marginalised in mainstream feminist politics .
These debates were painful, but they were also productive. They forced the movement to confront its own exclusions, to recognise that “women” was not a unified category, and to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how different forms of oppression intersected. The women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s had insisted that the personal was political. By the end of the decade, it was learning that the political was also personal—and that the personal looked different depending on who you were.
The Legacy – What Endured
The Whitlam government was dismissed in November 1975, bringing an abrupt end to the most reforming administration in Australian history. But the women’s policy agenda it had launched did not disappear. The institutions it had established—the women’s policy unit within the public service, the funded women’s services, the legal framework for equal pay—proved remarkably durable.
The Office of Women’s Affairs (later the Office of the Status of Women, now the Office for Women) continued to operate through changes of government. In 1983, it was moved back to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, signalling its ongoing importance . The Women’s Budget Program, introduced in 1984, required all government departments to assess the impact of their policies on women—a world-first innovation that forced gender to be considered across the entire range of government activity .
The Sex Discrimination Act, passed in 1984, built on the groundwork laid in the Whitlam years. The Affirmative Action Act, passed in 1986, required employers to take positive steps to promote women’s employment. The Supporting Mother’s Benefit, renamed and expanded, remained a cornerstone of the social security system. The women’s refuges and health centres that had received their first funding under Whitlam continued to provide essential services, their existence now taken for granted .
The women who had been part of the movement—as activists, as policy-makers, as service providers—went on to shape Australian society in countless ways. Eva Cox became a professor and social commentator. Elizabeth Evatt became the first chief justice of the Family Court and the first Australian elected to the United Nations committee monitoring discrimination against women . Anne Summers wrote books that influenced generations of readers. Pat Turner became a senior public servant and advocate for Aboriginal rights. Biff Ward continued to write and organise .
The movement itself changed. The radical, anti-hierarchical, participatory ethos of early women’s liberation gave way to a more professionalised, policy-focused mode of operation. Women who had once marched in the streets now sat on committees, wrote submissions, and negotiated with ministers. This was both a gain and a loss: a gain in influence and effectiveness, a loss in transformative vision and grassroots energy. The slogan “the personal is political” had opened up a vast terrain of struggle; the institutional feminism of the 1980s and beyond tended to focus on a narrower set of questions about employment, education, and legal rights .
Conclusion: The Revolution That Changed Everything
The women’s liberation movement and the Whitlam government transformed Australia. They won concrete reforms that changed millions of women’s lives: equal pay, accessible childcare, financial support for single mothers, affordable contraception, women’s refuges and health centres, anti-discrimination legislation. They created institutions that survived the movement that spawned them and the government that funded them. They normalised ideas—that women should control their own bodies, that domestic violence is a crime, that housework and childcare are work—that had been marginal or invisible a generation earlier .
But the movement also left unfinished business. The gender pay gap, though narrowed, persists. Women still do the majority of unpaid domestic labour. Violence against women remains endemic. Aboriginal women, migrant women, working-class women, and disabled women still face forms of oppression that a movement focused on the concerns of white middle-class women could not fully address. The personal is political remains a slogan to be realised, not an achievement to be celebrated .
Elizabeth Reid, looking back on those years, captured both the achievements and the limits. “We changed the terms of debate,” she said. “We made visible what had been invisible. We gave women a language to describe their experience and a movement to change it. But we didn’t win everything we sought, and we didn’t always recognise the limits of our own vision. That work continues” .
The women who gathered in living rooms in 1969, who picketed beauty pageants in 1970, who lobbied candidates in 1972, who occupied derelict houses to create refuges in 1974—these women opened a door that cannot be closed again. The personal became political in those years, and it has remained political ever since. That is the movement’s enduring legacy.
Bibliography
Barrett Meyering, Isobelle. Feminism and the Making of a Child Rights Revolution, 1969–1979. Leiden: Brill, 2022 .
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. “The first 50 years of the Office for Women.” Canberra: Australian Government, 2024 .
Lake, Marilyn. Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999.
Magarey, Susan. Passions of the First Wave Feminists. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001.
Summers, Anne. Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 1975.
Whitlam Institute. “Women’s Rights.” Western Sydney University, 2026 .
.
Image: Gough and Margaret Whitlam walking into the memorial service for Harold Holt in Melbourne.Date22 December 1967
Source: http://guides.naa.gov.au/gough-whitlam/gallery/image006.aspx
Leave a Reply