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A woman's place: Women and politics in Australia
556
Book Reviews
This is a serious misrepresentation of the concept o f "feminist process." As the authors themselves recognize (p. 148), the Organizational Review of NAC was consciously structured to reflect the frustrations of women who felt "outside" of NAC: racialized women, women with disabilities, poor women, women outside central Canada, and francophone women. One goal of "feminist process" is not only to embrace diversity but specifically to enhance diversity; to improve the lines of communication between differently situated women to expose more differences, not to smother dissent or insist upon uniform agenda and perspectives. Indeed, good feminist process recognizes that women matter and changes the relationship of individuals and groups to the organization. It does not imply a conflict-free politics. In contrast, a traditional politics of confrontation, majority rule, and not talking about difference seems more likely to accomplish the dangers itemized by the authors. And such it did. As the authors note, "rule-jockeys attempted to hijack the (Annual General Meeting) proceedings" (p. 226), which was "an alienating nightmare for (a meeting of) 500 women" (p. 216), and the "unreformed A G M . . . made the organization vulnerable to co-optation by an organized subset of groups bent on a particular political course" (p. 227). Indeed, exclusionary practices of some members and policy committees fed on indirectness regarding ideological motivations and a lack of commitment to recognizing and respecting a multiplicity of views; one of the key potential strengths o f NAC. Although the authors concede that the NAC has been "largely unsuccessful in maintaining more than symbolic links with francophone feminists in Quebec and with the women's movements of Canada's First Nations," they speak optimistically about a "measure o f success in recruiting member groups from recently mobilized segments of the female population, including immigrants, women of colour, and women with disabilities" (p. 7). Some of the women from these groups might be surprised to discover their "recent mobilization." For example, the "Coloured Women's Club of Montreal" was formed in 1902, and the Canadian Women's Negro Association began holding national conferences in 1973 (Alison Prentice et al.Canadian Women: A History, Toronto: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988, pp. 193, 405). The Canadian Congress of Black Women was originally admitted to NAC in 1977, but it was not until 1984 that Vickers et al. describe it as "now demand[ing] real participation" (p. 144) within NAC. Had no one noticed its presence before this? The authors note that in 1985-1986, as the number of groups they describe as "minority women" rose, "NAC could never eliminate racism (or able-bodied and heterosexist bigotry) fast enough and would continue to disappoint some of the new recruits" (p. 156). But this only masks the choices being made: to address other issues and practices at the expense of racism. The authors' optimism over NAC's ability to represent the voices o f racialized women, women with dis/abilities, and lesbians seems somewhat misplaced. The crucial (and old) question of whether the stucture and "institutionalization" of NAC impedes its ability to do so remains unexamined in this text. Not only is this question important to a study of NAC, but also to strategizing about feminist organization in any country. In their discussions of NAC, Vickers et al. frequently
refer to it as a "parliament of women," a phrase that they note is not new, and previously used to described the National Council o f Women of Canada (NCWC) (one of Canada's first national feminist organizations established in 1893, and still functioning) (p. 14). Given the authors' goal of analyzing the organizational needs of a rnultigenerational women's movement, little attention was given to the temporal overlap between NAC and the NCWC. Why did so many feminists decide in the early 1970s that the NCWC was incapable of meeting feminist needs for an institutional voice? The authors speculate briefly in a footnote that the NCWC "did not bring together as wide a range of ideological perspectives as NAC has" (p. 14). What is meant by this? Failure to embrace newly emerging forces within the women's movement? Resistance to change? Institutional rigidity? Alienating meetings? It would be truly unfortunate if this, or some similar comment, becomes the epitaph the next generation of political scientists bestows upon NAC. LORRAINE GREAVES CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN FANSHAW COLLEGE LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA
A WOMAN'S PLACE: WOMEN AND POLITICS IN AUSTRA-
LtA, by Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, 345 pages. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. Aus$(not known) soft cover. It is a sad but true fact o f life that until recently political parties in Australia--to an even greater extent than their counterparts in other English-speaking countries--ignored the role, needs, and participation of women in politics, parliaments, and the wider community. Furthermore, few political texts prior to the 1980s included discussions on women as voters, candidates, MPs, or simply members of a society whose laws they had to obey but in whose formulation they played almost no part. Law making (and hence politics) was seen by most male political scientists and male p o l i t i c i a n s - a n d indeed by most p e o p l e - a s "gender neutral" despite the fact that, whatever else can be said about politics, this is clearly not the case. Whether it was a question of access to employment and promotion in the public and private sectors, rape laws in and out of marriage, custody of children, access to divorce or preselection processes, there was nothing neutral about political decision making in Australia or anywhere else. Politics was a man's g a m e - - o r at least that was what the men who ran political parties believed, and it was the way they meant it to stay. Slowly, however, women in Australia--like their counterparts in Britain, Europe, and America--began to question and then to challenge this tradition. The second edition o f A Woman's Place, like the first, traces the results of that challenge by women to male-dominated politics. In doing so, it puts the position of women in Australian politics firmly and definitively in its social and historical context. It also provides a fascinating if, in the end, rather depressing analysis of where women are politically at both state and federal levels in Australia compared with women in other countries. Along the way it provides an insight into
Book Reviews
the hoops women have had to jump through to win their rightful place in various Houses of Parliament. Australia may well have been the first nation in the world to give women both the right to vote and the right to be elected to parliament, but, as Sawer and Simms show, although the political parties were prepared to woo the women's vote when it suited them, they were very reluctant indeed actually to elect women to parliament. In the end, Australia was the last of the Engiishspeaking countries to break the male strangle-hold on its national parliament. So much for bright beginnings. In fact, as the tables in A Woman's Place show, women in Australia are still elected mainly to Houses of Parliament (such as the Senate and the Tasmanian House of Assembly) which use the "list system," that is, proportional representation, as their election method because, although men are prepared to "share" multimember electorates with women, they are reluctant to give women the power inherent in a single member seat. It is no coincidence, as the authors make clear, that the majority of female politicians currently and in the past have been elected to the LESS important chamber of the house of parliament in which they sit. That they have nevertheless been able to make a considerable impact on the legislative process says more for the talent and tenacity of the women concerned than it does for the men who "let" them win a few seats or hold a few (generally minor) ministerial positions. Once again, the two Marians have produced a valuable and extensive analysis not only of how political parties feel about women, but about how women feel about political parties and, importantly, how the electorate feels about women in parliament. They trace women's involvement from the back rooms of party headquarters, where their role was to make tea and raise funds, to the front benches of parliaments where they brought a new perspective to the processes and priorities of law making. In addition, they reveal the personalities and performances (as well as the frustrations) of a wide range of female politicians, past and present, analysing in readable detail the impact those women have had on their parties' and the nation's policy priorities. A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia is unquestionably a first rate text for students in politics and Women's Studies courses. It provides both a general and feminist analysis of Australian politics with a final chapter that analyses the progress and current position of the women's movement in Australia. It is essential reading for anyone who wants an historical and current perspective on the changing role and value of women in Australia-- in and out of parliament. JANINE HAINES NETLEY, AUSTRALIA
GENDER, PATRIARCHY AND FASCISM IN THE THIRD REICH: THE RESPONSEOF WOMEN WRITERS, edited by
Elaine Martin, 309 pages. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1993. This collection of nine essays concerning the interrelationships of patriarchy and National Socialism in the works of non-Jewish West German, East German, and Austrian women writers makes a valuable and needed
557
contribution to the historical and literary study of this era. The contributors' findings have important implications for feminist analyses of patriarchal political, social, and family structures. The volume is one of a growing number of very recent studies of women's participation in and support for Nazi ideals, as well as analyses of their victimization by these structures. As Elaine Martin states in her introductory essay, "Women Right/(Re)Write the Nazi Past," the basic thesis of the book is "that patriarchy and fascism are interconnected concepts" (p. 25). Martin identifies three common theses that are not characteristic of men's works about the era, but are of women's. The first is the connection drawn between patriarchy and fascism. The second characteristic shared by women writing about this period concerns the placement of National Socialism within a historical continuum that begins before the 1930s and continues into the present day. Martin observes that the third commonality is the perspective "of fascism as a contemporary phenomenon and the authors' insistence upon recognition of its continued threat" (p. 18). She also notes how most women's writings about the Third Reich are autobiographical in nature. Because the central question of the book is how these writers individually deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, Martin has limited the discussion to non-Jewish women (p. 22). As more and more research appears on autobiographical, biographical, and fictional narratives by Jewish and non-Jewish women about this era, it would benefit our understanding of both groups to bring these women textually into a dialogue. The essays are arranged so as to present the writers discussed chronologically (with a a few exceptions). Ruth Rehmann's novel, Der Mann auf der Kanzel [The man in the pulpit], is the subject of two essays (by G~ittens and Figge) which explore the connections between war and patriarchy. Rehmann's novel explores the history of her authoritarian father, whereas in Christa Wolf's well-known novel, Kindheitsmuster ]Patterns of Childhood], the position of the father is assumed by the state. Ritta Jo Horsley's essay, "Witness, Critic, Victim: Irmgard Keun and the Years of National Socialism," is interesting for its overview of Keun's life and survey of her novels, hut lacks a deeper analysis, especially of some of the more challenging elements of her novels: prostitution, sexual promiscuity, class issues. However, Horsley does address Keun's apparent depictions of negative feminine stereotypes. The autobiographical genre is the specific focus of two contributors: Olga Elaine Rojer and Elaine Martin. Rojer discusses the autobiography of Doris Dauber, a German journalist who fled to Argentina in 1933; it is of interest both as women's autobiography and due to the portrayal of her social, cultural, and political life as a socialist. Elaine Martin's "Autobiography, Gender, and the Third Reich: Eva Zeller, Carola Stern, and Christabel Bielenberg," discusses three autobiographical works of the Nazi era in terms of recent feminist autobiography theory. For Martin, all three texts center on questions of identify and selfhood, yet also transcend the personal, thereby embracing larger philosophical, historical, and political issues. One of the most significant women writers of the postwar era whose life and work epitomize the difficulties of evaluating past and present actions is Luise
Book Reviews
This is a serious misrepresentation of the concept o f "feminist process." As the authors themselves recognize (p. 148), the Organizational Review of NAC was consciously structured to reflect the frustrations of women who felt "outside" of NAC: racialized women, women with disabilities, poor women, women outside central Canada, and francophone women. One goal of "feminist process" is not only to embrace diversity but specifically to enhance diversity; to improve the lines of communication between differently situated women to expose more differences, not to smother dissent or insist upon uniform agenda and perspectives. Indeed, good feminist process recognizes that women matter and changes the relationship of individuals and groups to the organization. It does not imply a conflict-free politics. In contrast, a traditional politics of confrontation, majority rule, and not talking about difference seems more likely to accomplish the dangers itemized by the authors. And such it did. As the authors note, "rule-jockeys attempted to hijack the (Annual General Meeting) proceedings" (p. 226), which was "an alienating nightmare for (a meeting of) 500 women" (p. 216), and the "unreformed A G M . . . made the organization vulnerable to co-optation by an organized subset of groups bent on a particular political course" (p. 227). Indeed, exclusionary practices of some members and policy committees fed on indirectness regarding ideological motivations and a lack of commitment to recognizing and respecting a multiplicity of views; one of the key potential strengths o f NAC. Although the authors concede that the NAC has been "largely unsuccessful in maintaining more than symbolic links with francophone feminists in Quebec and with the women's movements of Canada's First Nations," they speak optimistically about a "measure o f success in recruiting member groups from recently mobilized segments of the female population, including immigrants, women of colour, and women with disabilities" (p. 7). Some of the women from these groups might be surprised to discover their "recent mobilization." For example, the "Coloured Women's Club of Montreal" was formed in 1902, and the Canadian Women's Negro Association began holding national conferences in 1973 (Alison Prentice et al.Canadian Women: A History, Toronto: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988, pp. 193, 405). The Canadian Congress of Black Women was originally admitted to NAC in 1977, but it was not until 1984 that Vickers et al. describe it as "now demand[ing] real participation" (p. 144) within NAC. Had no one noticed its presence before this? The authors note that in 1985-1986, as the number of groups they describe as "minority women" rose, "NAC could never eliminate racism (or able-bodied and heterosexist bigotry) fast enough and would continue to disappoint some of the new recruits" (p. 156). But this only masks the choices being made: to address other issues and practices at the expense of racism. The authors' optimism over NAC's ability to represent the voices o f racialized women, women with dis/abilities, and lesbians seems somewhat misplaced. The crucial (and old) question of whether the stucture and "institutionalization" of NAC impedes its ability to do so remains unexamined in this text. Not only is this question important to a study of NAC, but also to strategizing about feminist organization in any country. In their discussions of NAC, Vickers et al. frequently
refer to it as a "parliament of women," a phrase that they note is not new, and previously used to described the National Council o f Women of Canada (NCWC) (one of Canada's first national feminist organizations established in 1893, and still functioning) (p. 14). Given the authors' goal of analyzing the organizational needs of a rnultigenerational women's movement, little attention was given to the temporal overlap between NAC and the NCWC. Why did so many feminists decide in the early 1970s that the NCWC was incapable of meeting feminist needs for an institutional voice? The authors speculate briefly in a footnote that the NCWC "did not bring together as wide a range of ideological perspectives as NAC has" (p. 14). What is meant by this? Failure to embrace newly emerging forces within the women's movement? Resistance to change? Institutional rigidity? Alienating meetings? It would be truly unfortunate if this, or some similar comment, becomes the epitaph the next generation of political scientists bestows upon NAC. LORRAINE GREAVES CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND CHILDREN FANSHAW COLLEGE LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA
A WOMAN'S PLACE: WOMEN AND POLITICS IN AUSTRA-
LtA, by Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, 345 pages. Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. Aus$(not known) soft cover. It is a sad but true fact o f life that until recently political parties in Australia--to an even greater extent than their counterparts in other English-speaking countries--ignored the role, needs, and participation of women in politics, parliaments, and the wider community. Furthermore, few political texts prior to the 1980s included discussions on women as voters, candidates, MPs, or simply members of a society whose laws they had to obey but in whose formulation they played almost no part. Law making (and hence politics) was seen by most male political scientists and male p o l i t i c i a n s - a n d indeed by most p e o p l e - a s "gender neutral" despite the fact that, whatever else can be said about politics, this is clearly not the case. Whether it was a question of access to employment and promotion in the public and private sectors, rape laws in and out of marriage, custody of children, access to divorce or preselection processes, there was nothing neutral about political decision making in Australia or anywhere else. Politics was a man's g a m e - - o r at least that was what the men who ran political parties believed, and it was the way they meant it to stay. Slowly, however, women in Australia--like their counterparts in Britain, Europe, and America--began to question and then to challenge this tradition. The second edition o f A Woman's Place, like the first, traces the results of that challenge by women to male-dominated politics. In doing so, it puts the position of women in Australian politics firmly and definitively in its social and historical context. It also provides a fascinating if, in the end, rather depressing analysis of where women are politically at both state and federal levels in Australia compared with women in other countries. Along the way it provides an insight into
Book Reviews
the hoops women have had to jump through to win their rightful place in various Houses of Parliament. Australia may well have been the first nation in the world to give women both the right to vote and the right to be elected to parliament, but, as Sawer and Simms show, although the political parties were prepared to woo the women's vote when it suited them, they were very reluctant indeed actually to elect women to parliament. In the end, Australia was the last of the Engiishspeaking countries to break the male strangle-hold on its national parliament. So much for bright beginnings. In fact, as the tables in A Woman's Place show, women in Australia are still elected mainly to Houses of Parliament (such as the Senate and the Tasmanian House of Assembly) which use the "list system," that is, proportional representation, as their election method because, although men are prepared to "share" multimember electorates with women, they are reluctant to give women the power inherent in a single member seat. It is no coincidence, as the authors make clear, that the majority of female politicians currently and in the past have been elected to the LESS important chamber of the house of parliament in which they sit. That they have nevertheless been able to make a considerable impact on the legislative process says more for the talent and tenacity of the women concerned than it does for the men who "let" them win a few seats or hold a few (generally minor) ministerial positions. Once again, the two Marians have produced a valuable and extensive analysis not only of how political parties feel about women, but about how women feel about political parties and, importantly, how the electorate feels about women in parliament. They trace women's involvement from the back rooms of party headquarters, where their role was to make tea and raise funds, to the front benches of parliaments where they brought a new perspective to the processes and priorities of law making. In addition, they reveal the personalities and performances (as well as the frustrations) of a wide range of female politicians, past and present, analysing in readable detail the impact those women have had on their parties' and the nation's policy priorities. A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia is unquestionably a first rate text for students in politics and Women's Studies courses. It provides both a general and feminist analysis of Australian politics with a final chapter that analyses the progress and current position of the women's movement in Australia. It is essential reading for anyone who wants an historical and current perspective on the changing role and value of women in Australia-- in and out of parliament. JANINE HAINES NETLEY, AUSTRALIA
GENDER, PATRIARCHY AND FASCISM IN THE THIRD REICH: THE RESPONSEOF WOMEN WRITERS, edited by
Elaine Martin, 309 pages. Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 1993. This collection of nine essays concerning the interrelationships of patriarchy and National Socialism in the works of non-Jewish West German, East German, and Austrian women writers makes a valuable and needed
557
contribution to the historical and literary study of this era. The contributors' findings have important implications for feminist analyses of patriarchal political, social, and family structures. The volume is one of a growing number of very recent studies of women's participation in and support for Nazi ideals, as well as analyses of their victimization by these structures. As Elaine Martin states in her introductory essay, "Women Right/(Re)Write the Nazi Past," the basic thesis of the book is "that patriarchy and fascism are interconnected concepts" (p. 25). Martin identifies three common theses that are not characteristic of men's works about the era, but are of women's. The first is the connection drawn between patriarchy and fascism. The second characteristic shared by women writing about this period concerns the placement of National Socialism within a historical continuum that begins before the 1930s and continues into the present day. Martin observes that the third commonality is the perspective "of fascism as a contemporary phenomenon and the authors' insistence upon recognition of its continued threat" (p. 18). She also notes how most women's writings about the Third Reich are autobiographical in nature. Because the central question of the book is how these writers individually deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, Martin has limited the discussion to non-Jewish women (p. 22). As more and more research appears on autobiographical, biographical, and fictional narratives by Jewish and non-Jewish women about this era, it would benefit our understanding of both groups to bring these women textually into a dialogue. The essays are arranged so as to present the writers discussed chronologically (with a a few exceptions). Ruth Rehmann's novel, Der Mann auf der Kanzel [The man in the pulpit], is the subject of two essays (by G~ittens and Figge) which explore the connections between war and patriarchy. Rehmann's novel explores the history of her authoritarian father, whereas in Christa Wolf's well-known novel, Kindheitsmuster ]Patterns of Childhood], the position of the father is assumed by the state. Ritta Jo Horsley's essay, "Witness, Critic, Victim: Irmgard Keun and the Years of National Socialism," is interesting for its overview of Keun's life and survey of her novels, hut lacks a deeper analysis, especially of some of the more challenging elements of her novels: prostitution, sexual promiscuity, class issues. However, Horsley does address Keun's apparent depictions of negative feminine stereotypes. The autobiographical genre is the specific focus of two contributors: Olga Elaine Rojer and Elaine Martin. Rojer discusses the autobiography of Doris Dauber, a German journalist who fled to Argentina in 1933; it is of interest both as women's autobiography and due to the portrayal of her social, cultural, and political life as a socialist. Elaine Martin's "Autobiography, Gender, and the Third Reich: Eva Zeller, Carola Stern, and Christabel Bielenberg," discusses three autobiographical works of the Nazi era in terms of recent feminist autobiography theory. For Martin, all three texts center on questions of identify and selfhood, yet also transcend the personal, thereby embracing larger philosophical, historical, and political issues. One of the most significant women writers of the postwar era whose life and work epitomize the difficulties of evaluating past and present actions is Luise