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Book Review
| Margaret Fitzherbert, Liberal Women: Federation to 1949, Federation Press, Sydney, 2004. pp. xiii + 305. $39.95 paper.
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| Margaret Fitzherbert's study of early Liberal women has two stated aims. Firstly, it seeks to bring to life the women who helped found the Liberal Party and achieved so many electoral firsts for women in the inter and post-War decades. Secondly, it seeks to quantify and explain the extent of their achievements. It succeeds spectacularly in its first objective. The books draws on a mass of primary source material to produce a detailed yet highly accessible account of the major organisations and personalities that made up the early Liberal women's movement. Fitzherbert has used her status as an insider to the full. Both the scope and the style of her narrative have been enhanced by her access to the records and recollections of senior Liberal men and women. However, the book raises more questions than it answers in relation to the causes and the significance of Liberal women's early successes. |
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Fitzherbert argues that Liberal women built large scale, autonomous, rank and file, political organisations in most States during the pre-War and inter-War years, in response to the introduction of women's suffrage. In doing so, they developed valuable political skills as both electoral organisers and factional operatives. Increasingly, key Liberal men recognised the electoral importance of the contributions that Liberal women made, both as grass-roots organisers and as advocates of policies that appealed to female voters. Finally, when Menzies sought to form a united national Liberal Party in 1945, leading Liberal women were able to trade the autonomy of their established organisations for real influence within the new Party. As a consequence, the Liberal Party adopted a political persona that was appealing to women. In short, Liberal women built effective political organisations. Recognising this, some leading Liberal men were prepared to give Liberal women concessions in return for their support and in the hope of attracting women's votes. |
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The evidence Fitzherbert presents supports this thesis. And it does, as she claims, help explain why Liberal women achieved so many 'firsts' in terms of women's parliamentary representation. I sympathise with her contempt for commentators who happily took statements about women's low status within the Liberal Party at face value, although I find it ironic that she makes the exact same mistake in relation to women's involvement in the Labor Party. More importantly, there are underlying questions that are not adequately addressed by the book — questions that are critical to any comprehensive analysis of Liberal women's achievements. While Fitzherbert's political foremothers undoubtedly deserve greater recognition, the laudable desire to give them their due is no excuse for gilding the lily or for avoiding troubling terrain. |
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A commitment to feminism demands that historians examine both the foundations and the limitations of women's organisations. So, firstly, why were Liberal women able to build strong associations? Did their strength bolster the electoral prospects of conservative candidates, or was it simply that these associations did best when the tide of public opinion favoured the conservatives? Were Liberal women entirely dependent on their connections with male politicians for success? Or was Liberal women's involvement in non-party suffrage and charitable organisations critical to the effectiveness of their political associations? And secondly, how valuable were the concessions that Liberal women extracted from their men? Liberal women prized the autonomy of their associations for decades but traded it for representation within Menzies' new Liberal Party. What were the costs and benefits of this exchange? In particular, to what extent did women's increased representation within the Liberals' ranks, and Menzies' readiness to court women's votes, translate into specific policy outcomes favoured by Liberal women? |
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Fitzherbert certainly presents evidence that is relevant to these questions but she never systematically examines them. When such issues are addressed, the discussion tends to be relegated to the footnotes. These questions need to be fully explored as part and parcel of a broader analysis of the impact of sex and gender issues on the development of the Liberal Party. Fitzherbert has written Liberal women back into history but the task of re-writing the story of the conservative parties in the light of her research remains. |
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