Feminism and the gendered politics of antiracism, Australia 1927-1957: From maternal protectionism to leftist assimilationism

Abstract

Feminists' campaigns for Aboriginal rights in Australia between 1927 and 1957 were complicated by their conflicting loyalties to empire, nation, sex, race and their own political agendas. These agendas were in turn shaped by the conceptual frameworks provided by the League of Nations and the United Nations: During the 1920s and 1930s, the convergence of maternalist feminism and imperial protectionism produced a political focus on the specificity of Aboriginal women's oppression as mothers robbed of their children and as sexually violated bodies. Aboriginal women thereby gained a political space to speak about the pain of being separated from their children and denied their rights as mothers...