Content warning: this presentation will refer to eugenics.

To steal from E.P. Thompson in a way he would have deplored, I am seeking to rescue conservative feminists from the enormous condescension of posterity! Although they have had greater scholarly attention in recent years, we know more about their activities through various groups (for instance, the National Council of Women, the Liberal Party and the Racial Hygiene Association) than about them. My project aims, through a collective biography, to present six feminists who, in various ways, contributed to the history of Australian feminist thought.

This project, dealing with a wide discrepancy of available biographical information, has several challenges, including the conceptual (How do I define conservative feminism? How is an agenda for change accommodated in a worldview that seeks to ‘conserve’?) and the structural (How do I discuss them as individuals and collectively?) To illustrate these challenges, I will use the ‘case study’ of one of my subjects, Ivy Deakin Brookes.

Zoom details:

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Meeting ID: 849 0058 9945 
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Bridget Brooklyn is a lecturer in the Politics, History and Philosophy discipline in the School of Arts, Western Sydney University. Her research interests are late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australian social and political history, particularly women’s political history. She is currently researching and writing a collective biography of conservative Australian feminism. Recent publications include ‘Eugenics and Feminism in early Twentieth-century Australia: The Work of Dr Mary Booth’, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, no. 30 (December 2024), 23-43.