Background

Home: About SECASA: About SECASA: History of CASA

By Lesley Hewitt and Carolyn Worth

The late 1960's and early 1970's saw social change movements proliferate in the Western world. There were Civil Rights marches in the United States, student riots in France and anti Vietnam war demonstrations in many countries. In Australia this period of social unrest and activism translated into the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Student Movement, the New Left and the Anti Vietnam War Movement with rallies and demonstrations taking place regularly. Social action groups started up around the country.

Many of the women involved in these forms of political activity found that the prejudice and discrimination that they faced as women was no different in these groups to what they had experienced in other more traditional organisations. Groups of women began meeting to discuss issues of particular concern to them. This included their disappointment with the hierarchical, male dominated format of the left wing groups. These women initially formed "consciousness raising" groups, but by the early 1970's specific groups of women were meeting around issues of domestic violence, community run childcare services, rape, abortion law reform, equal pay, access to pub bars, sexist advertising, education, home birthing and communes. According to Gisela Kaplan (1996) Melbourne had 34 women's liberation groups by 1971.

Many of the women involved in these groups believed that the changes they were working toward were in the forefront of a revolution that would change the world. A primary focus of debate was on whether or not to accept Government funding in case to do so meant a compromise of principles and goals. Men were often seen as actively opposing changes in women's lives in order to maintain their own relative power. Women were seen as taking charge of their lives and the rightness of causes was seen as sufficient for their success. The driving idea was one of social revolution not social reform.

Much of this activity took place before and during the life of the Whitlam Labor Government that came to power in 1972 after 23 years of conservative Liberal Party rule. However, arguably unavoidably, from the very beginning the Whitlam Government established a bureaucratic structure that started to co-opt the radical women's liberation groups. In 1974 the Labor Government offered $2.2 million to assist in the International Women's Day celebrations. This fund was administered by the National Advisory Committee for international Women's Year and generated fierce debates about the wisdom of accepting Government funding, Whitlam appointed a personal adviser on women's affairs and established the Women's Affairs Section within the Department of Premier and Cabinet. The Government re-opened the national wage case, lifted the luxury tax on oral contraceptives, established the supporting mother's benefit and maternity and paternity leave provisions and made a commitment to Federal support for childcare. Whatever shortcomings the Government had as an economic manager in three short years it changed the culture of metropolitan Australia. In among the many changes that took place a structure was established for a strong feminist element in the Federal bureaucracy.

With the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in December 1975 there was a move back to the right. The idea of radical groups changing the world and state intervention towards that end altered totally. The radical right moved into power and slowly cut state aid for many creative and innovative programs that had developed to challenge the status quo. But in relation to some feminist issues the expectation had been established that the Government would provide financial assistance to bring about a change - rape reform, domestic violence and child abuse were amongst the issues that maintained legitimacy. By the time the then Office of Women's Affairs was downgraded in 1977 and moved to the newly created Department of Home Affairs with far reduced access to Government power brokers, there were feminist bureaucrats in Canberra who were part of a growing network of women at State and Federal level sympathetic to a broad range of feminist aims. This, plus the universal appeal of causes such as opposition to domestic violence, child abuse and sexual assault paved the way for the, albeit slow, development of an Australia wide systems of refuges and sexual assault centres. As Dowse notes "Who can argue against rape law reform without appearing to be in favour of rape? Likewise, it is hard to argue against the extension of facilities and reforms to protect battered wives and children" (Dowse 1983, p. 221)

It is against this international background of social unrest and the Australian federal political system that the various Australian states developed services for rape victims. These services developed within a few years of each other during the seventies. The particular models of service delivery that ensued resulted from a combination of local factors set against an international and federal context. This paper details the history of sexual assault services in Victoria. Histories of the development of sexual assault services in NSW (Carmody, 1990) and Western Australia (Deller, Fatin and Stewart, 1979) have been described elsewhere.

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