From the late seventeenth century, women of the elite classes in Ireland began to share culinary and medicinal information with loved ones across the country and, frequently, across the Irish Sea. Over the course of the Ascendancy period recipe sharing became … Continue reading
Finding the women in the South Australian Field Naturalists
Almost three years ago I decided to write an academic history article. I’d always been intrigued by a story I had written about in my Honours thesis thirty years previously. It was about the South Australian Fauna and Flora Protection … Continue reading
Wine, women’s magazines and consumer culture
Consumption figures confirm that Australia became a wine-drinking country in the 1970s. The groundwork for the shift from beer drinking to wine consumption though was laid in the 1950s. Beginning in August 1955, the Wine Overseas Marketing Board mounted a … Continue reading
Women’s Grass-roots Activism
A decade ago, I began researching Millicent Preston Stanley (1883-1955), the first woman elected to the NSW parliament (1925-1927). My initial focus was on the dramatic strategies of her feminist campaigns such as the ‘Horses Rights for Women’ demand for … Continue reading
Coercing British women and girls into domestic service, 1918-1928
Elmarí Whyte explores how British women and girls were coerced into domestic service in the 1920s, and the role of working-class parents in that coercion. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available … Continue reading
Women, Puerperal Insanity and the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum
Alexandra Wallis examines the nineteenth-century use of “moral treatment” to enforce traditional gender roles on female patients suffering postnatal depression. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available now on open access here. … Continue reading
Women, race and Queensland’s 19th-century sugar plantations
Bianka Balanzategui examines the presence of women, white and of colour, in the “masculine” spaces of tropical north Queensland’s sugar plantations. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available now on open access … Continue reading
‘Fattening’ history: Reading archives of fat women
Jessie Matheson explores how “out-sized” rural women used the women’s pages of a 1930s newspaper to counter discourses about their bodies. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available now on open access … Continue reading
Women preachers: What to wear?
Kerrie Handasyde explores how dress played an important role in perceptions of the religious identity and authority of the first women preachers in Australia. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available now … Continue reading
Rethinking women’s political practices with Luce Irigaray
Belinda Eslick considers how Luce Irigaray’s philosophies can transform the way we think about the radical nature of women’s political history in Australia. This post is based on an article that appears in the 2020 issue of Lilith, available now on … Continue reading