‘We Marched in the Streets One Day, Wrote Submissions the Next’: Feminism, Domestic Violence and International Women’s Year

The Whitlam government and International Women’s Year (IWY) coincided with the feminist ‘discovery’ of domestic violence and the start of the feminist refuge movement, beginning with Elsie, a refuge founded in March 1974. In June 1975, the federal government committed to funding refuges, and their support for women’s services has since been historicised as a major achievement. We revisit IWY from the perspective of feminists involved in establishing the first refuges. This history has mostly been told via Elsie, who were not awarded an IWY grant. The origins of other refuges–such as Bonny Women’s Shelter (now Bonnie Support Services) in Western Sydney, and Christies Beach Shelter in Adelaide–reveal a more positive assessment of the impact of IWY and the Whitlam government. Yet as evidenced at the Women and Politics Conference in 1975, domestic violence was not yet properly established as a major social issue, nor were refuges wholly endorsed as a feminist response.