Before the early 1970s my life, outwardly, was that of a middle-class woman. Inwardly I was burning up, aware of being out of step with acquaintances and friends about the lack of women’s rights contrasted with men’s. In my pre-marriage business career I was reasonably succesful (for those times), quickly rising to secretary to the managing director, then to assuming responsibility for the running of the company – office, stores, and repairs sections – during frequent absences of the managing director overseas and interstate. Of course I received lower wages than the men whose work I oversaw. In response to my protests I was told it was inevitable, as the government made the rules on wages. The firm took this attitude despite often publicising my capacities in trade journals.
In 1935 I took six months’ leave of absence to marry. Yet I did not return to business. My husband, increasingly successful in his own career, thought my return to paid employment would signify his inability to provide for me. This outlook was prevalent then, and I understood it. Instead, I joined several women’s organisations. I found that none constructively challenged sex-discriminatory practices. Then an older friend suggested joining her in working to improve conditions for women prisoners in Long Bay Jail. The prison matron asked me to become the special visitor of a young woman serving a life sentence, who had no visitors. A friendship developed between the young woman and myself. Hers was a crime of passion. She shot her young husband in a fit of jealousy when he continually went out at night without telling her where he was going, while she stayed home with three young children. Long conversations with her, and shorter discussions with other more experienced women at the prison, introduced me to lives I had not known of. I became aware that some women felt they had to lie and cheat to survive, yet fundamentally they were rather noble people.
At this time the overseas political situation occupied public attention. The Spanish civil war and new regimes in Italy and Germany featured prominently. Wanting to see how lifestyles differ outside Australia, I persuaded my husband to take a year off for travel. We set out in late 1938 – by ship in those days. We went by cargo vessel, stopping at many cities and towns along the coasts of countries on the route to Europe. We left an Australia where the majority opinon expressed repugnance toward Nazi Germany, but a sizeable minority thought perhaps Hitler was only trying to right the wrongs inflicted upon the German people in the Treaty of Versailles, and reports of atrocities against Jews may have been anti-Nazi propaganda. In England there was the same division of opinion about Hitler’s Nazi regime among the people we met. However after Hitler’s troops marched into Prague in March 1939, defiant of the Munich agreement with England and France, we heard no open support again for Hitler, except in Germany.
English newspapers contained similar evidence of male arrogance and insensitivity to women’s rights as in Australia. One morning newspaper reported findings of a medical committee inquiring into whether or not women should be permitted some form of pain relief at childbirth. By a majority decision the male members of the committee decided women should not have relief, as pain may be necessary to establish a mother’s love for her child. The two women on the committee recorded a minority finding in favour of pain relief during childbirth.
Leaving England, we drove through Europe. In Berlin I visited the Foreigners’ Service Office where I recieved information on the Nazi system and Nazi women’s organisations. We grew wary of the claimed advantages of the procedures. When visiting the British Consul in Frankfurt, the reception room was crowded. As the consul opened his office door to admit us, everyone in the room waved papers in an effort to attract his attention. They were German Jews wanting British visas to escape. We left Germany in June. World War II erupted in September when we were two days out of Colombo en route to Fremantle.
Back home, when I voiced concern about discrimination against women in many areas of everyday life, I was usually greeted with laughter, condescending smiles or anger. An evening spent with other than close friends,during which I expressed views on current affairs invariably ended with a departing male guest patting me on the shoulder and patronisingly advising me not to worry my head about such matters – I had two wonderful children and a devoted husband so should content myself with home affairs. That was in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Toward the end of 1946, our younger child had an undiagnosed serious illness; we were told he was dying. In an agony of guilt at having sent the child to pre-school at three years old, I dropped all outside interests including women’s organisations, visiting him daily in hospital for nearly twelve months. On recovery he needed attentive home care for many more months.
Then in 1949 some friends and I decided to sit in at English lectures and drama lectures at Sydney University. We asked no one for permission – but sat enthralled through the classes, daring but eager to learn. Following this experiment, we later applied and received official permission to pay fees and continue attending lectures through 1950. During the lectures I was frequently appalled by the unconscious sexism of the statements of some male lecturers, such as ‘Jane Austen’s novels, like those of most women novelists, contain grammar of low quality’. Probably this was because Jane Austen used non-sexist language which was perfectly acceptable at the time of her writing – like ‘everyone has their own books’, rather than ‘Everyone has his own book’, the latter being foisted upon the English language by Fowler.
During the first half of the 1960s, ‘confrontation’ and increasing misundersatnding between Indonesia and Australia motivated me to attend Bahasa Indonesia language classes. Over three years of study of the Indonesian language, history and customs, including study camps and seminars attended with Indonesian university students in Australia, I became aware that some of the misunderstandings between the two countries were exaggerated through not only different background and customs, but also through the ambiguities stemming from lack of understanding of the nuances in the respective languages. Such divisions and misunderstandings seemed to me analogous to the lack of understanding often arising between men and women owing to sex roles imposed from birth onwards, together with our literature and language using male gender for persons of both sexes; this relegates females, in the eyes of girls and boys and women and men, to a secondary and less important status.
Di Graham (c) 1986
Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1909, Di Graham died at the age of 89, shortly before her ninetieth birthday. She wrote this essay in 1986, reflecting upon her engagement with the Women’s Movement and how she was precipitated, from birth, into women’s rights activism. For her work in advancing the rights of Indigenous Australians, particularly in education, in 1978 she was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal, and in 1980 for her work on women’s rights she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM).
