Preview

How Effective Are the Legal and Non-Legal Responses in Addressing the Changing Needs of Women?

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
3796 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Effective Are the Legal and Non-Legal Responses in Addressing the Changing Needs of Women?
How effective are the legal and non-legal responses in addressing the changing needs of women?

The road to equality for women in Australian society is long but not without merit. However have females after two hundred and eleven years reached their destination? This is debatable but it is clear that there have been changes, both legal and non-legal. The answer lies in the exploration of the effectiveness of the mechanisms in place to determine where women have been, where they are now and where they are going in the future.

Life at the beginning…..

The journey commences on the 26 of January in 1788 when 191 female convicts arrive on the first fleet at Sydney Cove. The attitude was that to be female you were immediately subservient to your male counterpart, be it a husband or father. Unmarried women were looked down upon by society and subsequently they sought to be betrothed as many times their future welfare was at stake. Single women relied on the support of relatives and were seen as recipients of charity rather than fulfilling any useful purpose. Generally Women were acclaimed to be less intelligent and hence destined to a life of domesticity and child rearing. Ironically lower class women had more rights as they could acquire a job but it was generally out of necessity and they were low paying and menial. Employment included; professions assigned to women such as teaching, nursing or piecework.

Society claimed and legally stated that women were not individuals and hence did not have the opportunity to vote and had no voice in the political direction of their country. Women had no economic rights and were "unito caro" or one entity with there husband. They did not even have the right for sexual consortium but were expected to meet the needs of their husband. Living in a male dominated society it was very difficult for women to express their opinions especially if they contradicted their husband beliefs. Consequently their education was restricted to



References: 1. Brogan, Michael; Siow, Veronica; Ejsak, Therese, LEGAL STUDIES,Port Melbourne, Heinemann, 2000 2. Anderson, Maureen; Conroy, Jeffrey: Keese, Ian; Lowe, Anne, RETRO ACTIVE AUSTRALIAN HISTORY, Milton Queensland, John Wiley and Sons, 2000 1. Merit Students Encyclopaedia, 1967ed, s.v "women"

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The evolution of the rights of woman in Australia owes much to successive waves of feminism, or the woman’s movement. The first of these took place in the late 19th century and was concerned largely with gaining the right to vote and to stand for election into parliament. The second wave of feminism took place in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on gaining equality with men in other areas, such as work, the law and general social standing. These protests for the changing rights and freedoms of woman targeted many different aspects of life and presented a broader challenge to traditional ideas of woman’s rights. This therefore led to more fundamental changes in the daily lives of mainstream Australian woman.…

    • 1482 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Apush Chapter 1 Summary

    • 1422 Words
    • 6 Pages

    * Since there was no requirement for academic education for women and very little opportunity for women to use such as knowledge (women learnt for the improvement of their mind) education depended strongly on the individual inclinations of the women herself, being able to more or less choose their own…

    • 1422 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    It was the political journalist, George Megalogenis who wrote in his book Fault Lines that it was ‘wogs and women’ who laboured to create modern Australia (2003, p.28). Megalogenis posits ‘wogs’ as the low paid, unskilled or under-skilled ‘working’ class, post World War II migrants. The Marxist principle of a reserve army of labour – which includes unskilled as well as casual or precarious labour and women – proposes that, as supply of labour is constant and abundant; the wages of this group are kept low. Horizontal inequality has resulted from women’s double burden of being underpaid for performing the same private work as men as well as the seemingly sole responsibility of unpaid, domestic labour. Concurrently, ongoing engendered disadvantage is on display in the high levels of vertical inequality whereby opportunities for the advancement of women within market society and the broader economy are stifled. These issues are further propagated by state policies that, for example, attach parental leave payment levels to the lower income of the household further relegating women to the lowest pay levels and entrenching the inequity that the gender pay gap creates. Attempts at economic empowerment and longer term prosperity that come from uninterrupted engagement in the workforce as enjoyed by men are further sabotaged by this disincentive. This essay will argue that both classism and gender based inequity have intersected to create serious financial and social disadvantage to women. Moreover, this paper will explore how both formal and informal institutions; structure and agency - whilst providing basic rights - have intertwined to create ongoing class and gender based inequality for women within market society.…

    • 1881 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Apush Chapter 7 Summary

    • 4437 Words
    • 18 Pages

    Growing distinction between workplace and home led to distinction in societal roles of men and women. Women had long been denied legal and political rights, little access to business, less access to education at high…

    • 4437 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    During his time as prime minister Gough Whitlam, and his government were able to transform the rights of indigenous Australians through reformed policies. • Additionally Gough Whitlam introduced the policies, which changed the rights of women and challenged the social norms of the current time. Gough Whitlam transformed women’s rights in three ways. Firstly the government created funding for women’s health and welfare, secondly policies were changed to give women greater opportunities in the workplace to accumulate money, and finally Whitlam attempted to reform the social perception of women. Gough Whitlam provided essential funding for organizations specializing in women’s health and welfare.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Australian feminist movement of the post war era paved the way for the rights of women international. Despite the act of breaking through the barrier of inequality, an alternate perspective could be argued that had American feminist influences not occurred at such a drastic level, the rights of Australian women would not have progressed further than what they originally were. To support this notion, there will be a prominent examination of the causes, long, and short term consequences of the feminist movement. The alternate possibility of a stall in progression will be analysed and discussed throughout the duration of this presentation.…

    • 102 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Australian history has been tied to British history since its discovery by James cook in 1778, and its colonial occupation, this creates issues of identity for Australians reading their history. To an 18th…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Bibliography: Greenwood G & Grimshaw C. (eds) ‘Documents on Australian International Affairs, 1901-1918’ in HIST 329:Australia and the World: An International History, Resource Book 2008, Armidale, University of New England, 2008, pp 11-27.…

    • 3387 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    I have selected the Women’s rights reform because I admire the bravery of women who stood up for their equality and rights during the 19th century even though they were often abhorred on. During the 1800s, the position of women was legally and socially inferior to men.. They could not vote and own property if they are married. When the abolition and temperance movement arose in the 1830s, women saw this as a chance to get involved. Soon enough, Women reformers began to publicize not only for temperance and abolition, but also for women’s rights, saying that men and women are created equal and should be treated as such under the law. Eventually the three movements merged together. Not only did women benefited from this movement, but slaves as…

    • 213 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Blackrock Essay

    • 2399 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The marginalisation of women is barely acknowledged in Australian society even today. Women, by law, have equal rights and status to men in Australia, presenting an egalitarian image. Despite this fact, detrimental attitudes towards women in society are still prevalent, portraying them as mere…

    • 2399 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Belonging In The Crucible

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Stephanie Johnson: Miss Ford, your writing is mostly about women’s place in our contemporary Australian society and their role more particularly in parliament and leading the country. My question is, in your opinion, do you believe that women are vilified in Australian politics due to traditional patriarchal ideals and values still in place?…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mr Griffen Murphy

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Victorian Britain was in almost all ways a period of oppression and exploration of women. Women in Britain during the Victorian age were seen largely as second class citizens in a so called “man’s worlds.” Women lacked the right to vote and the own property and inherit money once they were married, and where seen as the property of their husband to do almost anything that they so pleased. Though there are many reasons for why we can see that Victorian Britain was a time of exploration for women, in this essay the main points that will be focused on will be, women in the workplace, the role of women in marriage and the view that society had on women and their role within society. After looking at these points one will clearly see that Victorian Britain was a period of oppression and exploration of women.…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A lot has changed in the last 100 years. Women have taken each step towards equality that they have been allowed. “Looking back over the century, Nancy Woloch stated, "Women of the twenty-first century, thus inherited an unfinished agenda, one initiated by second wave feminists in the 1960’s and 1970’s but incomplete as the century ended”, (Bowles, 2011).…

    • 1173 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    History and Memory Speech

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages

    History is traditionally seen as the study of past events, which is recorded with facts, data and statistics. These recorded documents are everlasting pieces of the past. However, these documents on their own fail to present the intricate picture of the dreadful events that have occurred. The emotions and sorrows felt by the individuals are continually overlooked and sidestepped in these historical recordings due to their attempt to remain as unbiased as possible by maintaining an objective view. It is the memories of others that then add substance to the historical archives, which allows people to empathize and connect with those moments in time.…

    • 850 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Women, in their relentless pursuit of gender equality, have evolved from the early modern period to the postmodern world. Whereas early modern women simply focused on getting a good education, modern women focused on acquiring equal legal rights as men and postmodern women focused on expanding upon a woman's role in society from that of a traditional housewife to a woman with equal opportunity as a man.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics