Lilith 14: 2005

Editorial

Welcome to this fourteenth edition of Lilith, the only Australian journal dedicated to the publication of feminist history. This edition comes at an interesting and, in many ways, calamitous time for feminism. As we approach the tenth anniversary of the election of John Howard's aggressively conservative Coalition Government, we feel that many of the rights and freedoms for which feminists have struggled are currently under threat. Howard's Liberals have presided over a steady ideological shift to the right in Australia, capturing the terms of public debate and outflanking their progressive critics.

As usual, it is women who stand to lose the most from the Howard Government's politically, morally and socially conservative agenda. While any historian will tell you that clocks cannot be turned back, Howard's apparent desire to return to the sanctuary of a mythologised 1950s Australia is worrying nonetheless. Under the banner of 'family values', the last twelve months have seen the resurrection of 'debates' over abortion, the rights of single women and lesbians to be parents, and the so-called fertility crisis. In the course of such debates, women's identities have been increasingly re-tied to the family. Howard's 'baby bonus', for example – like Peter Costell's exhortation to women to have 'one for the country' - seems to hark back to the racist pronatalism of the White Australia era...