Opposition to War

Women’s Political Association peace buttons WW1from womenworkingtogether.com.au

There has been an unbroken tradition of opposition to war by women. During WW1 the Women's Political Association (WPA) and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) established a tradition of seeing war and militarism more broadly than guns; connecting war automatically to hunger, want, gender violence, etc.

After the war this tradition passed to individual women such as Doris Blackburn, Doris McRae and Joy Manton. Vida continued involvement with the women’s and peace movements, later including later anti-nuclear activism.
In the 1930’s there was a large peace demonstration at the Bijou theatre in Melbourne with 35 organisations officially represented.

Picasso peace emblem, reproduced with the kind permission of WILPF

In the ‘70’s and 80’s there was Women’s Liberation and Save Our Sons. WILPF has been continually active since WW1. Today, groups such as Japanese for Peace, Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW), International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear War (ICAN), Women in Black (WIB) continue this tradition.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) are, with WILPF, still active. Are we?

Prejudice and Reason some Australian women’s responses to war
prejudiceandreason.com.au

I hope we can come together, online and in person, and document our stories of our heritage of the effects of war, the stories so seldom told.

I finish with another quote from Vida Goldstein from an open letter to the Women of Australia published in the Woman Voter 29 September 1914, at the start of the war:

‘Dear women of Australia, dear women of every shade of political and religious thought, come and let us reason together about war; the present war and war in general.’

from www.womenworkingtogethersuffrageandonwards State Library of Victoria

If they had come together four or five years earlier, before war was declared, who knows what they could have achieved?

Geraldine Robertson, October 2013