The Union of Australian Women (UAW) is a left-wing women's organisation concerned with local and international issues regarding women's rights, international peace and equality.
The UAW was established in Sydney on 31 July 1950 in New South Wales. Branches in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania soon followed. In 1956 a national UAW was set up, with an executive committee based in Sydney and representatives from each state organisation.
The UAW's self-published magazine, Our Women, mixed mainstream content such as recipes with news from the trade union movement, tracts on women's equality and articles on Aboriginal rights. Although the UAW was never officially affiliated with any political party many of its founding members were in close contact with Communist Party of Australia. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) kept the organisation under surveillance during the 1950s and '60s.
The UAW campaigned for women's rights to work, with equal pay and conditions, affordable childcare, Indigenous rights and the environment, and strongly protested against Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. The UAW vigorously protested against the South African apartheid movement.
International Women's Day was almost solely organised by the UAW in the early years after World War II and the UAW organised the first United Nations-sponsored international conferences for women in 1975, International Women's Year.
The UAW enjoyed success in the 1950s and 1960s with their combination of the conventional and subversive, being a "product of both mainstream and left culture" but were considered conservative by the post-Vietnam Women's liberation movement.
By the late 1980s and 1990s, the UAW began winding down. Currently the Victorian UAW continues. The UAW (Vic) is currently the National body as well as the Victorian body.
History
The UAW was established in Sydney on 31 July 1950 as the successor to the New Housewives' Association (NHA), with the first branch formed in New South Wales, soon followed by Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania. The Northern Territory had a branch revived from the defunct Darwin Housewives' Association, but purportedly attracted few members due to concerns of Communist affiliation.
In 1956, the national UAW organisation was formed, comprising an executive committee based in Sydney and representatives from each state organisation. While executive decisions on national/international issues and state issues were planned at the national and state levels respectively, the bulk of activities were carried out by suburban (and regional) sub-groups in each state (e.g. Sunshine and Mildura respectively in Victoria). Through this grassroots approach, the UAW was on one hand able to connect housewives and mothers in local communities to national or international issues beyond the home, and on the other, provide the organisational backing to campaign for improvements in their members' immediate surroundings—such as child-minding centres in Rockhampton.
Maternalism
The UAW's name, as opposed to the NHA's, reflected their aim to attract "all women", recognising that those who stayed in the post-war workforce were no longer necessarily housewives and would want to identify otherwise.
Nevertheless, the domestic focus persevered, especially through the 1950s, shaping what has come to be called UAW's "maternalist" approach. The working-class mothers and housewives who comprised the bulk of earlier UAW membership did challenge traditional maternalism by recognising the necessity for women to work, and in Victoria overcame traditional maternalist policies by advocating local and subsidised childcare for all working women. Nevertheless, they subscribed to the underlying notion that children were a woman's responsibility, which informed their stance on issues from living costs to environmental damage, and especially war. The UAW's significant peace activism stemmed from the perceived universal concern of mothers over the mental and physical well-being of children.
Maternalism provided the ideological backdrop for domestic activities, such as apron-making and millinery demonstrations, to comfortably coexist alongside equally important discussions on serious political issues in local group meetings. Similarly, the UAW's self-published magazine, Our Women, juxtaposed mainstream content such as recipes, light-hearted chat and fashion tips against the latest workers' union news, tracts on women's equality and articles on Aboriginal rights.