TY - JOUR
T1 - "A miserable sectarian spirit"
T2 - Sectarianism and the women's movement in early twentieth-century New South Wales
AU - Rademaker, Laura
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This article examines the sectarianism that divided feminist organisations in early twentieth-century NSW. In 1903, the Catholic feminist Annie Golding took legal action against the Protestant paper, The Watchman, accusing it of libel. Through an examination of the five leading women embroiled in the Golding affair, this article shows that women activists saw women's political loyalties as potentially divided, not only by questions of labour or free trade but also by religion. Although the feminist organisations the Women's Suffrage League (WSL) and Women's Progressive Association (WPA) each claimed non-sectarian status, in the debates surrounding the Golding case, their leadership proved willing to appeal to sectarian prejudices. When religious presses claimed to find sectarian division among women's organisations, leading feminist women themselves also quickly attributed their differences to religion and exploited what they considered women's natural piety for political gain. These findings contribute to a growing scholarship on the religious dimensions of women's public activism, revealing complex interactions between religion, politics, class and gender.
AB - This article examines the sectarianism that divided feminist organisations in early twentieth-century NSW. In 1903, the Catholic feminist Annie Golding took legal action against the Protestant paper, The Watchman, accusing it of libel. Through an examination of the five leading women embroiled in the Golding affair, this article shows that women activists saw women's political loyalties as potentially divided, not only by questions of labour or free trade but also by religion. Although the feminist organisations the Women's Suffrage League (WSL) and Women's Progressive Association (WPA) each claimed non-sectarian status, in the debates surrounding the Golding case, their leadership proved willing to appeal to sectarian prejudices. When religious presses claimed to find sectarian division among women's organisations, leading feminist women themselves also quickly attributed their differences to religion and exploited what they considered women's natural piety for political gain. These findings contribute to a growing scholarship on the religious dimensions of women's public activism, revealing complex interactions between religion, politics, class and gender.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85025644538&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5263/labourhistory.112.0175
DO - 10.5263/labourhistory.112.0175
M3 - Article
SN - 0023-6942
VL - 2017
SP - 175
EP - 190
JO - Labour History
JF - Labour History
IS - 112
ER -