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AbstractThe Housewives' Associations were the largest women's organizations in Australia during the interwar years and were the first consumer-watch agencies. This article examines the gendered economic identity they cultivated in successfully mobilizing women under the banner of free-market economics against the protectionism of the mainstream political parties and the labor movement. In challenging the dominant economic discourse, they asserted the claims of consumption to the same status and recognition in the functioning of the economic system as the overwhelmingly masculine forces of capital and labor. In the process, they also threw into question the relevance of class as a basis for women's political activism.

Seeking to redirect working-class women's discontent but also genuinely outraged by post–World War I profiteering, Australian Housewives' Associations engaged in boycotts, cooperative buying, concessional agreements with businesses, and, increasingly, lobbying for representation of women in parliament and on all boards, tribunals, and committees of inquiry concerned with the home and the cost of living. Liberal and progressive women in Melbourne formed the first Australian Housewives' Association in 1915, but by the 1920s politically conservative women had reinvigorated the movement. This article examines the models these groups drew on for organization and strategy, and the visions of the ideal society that evolved in their work up to 1950. It argues that the Housewives' Associations demonstrate the permeability of boundaries between radical and conservative ideas and strategies in many feminist—or "female collectivist"—organizations.

Intro -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: The beginnings of the women's refuge movement in the 1970s -- Chapter 3: The domestic violence services movement in the 1980s -- Chapter 4: The domestic violence service system in the 1990s -- Chapter 5: Reforming the domestic violence service system in the 2000s -- Chapter 6: Ending domestic violence in the 2010s -- Chapter 7: Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.