Office of Women's Affairs (1974 - 1977)

Formed under the leadership of Sara Dowse, the Office of Women's Affairs (OWA) was the bureaucratic support unit of the women's adviser to the Prime Minister, a position created in 1973 under the Whitlam Labour government. OWA became the state apparatus through which many Australian feminists worked to achieve measures of women’s advancement in equal employment opportunity, legislation and law reform, health funding, refuges, childcare, arts and sport, media representations and school curricula.
The OWA played an important role in securing government funding for for women's services. The Office was originally located in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. However, in 1977, under the Fraser Liberal government, bureaucrats announced the Office was to move to the Department of Home Affairs, representing a significant loss of status given Home Affairs was ranked 26th out of 27 ministries in seniority. Dowse resigned over this move, having always argued for the importance of having the Office located in the chief policy-making agency of the govermnet (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). The Office (by then called the Office of the Status of Women) was restored to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1983 when Labour returned to office; prominent feminist academic Anne Summers was then appointed its head.

Souces: Sawer, M. 1996 and Caine, B. 1998

Previous and Subsequent Entities

 1974 - 1977 Office of Women's Affairs
       1977 - Office of the Status of Women

Related Corporate Bodies

• Interdepartmental Working Group Taskforce on Migrant Women (1977)

  Chaired the Interdepartmental Working Group Task Force on Migrant Women in 1977, an important review which informed the Galbally Review of Post-arrival Migrant Programs and Services.

Related People

• Dowse, Sara (1938 - )

  Sara Dowse was appointed the first head of this office, created in 1974

  [1974 - 1977]

• Taperell, Kathleen Joan (1939 - )

  Head of the Office of Women's Affairs/Office of the Status of Women

  [1977 - 1983]

Reports

• Office of Women's Affairs, Interdepartmental Working Group On Women's Affairs: Report of Task Force on Migrant Women, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, November 1977. [ Details... ]

See also

• Caine, Barbara (ed.), Australian Feminism: A Companion, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, 607 pp. [ Details... ]
• Sawer, Marian, 'Femocrats and Ecorats: Women's Policy Machinery in Australia, Canada and New Zealand', United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1996, http://www.unrisd.org/html/op/opb/opb6/op6.htm. [ Details... ]