From

c. 1926

Occupations

Feminist organisation and Social action organisation

Alternative Names

• Central Women's Department of the Communist Party of Australia (also known as)
• Militant Women's Group (also known as)

Summary

The Militant Women's Movement was the preferred name of the Central Women's department of the Communist Party of Australia. It's official publication was the newsletter/journal The Working Woman. was first published in 1928.

The Movement's activities included: organising women's conferences in Sydney and Melbourne; organising demonstrations and disrupting public meetings convened by bourgeois women's organisations; activity in the Women's Unemployed Worker's Movement and the Militant Minority Movement and running candidates for municipal and State elections. They organised the first Australian International Women's Day rally in Sydney on March 25, 1928.

Membership included such women asJean Thompson, Joy Higgins, Edna Ryan, Hetty Weitzel (Ross), Mary Lamm (Wright), Edna Cavanagh and Alice McConville.

Sources used to compile this entry: Booth, Simon, Verity Burgmann, Stuart Macintyre, Andrew Milner and Matthew Ryan., Reason in Revolt: Source Documents of Australian Radicalism, University of Melbourne; Monash University, 2006, http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/home.htm; Daniels, Kay, Murnane, Mary, Picot, Anne and National Research Program (Australia) (eds), Women in Australia : an annotated guide to records, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977; A History of International Women's Day in words and images, 1997, http://www.isis.aust.com/iwd/stevens/contents.htm.