Australia's first Women's Liberation protest at Adelaide University in 1970 against Miss Fresher
The Adelaide Women's Liberation Movement had begun at Adelaide University in 1968, inspired by women active in Young Labor and the anti-Vietnam war campaign.
The first Women’s Liberation protest in Australia was staged at Adelaide University in 1970 – against the annual Miss Fresher contest at part of the university’s orientation week.
In 1969, Warren Osmond, a tutor in politics at the university, in an article for student newspaper On Dit, drew a parallel between Miss Fresher and the Miss America Pageant that had been picketed by New York radical women in 1968.
His question as to whether it was time for “a new feminism” was answered in March 1970 when about 50 women calling themselves Women’s Liberation protested against Adelaide University’s Miss Fresher.
Among the group was politics tutor Anna Yeatman who said that they were protesting against being seen simply as objects of male desire: “sex slaves … be gaped at by pathetic, goggling men”. The media frenzy included Channel 9 interviewing Yeatman and evening newspaper, The News, predicting: “Women's liberation is quickly shaping as a major world issue of the seventies”.
The Adelaide Women's Liberation Movement had begun at Adelaide University in 1968, inspired by women active in Young Labor and the anti-Vietnam war campaign. They were frustrated about their role in these male-dominated groups. Yeatman, Anne Summers and Julie Ellis gave first voice to the movement with feminist newsletters.
After the media exposure from the Miss Fresher protest, public meetings involved the broader community and led to the Adelaide Women's Liberation Movement having a home at Bloor House in Bloor Court off Currie Street, Adelaide.The Adelaide Women's Liberation Group took part in the first Women's Liberation conference in Melbourne in 1970. and wrote a manifesto in 1971.
Women's Liberation in Adelaide was the catalyst for the Women's Health Centre at Hindmarsh, The Rape Crisis Centre, Women's Studies Resource Centre, Abortion Action Campaign, St Peters Women's Community Centre, and Women's Health Centres at Christies Beach and Elizabeth. They lobbied for women's studies in tertiary education, women's to be represented in parliament, a working women's centre to protect women's working rights, and the women's pace movement.
Bloor House, providing a space for women to express personal political ideas and to get feedback and support, moved to Eden Street in Adelaide and then to Mary Street, Hindmarsh, where it was closed in 1989.
