Sylvia Kinder a driver of Adelaide Women's Liberation push for 1970s Australian firsts in women's studies

Feminist singer and later Adelaide Festival (1998, 2000) director Robyn Archer with editors Susan Sheridan (centre) and Susan Magarey, at the launch of the Australian Feminist Studies journal at Adelaide University in 1985.
Image courtesy Susan Magarey 

Adelaide Women’s Liberation boosted feminist awareness in the 1970s with the Australian-first women’s studies resource centre and women’s studies tertiary courses at Adelaide and Flinders universities.

Teacher Sylvia Kinder was active in questioning the sexist practices within schools. Kinder and other concerned teachers started a women’s library as part of the liberation movement.

Books and papers were donated and interviews taped with South Australian feminists including Pat Ronald, Liz Byard, Anna Yeatman, Judy Gillett, Betty Fisher, Connie Frazer, Deborah McCulloch, Jill Mathews, Sue Higgins (Sheridan) and Gail Tauscher. The result was a Women's Studies Resource Centre– with a comprehensive feminist collection of 17,000 items to be used for education – that eventually found a permanent home in Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide (until it closed in 2015).

Largest enrolments in tertiary women’s studies from the early 1970s was at Salisbury campus of the South Australian College of Advanced Education, part of the graduate teaching diploma.

Susan Magarey was appointed to start a Research Centre for Women’s Studies at Adelaide University (the first Australian university to do so) in 1983. Besides its seminars and conferences, up to international level, the centre launched the Australian Feminist Studies journal in 1985, edited by Magarey and Susan Sheridan until 2005. In 1989 the Australian Women’s Studies Association, peak body for academic feminists, started at Adelaide University.

Women’s studies moved from Salisbury to the city campus of South Australian College of Advanced Education (later University of South Australia) in 1989 and became allied with Adelaide University where other feminist academics, including Carol Johnson and Carol Bacchi, taught individual women’s studies subjects, jointly supervised at postgraduate level with Flinders University.

In 1992, Adelaide University started a women’s studies department in the arts faculty. Magarey taught undergraduate courses in anthropology, education, English, history and including a special Honours option: “A history of feminist thought in the English-speaking West 1780–1980”.

Women’s studies at Adelaide University coped with a shortage of resources among upheavals, including a move to place it within the anthropology faculty, and ultimately a name change to gender studies. Although not as active in the community at Flinders University, Adelaide University women’s studies survived by keeping sound links with grassroots feminist groups and a student-centred professional course, with dedicated interdisciplinary feminist core subjects.