Australia has a long-standing association with the protection and creation of women's rights. Australia was the second country in the world to give women the right to vote after New Zealand in and the first to give women the right to be elected to a national parliament. Women in Australia with the notable exception of Indigenous women , were granted the right to vote and to be elected at federal elections in Australia has also been home to several prominent feminist activists and writers, including Germaine Greer , author of The Female Eunuch ; Julia Gillard , former prime minister; Vida Goldstein , suffragist; and Edith Cowan , the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament.
Laws against sex discrimination exist and women's units in government departments have been established. Australian feminists have fought for and won the right to federally funded child care and women's refuges. The success gained by feminists entering the Australian public service and changing policy led to the descriptive term 'femocrats'.
Germaine Greer's novel The Female Eunuch became a global bestseller and a highly influential text in the feminist movement. It discusses and challenges the role of Australian housewives as a homemaker, which Greer suggests leads to a repression.
The predominate critical theory of feminism in Australia is that male dominance of business, politics , law and the media has resulted in gender inequality. Joanna Murray-Smith , a Melbourne-based newspaper columnist claimed in a column that 'feminism had failed us'.
Miranda Devine and Cathy Sherry have consistently argued that feminism has been a mistake and failed to liberate. Australia has and has had several notable feminist authors, academics and activists whose work has been recognised internationally. Perhaps most widely recognised is Germaine Greer, whose book The Female Eunuch was held in high acclaim after its publication.
