Michelle Arrow – författare

How the Personal became Political brings together new research on the feminist and sexual revolutions of the 1970s in Australia. It addresses the political and theoretical significance of these movements, asking how and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political?These movements produced a series of changes that were both interconnected and profound. The pill became generally available and sexuality was both celebrated and flaunted. Homosexuality was gradually decriminalized. Gay liberation and Women’s Liberation erupted. Activists established women’s refuges, rape crisis centres, and counselling services. Crucially, in Australia, these developments coincided with the election of progressive governments, who appointed women’s advisors and expanded the role of the state in the provision of childcare and other services. It was a decade of contestation and transformation.This book addresses the political and theoretical significance of these 1970s revolutions, and poses key questions about the nature of sweeping change. What were the key policy shifts? How were protests connected to legislative reforms? How did Australia fit into the broader transnational movements for change? What are the legacies of these movements and what can activists today learn from them? Scholars from several disciplines offer fresh insight into this wave of social revolution, and its contemporary relevance.This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Australian Feminist Studies.

From jitterbugging to ""Big Brother"", from the introduction of television to the rise of file-sharing, ""Friday on our Minds"" explores the ways popular culture has developed and changed in Australia. This book considers film, television, sport, music and leisure in relation to each other, rather than as stand-alone cultural forms. The book also pays significant attention to issues of consumption and audience engagement with popular culture through case studies. It is written by an award-winning author who was a presenter on the ABC TV history series ""Rewind"". In order to understand the massive social and cultural changes that took place in Australia since the end of World War II, Michelle Arrow examines popular culture through three main lenses: consumerism and the development of a mass consumer society; the impact of technological change; and, the ways that popular culture contributes to, and articulates, individual and collective identities. She provides an integrated account of changes in a range of popular culture forms, meanings, production and consumption.

How the Personal became Political brings together new research on the feminist and sexual revolutions of the 1970s in Australia. It addresses the political and theoretical significance of these movements, asking how and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political?These movements produced a series of changes that were both interconnected and profound. The pill became generally available and sexuality was both celebrated and flaunted. Homosexuality was gradually decriminalized. Gay liberation and Women’s Liberation erupted. Activists established women’s refuges, rape crisis centres, and counselling services. Crucially, in Australia, these developments coincided with the election of progressive governments, who appointed women’s advisors and expanded the role of the state in the provision of childcare and other services. It was a decade of contestation and transformation.This book addresses the political and theoretical significance of these 1970s revolutions, and poses key questions about the nature of sweeping change. What were the key policy shifts? How were protests connected to legislative reforms? How did Australia fit into the broader transnational movements for change? What are the legacies of these movements and what can activists today learn from them? Scholars from several disciplines offer fresh insight into this wave of social revolution, and its contemporary relevance.This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Australian Feminist Studies.

In 1970 homosexuality was illegal, God Save the Queen was our national anthem and women pretended to be married to access the pill. By the end of the decade conscription was scrapped, tertiary education was free, access to abortion had improved, the White Australia policy was abolished and a woman read the news on the ABC for the first time.The Seventies was the decade that shaped modern Australia. It was the decade of ‘It’s Time’, stagflation and the Dismissal, a tumultuous period of economic and political upheaval. But the Seventies was also the era when the personal became political, when we had a Royal Commission into Human Relationships and when social movements tore down the boundary between public and private life. Women wanted childcare, equal pay, protection from violence and agency to shape their own lives. In the process, the reforms they sought – and achieved, at least in part - reshaped Australia’s culture and rewrote our expectations of government.In a lively and engaging style, Michelle Arrow has written a new history of this transformative decade; one that is more urgent, and more resonant, than ever.Sales PointsThis book is the first to explore the impact of the 1970s on Australiansociety since Frank Crowley’s Tough Times: Australia in the seventies,published over 30 years agoMichelle Arrow was the joint winner of the 2014 NSW Premier’sHistory Awards Multimedia History PrizeShe was the first historian to read the archives of the Royal Commissionon Human Relationships, an extraordinary social inquiry that hadbeen almost entirely forgotten until now. Has led to an award-winning radio documentary and to this bookMany accounts of the 1970s focus only on economic and politicalissues where this emphasises changing relationships, more openness to sex and sexuality, looking at gay and lesbian activistsOne of the first books to address place of conservative anti-feminist activists at the time, such as Women Who Want To Be Women and the Festival of Light

The Whitlam government transformed Australia. And yet the scope and scale of the reforms for Australian women are often overlooked.The Whitlam government of 1972–75 appointed a women's advisor to national government — a world first — and reopened the equal pay case. It extended the minimum wage for women, introduced the single mother's benefit and paid maternity leave in the public service, ensured cheap and accessible contraception, funded women's refuges and women's health centres, introduced accessible, no-fault divorce and the Family Court, and much more.Women and Whitlam brings together three generations — including Elizabeth Evatt, Eva Cox, Patricia Amphlett, Elizabeth Reid, Tanya Plibersek, Heidi Norman, Blair Williams and Ranuka Tandan — to revisit the Whitlam revolution and to build on it for the future.