67 Glebe Point Rd today; now the enigmatic Pamakon Café (photo: Ian Stephenson)

by Ian Stephenson, Bulletin 3/2022 (May)

The third site nominated by the Glebe Society for a Blue Plaque is Women’s Liberation House, 67 Glebe Point Rd. The building is important for its ability to represent the early days of second-wave feminism in Australia. First wave feminism was focused on suffrage and legal obstacles to gender equality, second wave feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.

In 1967, the first Women’s Liberation organisations were formed in major north American cities like Berkeley, Boston, Chicago, New York City and Toronto. Women’s Liberation started meeting in Sydney in Glebe and Balmain in 1969, but the catalyst for growth came in 1970 when Barbara Levy made premises at 67 Glebe Point Rd available as headquarters.

Women’s Liberation House had a meeting room, reading rooms where the latest newspapers, magazines and books from abroad could be read and workshop areas. It was a collective where women could analyse the structural biases against women in Australia and work to change them.

Professor Ann Curthoys recalls discovering at Women’s Liberation House ‘that your personal feelings of inadequacy were not because you were inadequate but because society made you as a woman feel inadequate’ and realising that women tended to look for male approval and didn’t seek or value solidarity with other women. She has recorded that ‘from these two basic points all sorts of other ideas emerged. For instance, analyses of the importance of women having financial independence, of the relationship between the workforce and family life, of male objectification and fundamental disrespect for women, and a growing emphasis on women’s cultural expression, and much else. All these came out of those meetings.’

In 1971, Australia’s first women’s liberation newspaper in Sydney, MeJane was produced at 67 Glebe Point Rd. Women involved at Women’s Liberation House included Lesley Lynch, Sandra Hawker, Martha Ansara (an American filmmaker), Coonie Sandford (another American), Lyndall Ryan, Camille Guy (a New Zealander), Mary Murnane, Bessie Guthrie, Suzanne Bellamy and Ann Curthoys.

The content for the nomination is largely derived from Ann Curthoys’ Radical Glebe: a ‘Glebe Voices’ talk, 22 February 2012.