‘The women's lobby’: Networks, coalition building and the women of middle Australia

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Abstract
The ‘women's lobby’ or the ‘powerful feminist lobby’ has been held responsible for a range of evils including the undermining of the traditional family, public expenditure on community services, social engineering and the imposition of ‘political correctness’. To what extent is there a ‘women's lobby’ working from inside or outside government to influence public decision‐mating? In this paper we explore this question, using data from a social network analysis of the Australian women's movement conducted in 1992–3. Our findings are that there is a large, very loosely connected network of organisations engaging in advocacy on behalf of women. Density of ties is less than is found in a comparable study of the Canadian women's movement but there are more ties between non‐government groups and government agencies. Issues of organisational philosophy have inhibited the development of a ‘peak body’ for the non‐government women's movement and led to reliance on issue‐specific coalitions. Latterly, awareness of increasing fragmentation has led to a series of attempts to create more effective national networking.

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