The politics of the small purse: The mobilization of housewives in interwar Australia

The Housewives' Associations were the largest women's organizations in Australia during the interwar years and were the first consumer-watch agencies. This article examines the gendered economic identity they cultivated in successfully mobilizing women under the banner of free-market economics against the protectionism of the mainstream political parties and the labor movement. In challenging the dominant economic discourse, they asserted the claims of consumption to the same status and recognition in the functioning of the economic system as the overwhelmingly masculine forces of capital and labor. In the process, they also threw into question the relevance of class as a basis for women's political activism.