Women Waging War: The National Council of Women of Victoria 1914-1920

Women's organisations in Victoria during the Great War were subject to serious tensions that opened into bitter divisions lasting well into the postwar period. This article will focus on some of the issues that divided member organisations within the National Council of Women of Victoria (NCWV), particularly the battles between feminist pacifists and imperial pro-war loyalists over questions of peace and free speech, recruitment and conscription, attitudes to Germans, and between middle-class and working-class housewives over means of reducing the cost of living. It argues that existing differences within council were accentuated by the leaders' patriotic priorities, undermining previously shared ideals about peace and wellbeing. These tensions within council gradually faded in the postwar years, partly because dissident organisations disbanded or chose not to affiliate, and partly because council leaders joined erstwhile opponents in a commitment to League of Nations ideals of peace and arbitration.