She I Dare Not Name: A spinster's meditations on life

by Donna Ward

Summers’ list was on the money and, fortunately, by the time her book came out Gough Whitlam was in the business of ticking off everything on that list. He abolished university fees and introduced financial assistance to help women get educated for work. He initiated the single mother’s benefit, put the pill on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, established a path to equal wages and maternity leave, brought about no-fault divorce, recognised de facto relationships and based property settlement on a fifty-fifty split of the family home and total superannuation. Women could choose not to marry badly. Single mothers could survive the crush of divorce. But that’s not all. He funded women’s health centres, refuges and rape crisis centres, he brought in free universal healthcare and established the Office of Women’s Affairs (which, in 1983, Bob Hawke renamed the Office of the Status of Women and appointed Anne Summers to lead, which she did until 1987, when she became editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine).