International Women’s Day Rally promotes a feminist icon
The Melbourne International Women's Day rally on Thursday 7 March is organised around justice, safety, and respect for all women. The image chosen to promote it could not be more apt.
The artwork for this year's rally was inspired by an "Ex libris" bookplate from 1930 depicting Jean Daley, a union delegate for the Hotel and Caterer's Union who organised working-class women to fight sexism between 1910s-1940s.
The bookplate depicts Jean standing upon a book as a soapbox. She was a leading orator at Yarra Bank, speaking out against the high cost-of-living and opposing conscription and later became an early campaigner for a maternity allowance for women workers.
The Jean Daley bookplate is held by the Castlemaine Art Museum.
On the museum’s website, Christine Bell, Honorary Curator of the Bookplate Collection at the State Library of Victoria, offers a biography of Jean.
“Jean (originally Jane) Daley was born in September 1881 in Mt Gambier, South Australia, the daughter of a man who was an early member of the Amalgamated Shearers’ Union. She was nine during the 1891 shearers’ strike of 1891, and so grew up in a politically alert household.
“After schooling in Portland, she went to live in Melbourne, but after the birth of her child in 1906, she returned to live with her parents at Wallacedale, near Hamilton. In 1909 she returned to Melbourne and became active in Labor politics, her focus on general industrial subjects from 1914 onwards coinciding with the duration of World War I.
“Bitterly opposed to Billy Hughes’s conscription campaign, she organised the Labor Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee in October 1916, and was a speaker at its Yarra Bank demonstration on 21 October. She campaigned avidly against the high cost of living, alcohol consumption and the dangers of venereal disease. Her activism extended to the Militant Propaganda League, and she became an executive member of the Victorian Socialist Party.
“During the 1922 federal electoral campaign Daley stood for the Kooyong electorate as Labor’s first endorsed electoral candidate. She did not win, of course, but, undeterred, she continued to campaign actively for pacifism, the industrial organisation of women, and the protection and education of children. When she died in November 1948, an obituary noted that “when Miss Daley is not working for the ALP, she is dreaming about it”.
This year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) rally theme is “End the Silence”.
“For too long the patriarchy has tried to silence us. This International Women’s Day we won’t be silent. This International Women’s Day we’re speaking out and using our voices for justice, safety, respect and equality for all women.”
The rally is just one of many events occurring in Victoria during the Women’s Rights at Work Festival. There’s the celebration of 40 years of the fabled Anna Stewart Memorial Project; a women’s welding workshop; a Feminism at the Hall debate on gender equality and much more.
Check out the full list of events below.
The original Jean Daley bookplate, at the Castlemaine Art Museum.