Author/Editor: Joyce Stevens
Biography
Joyce Stevens has been an activist over many years in the left, union and feminist movements. In the early 70s, feminism was a powerful new political force and Joyce was intent on reconciling this with her experience of class politics. She helped to produce the first Women's Liberation newspaper in Australia, Mejane and Australia's first socialist-feminist magazine, Scarlet Woman.
She helped set up the Control Abortion Referral Service which established the first two women's health centres in Sydney - at Leichhardt and Liverpool. She worked for the Women's Employment Action Centre (WEAC) on its register of women in non-traditional jobs and in their attempts to establish a comparable worth case between pay rates in traditional female and male occupations.
Joyce became part of the section of the CPA working for a renewal of its "socialist vision", drawing on feminist, environmental, Aboriginal and multicultural aspirations. In 1991 she supported the dissolution of the CPA believing that new forces and forms of organisation were needed for the renewal of left politics.
In 1996 Joyce received an Order of Australia (AM) for "service to social justice for women as an activist and writer".
She is the author of A History of International Women's Day in words and images (1985), Taking the Revolution Home - Work among Women in the Communist Party of Australia 1920-1945 (1976), Lightening the Load - Women and Work - A History of WEAC 1982-1989 (1991) and Healing Women - A History of Leichhardt Women's Health Centre, (1995).
Website: http://www.isis.aust.com/iwd/stevens/contents.htm
Awards
1996 Order of Australia (AM) for "service to social justice for women as an activist and writer"
Books published by, or available from, Spinifex
|
