Spinifex Press
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
Taking The Revolution Home

Out Now
The Aerial Letter

The Aerial Letter


Nicole Brossard

What characterizes women as a group is our colonized status. To be colonized is not to think for oneself...in short, not...


Murmurations

Murmurations


Carol Lefevre

For the first time since he’d left the island he thought of the starlings massed at dusk in the winter trees behind the...


Symphony for the Man

Symphony for the Man


Sarah Brill

1999. Winter. Bondi. Harry’s been on the streets so long he could easily forget what time is. So Harry keeps an eye on...


In Defence of Separatism

In Defence of Separatism


Susan Hawthorne

In Defence of Separatism is a timely book. When it was first written in 1976, although it was an important subject of...


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