Constructing women's history: The audience

Whatever the appropriateness or otherwise of the response of the history profession to the commemoration of the bicentenary of European settlement, perhaps one constructive outcome has been an increasing self-consciousness about the process of writing history. The scholars who have engaged in the plethora of conferences and publications of 1988, together with their critics, have begun to show a concern about the processes of history-writing, its purposes and underlying political agenda, which has been uncommon in Australia. Feminist historians have always been forced to be reflective about their task, by the very nature of their interpretative challenge to mainstream history. The activities of the year nevertheless have led feminists to review women's history within a fresh critical context. One point of departure for such an examination might be the questions: For what readership, for what audience do we write women s history? Whom do we wish to persuade of its relevance and significance? My own interest in these issues has stemmed from contrasting my involvement in the writing of the 1888 volume of the ten-volume series Australians: A Historical Library, with the task of presenting a range of lectures on women's history to audiences somewhat removed from history in the academy.