Young Women in the Australian Women’s Movement

This article explores and documents the role of young women in the contemporary Australian women’s movement. Through case studies of two very different groups of young women, working in submerged networks in the community and on university campuses, it aims to suggest the diversity of contemporary young feminist praxis. Further, it argues that the work that these young women are doing in discursively creating and maintaining a feminist political space is crucial to the future of the movement. Based in constructivist ‘new’ social movement theory this article suggests a way forward from the so-called ‘generational debates’ of the 1990s and argues that, through their own unique processes of collective identity, young women who are active in the Australian women’s movement are dealing with the conflicts that are essential to the movement’s survival.