Feminists on the University of Tasmania need to begin a fight to defend the women's officer position, following a proposal by the Student Representative Council to integrate the post's functions into the duties of a general welfare officer.
The proposal follows considerable discussion among student activists about the role of women's officers and women's rooms. The Hobart campus did not provide a women's room until a sustained campaign was run in 1997. In 2000, a man was elected as the Launceston campus women's officer. His supporters argued that he was as capable of providing services to women as a female women's officer.
Then in 2001, the Tasmanian University Union's SRC applied to the anti-discrimination board for permission to establish a men's officer.
The main argument raised in the SRC for abolishing the women's officer is that women's officers do very little, and what they do accomplish could be incorporated into the welfare officer's portfolio.
But this argument is based on a misunderstanding of the role of a women's officer. Women's officers should do more than provide welfare services. Where this is all they do — whether referring women to counsellors or providing free tampons — it is not surprising that there is room for the views of anti-feminist students to get a hearing.
The reason women students fought in the 1970s for campus women's officers and rooms was to gain resources to organise against women's oppression. Women do the majority of the cooking, cleaning and child-care in families, and on average receive lower wages than men. Every day, women face sexist propaganda which attempts to justify this inequality.
This situation cannot be overcome by providing more services and "stress free" areas. It can only be overcome through the mobilisation of women against sexist discrimination, and through the massive provision of publicly-funded alternatives to the work women provide for free within the family unit.
The post of women's officer on university campuses should be seen within this campaigning framework — as a feminist campaigns organiser, not an organiser of welfare services. For example, among the activities that campus women's officers need to involve themselves in are helping to build the two main annual feminist marches — International Women's Day and Reclaim the Night.
It is not enough to just refer women to rape counsellors — because until sexism is challenged by a strong women's liberation movement the number of women being sexually assaulted will continue to increase.
Women's officers' responsibilities cannot be incorporated into a welfare officer position. Those who support this concede that women do not have to organise against socially institutionalised oppression, that sexual assault will always happen and all we need are services to mop it up.
The reason that support for campus women's officers is falling is partly because few women's officer positions on campuses around Australia have been used as campaigning positions. Increasingly women's officers see themselves as just "making things better" and not as fighting against the system that fucks things up in the first place.
But without visible campaigning that challenges women's oppression, the idea that women's officers are largely irrelevant will continue to circulate and gain even broader acceptance.
This latest attack on the ability of Tasmanian women to organise to fight their oppression needs to be condemned by feminists around the country. But the best way for women to fight this attack, and others like it, is to get involved in campus women's collectives, and help make them organising bodies for women's liberation.
This is the way we can rebuild a strong women's liberation movement — one which campaigns for reproductive rights, is out there militantly every International Women's Day calling for an end to the second class status of women, and can counter the attacks from right wing forces who oppose and attempt to undermine women's rights.
BY SARAH CLEARY
[The author is the Hobart Resistance branch organiser.]