“Women’s Business”: What is It?

Deborah Bird Rose writes of women’s business as including the knowledge, songs, dance, designs, story and myths which belong to and are transacted by women. The Ngarrindjeri applicants who asserted the existence of “women’s business” believed that disruption to the proposed bridge site would be a violation of that business, but they were not prepared to place certain parts of their stories in the public domain. The dispossession of land, depopulation through disease, the male character of the frontier and the prurient interest shown in women’s bodies have all shaped what is the business of women and, more particularly, the power of women to pursue their business. The Ngarrindjeri applicants who asserted the existence of “women’s business” believed that disruption to the proposed bridge site would be a violation of that business, but they were not prepared to place certain parts of their stories in the public domain.