ABSTRACT
The much-used category of ‘migrant women’ is, in itself, fairly meaningless. On analysis, it throws up the inadequacies of our current theorising about the three major dimensions of gender, ethnicity and class. This chapter attempts some preliminary observations about interrelationships between these three dimensions. Women tend to disappear in discussions about migration, as immigrants often disappear in discussions about class and about women. One of our central themes in this book is the need to recognise and counter such slips. At the 1980 Women and Labour Conference, three women from the Italian workers’ organisation, FILEF, gave an interesting paper about Italian women and political activism. Acculturation to Australian norms usually entails political neutralisation for people who come from societies where political debate and activity are part of everyday life. Feminism in Italy, as elsewhere, developed as a predominantly urban middle-class phenomenon, over the last fifteen years or so.
