Exploring the history of gender bias in the law, this book draws on the most recent scholarship in the historical research of law in Australia. It analyzes the impact of the law on women; on legal constructions of gender and race; and on feminist campaigns to redress grievances.

Part I sexuality: controlling (hetero-)sexuality - the implementation and operation of contagious disease legislation in Australia, 1868-1945; understandings of justice - Australian rape and carnal knowledge cases, 1876-1924; "Lady friends" and "sexual deviationists" - lesbians and law in Australia, 1920s-1950; reforming the law of rape - incursions into the masculinist sanctum. Part II punishment: from stridency to silence - the policing of convict women, 1802-1853; legislating lunacy and the female lunatic body in 19th-century Victoria; captives of their bodies - women, law and punishment, 1880s-1980s. Part III family: marriage and divorce before the Family Law Act, 1975; Australian colonial law and the construction of childhood - the example of Western Australia, 1829-1902; Aboriginal families and the law in the era of assimilation and segregation 1880s-1950s; feminists and legal change in New South Wales, 1890-1916; husbands, widows and "family property". Part IV citizenship and the state: women as fringe-dwellers of the jurisprudential community; the state's education of "women"; women workers and the liberal state - legislative intervention in the workplace, 1880s to 1980s; law in white Australia, 1900-1970; feminism in white Australia; aliens, marginalized citizens and the Australian welfare state, 1945-1975.