Co-operative women organised through the Women’s Co-operative Guild, which was formed in the UK in 1883 and encouraged the formation of women’s guilds at each consumer co-operative.
The Women’s Co-operative Guild encouraged women through education to actively participate in their own autonomous guilds and sponsored women as candidates in co-operative elections. The Women’s Co-operative Guild promoted its movement internationally with guilds being established in Amsterdam in the Netherlands by 1900 and the French Women’s Co-operative League in 1903. The International Co-operative Women’s Guild was formed in 1924. It had 17 affiliates by 1940 and became an advocate for the political rights of women, world peace and international disarmament.
Women’s Co-operative Guilds spread to Australia with an early example being the Bendigo Co-operative Women’s Guild, which was established in 1905. A significant women’s guild was the Victorian Women’s Co-operative Guild of Victoria, that operated in Melbourne from 1907 to 1915. The Guild affiliated to the National Council of Women, supported campaigns for equal pay for women and signed an Australian petition to the UK House of Commons in 1912 for UK women’s suffrage.
Many Australian consumer co-operatives in coalmining and metropolitan areas formed women’s guilds with the aim of educating women in co-operative principles and promoting the co-operative movement. The Australian women’s guilds formed a national organization in 1936, with all guilds affiliating to it by 1945.
In NSW, the guilds went beyond the supportive role expected by the consumer co-operative movement, with some guilds frequently challenging the male-dominated movement by criticising their leadership and organising conferences to promote alternative paths for consumer co-operatives.
The divisions along gender lines persisted after the Second World War. One key guild activist was Margaret Jones, born in Salford in the UK in an ardent co-operative household. Jones saw the consumer co-operative movement as a women’s movement because of the consumer power of women and the significant employment of women in the stores. With the decline of the consumer co-operative movement in Australia following the Second World War, the co-operative women’s guilds in Australia folded. While the International Co-operative Women’s Guild dissolved in 1966, the Co-operative Women’s Guilds continued in the UK until 2016.
For further details, please download Greg Patmore, Nikola Balnave and Olivera Marjanovic, A History of Australian Co-operatives 1828-2023.
