WISENET Journal 35, July 1994, pp. 23-24.
by Margarita Bowen
Today a respected writer on social issues, with a list of books to her credit, Margaret-Ann Franklin is an honorary research associate at the University of New England (UNE), where she graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science and contributed actively to the teaching programme during her years with the Department of Sociology.
Margaret-Ann has given her energies to a number of important causes - equity forAboriginal people, the opposition of churchmen to the ordination of women, the question of gender relations in rural communities.
From the time of her early studies, for a law degree at the University of Melbourne - a conservative institution in those days - Margaret-Ann was searching for a more socially sensitive interpretation of justice.
Her involvement with Aboriginal concerns began in 1968 when she joined Armidale's Association for Aboriginal Advancement. She then helped organise a tutorial scheme for Aboriginal children which was later funded by the Commonwealth. In addition she ran a voluntary legal and welfare service, and in 1972 was appointed a representative of the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service.
Since 1976, when she published a history of race relations in Australia (Black and White Australians, Heinemann Educational), Margaret-Ann has written extensively on Aboriginal issues, particularly about Aboriginal health and racism in Australian society. She is now a member of the Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Margaret-Ann has just completed another book, Assimilation in Action, an examination of Australia's assimilation policy using as a case study the Armidale Association for the Assimilation of Aborigines, which was started in 1956 by members of UNE's Women's Association. The book looks at the assimilation policy of the time from both Aboriginal and white perspectives.
Henry Reynolds, Professor of History and Politics at James Cook University, and himself a distinguished author on Aboriginal history, describes Margaret-Ann's new study as:
'the very best sort of local history - it has a strong sense of the particular and the specific but is related to the wider world and the broader themes. The experiences in Armidale in the 1950s and 1960s were part of an important phase of white-Aboriginal relations. I am not immediately aware of any comparable work written by white Australians involved in the 'civil rights' type of organisations of the period.'
Assimilation in Action will be published later in the year [1994] with funds provided by UNE and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).
Margaret-Ann has also published extensively on the status of women in Australian society. She has edited two books on women and the church and contributed chapters to two studies of rural women. Recently she edited, with Leonie Short and Elizabeth Teather, Country Women at the Crossroads, to be published later in 1994 by the University of New England Press. It looks at gender relations in rural Australia, women and land care, and many of the problems and needs of rural women.
Margaret-Ann has also taken a keen interest in the status of women in other countries, particularly in China, a country she first visited in 1975 with a UNE study group. I remember being with her then - when Europeans were a rare sight for rural Chinese - crossing the language barrier easily with her smiles and caring manner. In 1986 she led a delegation of Australian women on a study tour through China.
A member of many women's organisations, including WISENET, Margaret-Ann in 1986 was awarded by Armidale ZONTA their first Woman of Achievement award for the work she had done to raise the status of women locally, nationally and internationally. She is now actively involved, with her husband Dick and friends, in organising Armidale's first U3A - University of the Third Age.