Women's agency in Australia's first fertility transition: a debate revisited

Australia’s Fertility Transition: A study of 19th-century Tasmania

“…McCalman's (1988) study of female patients at a large public hospital in Melbourne shows that abortion was common in Melbourne in the late 19th century. In Adelaide also, several cases of abortion by a well-known abortionist, Madame Harper, were reported in the local newspapers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Anderson and Mackinnon 2015).…”

“…Historical sources of the time show women played a major role in the historical fertility decline in all the Australian colonies, due to changes in their roles in the family and in society that were occurring at this time. A recent article examining women's roles as agents in fertility decisionmaking concludes they were central agents in Australia's historical fertility transition (McDonald and Moyle 2018)-an argument also made by Cook (2000) and Anderson and Mackinnon (2015).…”

Women as Agents in Fertility Decision‐making: Australia, 1870–1910

“…McCalman's () study of female patients at a large public hospital in Melbourne shows that abortion was common in the late nineteenth century. In Adelaide, a number of cases of abortion by a well‐known abortionist, Madame Harper, were reported in the local newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Anderson and McKinnon ).…”

“…The modal number of children fell from eight for the 1847–51 birth cohort to five for the 1857–61 cohort and to three for the 1872–76 cohort. Therefore, while others have emphasized the role of immigrants in Australia's historical fertility transition (Ruzicka and Caldwell ; Anderson and MacKinnon ), the transition in Australia was clearly the outcome of the behavior of this first large generation of universally educated, Australian‐born women and men.…”

“…The idea of women being agents in fertility decision‐making is also implicit in contemporary gender equity theory (McDonald ). For Australia, the argument that women were central agents in the historical fertility transition has been made by Cook (), Anderson and Mackinnon (), and Moyle (). We build on these and other earlier works by placing the argument within Giddens's () theory of structuration.…”