The Dawn (feminist magazine)

Dawn

Front cover of the first edition, 15 May 1888
Editor	Louisa Lawson
Frequency	Monthly
Year founded	1888
Final issue	1905
Country	Australia
Based in	Sydney
Language	English

The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women was an early feminist journal published monthly in Sydney, Australia between 1888 and 1905. It was first published 15 May 1888 by Louisa Lawson using the pen name of Dora Falconer. The subtitle was later changed to A Journal for the Household. It became the official publication of the Australian Federation of Women Voters.

Louisa Lawson left her husband in 1883 and relocated her family to Sydney. There she supported her children through various jobs, including working as a seamstress and running a boarding house. During this period she was introduced to women's suffrage. In 1887 she purchased the Republican, a journal dedicated to Australian independence and, the following year, in 1888, she founded the Dawn.

From the outset the Dawn was intended as a mouthpiece for women. In the first edition, Louisa Lawson, writing under the name of Dora Falconer, wrote:

Every eccentricity of belief, and every variety of bias in mankind allies itself with a printing machine, and gets its singularities bruited about in type, but where is the printing-ink champion of mankind's better half? There has hitherto been no trumpet through which the concentrated voice of womankind could publish their grievances and their opinions ... Here then is Dawn, the Australian Woman's Journal and mouthpiece.

Nevertheless, the Dawn soon hit opposition: the Dawn was produced by an all-women team of editors and printers, and this fact angered trade unionists in the New South Wales Typographical Association, in part because women were paid substantially less than men. In fighting the Dawn, the association argued that the discrepancies in pay were such that men would be unable to compete, as women would be "… able to work for half the wages a man would require to keep himself and family in comfort and respectability", as well as arguing that the work was too dangerous for women to engage in. The association attempted to boycott the publication, and at one stage a member visited their offices to "harangue the staff" – only to be removed after having had a bucket of water thrown on them by Lawson. Lawson won the battle through patience and "stern resistance" – eventually the boycott lost momentum, and the Dawn continued as it had before.