The personal qualities of women in the Australian consciousness are humanity and courage. But public attitudes make a mockery of this: women in Australia have a lower social standing than their counterparts in such comparable countries as England, the United States and the other democracies.

Miriam Dixson turns to our colonial beginnings and finds a past steeped in negative feelings about women. She argues that we must, in the first instance, look at the males who were our founding fathers—the puritanical and self-doubting elite, the convicts, the working class and the depressed Irish. To make up for their own feelings of emptiness, these men tried—largely unconsciously—to ensure that their women felt even less complete as human beings than they did. Small wonder that women in Australia today have difficulty in finding a sense of their own worth.

The Real Matilda invites us to ask new questions about our history. In doing so, it illustrates some of the special features that mark the relationship between men and women in Australia.