Dale Spender, who has died aged 80 after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was the author of the internationally acclaimed Man Made Language (1980), in which she argued that language is highly gendered and both reflects and perpetuates a male worldview. The book was an instant classic and is considered by scholars and feminists to be highly relevant today.
As well as an accomplished author, Spender was a feminist activist, researcher, broadcaster and teacher in her native Australia and during a period of some 15 years in London. She edited more than 30 books and was involved in founding a number of publishing imprints, series and journals – most notably, in 1983, Pandora Press, a feminist imprint of Routledge, where she was editor-at-large.
For Pandora, she wrote Mothers of the Novel (1986), which explored the work of female writers of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries who had been ignored by male historians and literary critics, and produced an accompanying series of republished novels by authors of the period.
Later in the 1980s, she was the founding editor of Pergamon’s Athene series and a commissioning editor of the Penguin Australian Women’s Library series, for which she edited The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women’s Writing (1988).
She became the Australian representative for a number of international academic journals, a member of various advisory boards, taught in universities in many countries, gave more than 300 keynote speeches at events worldwide, and contributed regularly to the media. In 2001 Spender co-founded the Australian charity Second Chance Programme Fundraising Group for homeless women.
A middle child, Dale was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, to Florence (nee Davis), a comptometrist, and Harry Spender, an accountant. She attended Burwood Girls high school, in Sydney, and subsequently Sydney University. In 1974 she started lecturing at James Cook University, north Queensland, before moving to live in London, where she studied at the University of London for her PhD, which was awarded in 1981, and began writing Man Made Language.
In the late 1970s she was part of a small group of women called the Feminist Education Group, running courses on feminism at the Roundhouse and Drill Hall in London. Her thesis and research resonated with many of the women in the audience.
Funny, kind, generous and eccentric, Spender was known for wearing purple, in honour of the suffragettes. I once saw her at a meeting in London wearing a purple coat and matching tights, and carrying a purple suitcase.
In 1980 Philippa Brewster, an editor at Routledge, was due to publish Man Made Language, and Spender made the case to her for setting up a feminist imprint at the publisher. They co-founded Pandora Press, and one of its first titles was Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985).
Spender’s best known quote is from Man Made Language, and she would repeat it whenever feminism was under attack: “Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practised no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions ... for safety on the streets, for child care, for social welfare ... for rape crisis clinics, women’s refuges, reforms in the laws. If someone says, ‘Oh, I’m not a feminist!’, I ask, ‘Why? What’s your problem?’”
Her work also focused on forgotten and silenced women, and the neglect of girls in the schooling and higher education system. Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal (1982) was a study of disadvantage and prejudice in women’s education.
Her book Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (1995) was one of the first to look at the impact of the internet on women’s lives. Other influential titles included Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: From Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich (1982) and Feminist Theorists: Three Centuries of Women’s Intellectual Traditions (1983).
In the late 1980s Spender returned to Australia, and settled in Brisbane. Always sociable, she loved nothing better than getting together with feminist friends and colleagues for dinner, her warmth and good humour spreading across the table.
She is survived by Ted Brown, her partner of 45 years, her sister, Lynne, and her brother, Graeme.
• Dale Spender, feminist scholar, teacher and writer, born 22 September 1943; died 21 November 2023
