Women experiment down under: Reading the difference

Questions of difference in women's writing, of what might constitute a female specificity and a female difference in comparison with writing by men, particularly in relation to language and literary form, are items on the agenda of feminist discussion of women's writing in Australia and New Zealand as they are in some European and North American circles. These questions are also seen as important by some women writers and some publishers, although it is arguable that the debate has its own resonances in the Antipodes where, if women's presses and other small presses are marginalised in relation to dominant publishing, it should also be remembered that the larger Australasian presses are themselves marginalised in relation to British and American firms.'