Gender Equality and the Regulation of Intimate Relationships

This chapter concerns the regulation of intimate relationships by the nation-state in an age of globalization. The term intimate association involves a wide range of goods and principles, not only material but also of a spiritual, religious, symbolic and psychic character. The impact of globalization on the nation-state offers the promise of new spaces in which the identity and relationships of women in particular can be explored and defined in more open, egalitarian and autonomous ways than in the pre-globalization era. In part, these spaces are found in the increasing pluralism of western societies created through immigration and other forms of movement across borders. It would of course be a mistake to see this pluralism as an entirely novel phenomenon, even in a country like Australia, so often characterized as ‘white’ prior to the 1970s. Even before white conquest and settlement of Australia, movements of persons especially for trade to and in the north of the continent meant that its population was by no means homogeneous in racial, legal, linguistic or religious terms.1 There has never been a time of ‘one law, one language, one people’ in Australia. However, there is a difference in that modern societies value heterogeneity in more positive terms, and even as an aspiration, than have older societies.