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The women's movement in Australia in the 1970s has been documented with books, academic papers and video clips from television news bulletins.

Like most histories, it is text-based, augmented with images and voice recordings.

But what really stimulates the emotions and memories of a time of great change are the objects of that time: what Alison Bartlett calls objects of social change.

Some of the objects that signify the changes to women's lives in the 1970s are bras, overalls, tampons, protest placards, the gestetner machine, a film-makers' clapperboard and various badges, vinyl records and book covers.

Professor Bartlett is Discipline Chair of Gender Studies in the School of Humanities.  She and co-editor Margaret Henderson have just launched their new book Things That Liberate: An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer .

"Objects are not generally looked at by historians," Professor Bartlett said. "It is more the field of anthropologists. But we shouldn't overlook material culture and the power of objects to evoke the emotions and politics of their time."

The bra - and its mythical burning -- became a symbol of the women's movement; overalls were often the clothing of choice, as they represented both resistance and freedom, but then when women entered bureaucratic jobs as ‘femocrats' power dressing was the thing; the gestetner was a desk-top copier which was invaluable for printing pamphlets; many women took to film-making in the 1970s as a medium for their politics, hence the clapperboard is one of the featured objects; and specific badges, placards, music and literature all arouse memories of particular political campaigns, protests, defining moments and enlightening knowledge.

The book had its roots in a consultation Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson did for the National Museum of Australia. They were asked to gather information to propose a collection of objects from the women's movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

"We talked about material culture and the stories embedded in these things; things that are disappearing as the women who owned them are downsizing their homes or even dying, with their possessions being dispersed," Professor Bartlett said.

"Sadly, the Museum's exhibition didn't get off the ground, but it inspired us to look for our own collection of objects and call for essays about things that represented the women's movement."

The authors have collected and edited the essays, many of which are written as memoirs while others are scholarly social histories.

Professor Bartlett has contributed a piece on bras, particularly apt as she has done a lot of research on breastfeeding and its place in society.

"I also took part in a Reclaim the Night march in Brisbane in the 90s where women took off their tops and marched bare-breasted," she said. "The bra, in all its guises, has a very important place in this history."

Material culture provides a novel form of understanding social history and Professor Bartlett will present a fascinating collection of things that changed Australian women's lives in a lecture, Objects of Social Change: the women's movement and things that liberate , on Tuesday 20 August in the Webb Lecture Theatre at 6pm.

The lecture is presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies and is free but please book your seat at ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/bartlett