It's good to see so much history in the media coverage of Federation. Old photos of founding fathers, crowds in heavy Edwardian dress, and 1901 cityscapes remind us of how much we've changed. Perhaps not our constitution - but certainly our society and the built environment are dramatically different in 2001.

Yet in those old photos and reprinted texts of stirring Federation speeches a significant part of Australia is conspicuously absent. There were no founding mothers. Women were effectively excluded from the decisions leading up to Federation, as they were from all positions of power in public life.

Ironically, although Federation led swiftly to the extension of the right to vote and the right to stand for parliament for all Australian women except Aborigines, women exercised these new political rights cautiously.

Since Federation female voters have more often than not adopted a conservative attitude to change. When women voters have supported change it is where they have had a chance to shape the debate.

The 1999 republican referendum was no exception. Fewer women than men voted yes. If women had supported the yes case as strongly as men, it may have got up. Why the gender difference? It should not be explained in terms of the demeaning stereotype of female readers as mindless captives of women's magazines with their obsession with British royalty.

Perhaps the gap is better explained by the failure of the republican movement to include women fully at every stage, to ask their views and listen to their concerns. A mother struggling to support a couple of children on a low and irregular wage is unlikely to respond actively to an academic argument about the reserve powers, however elegantly phrased. She may well, however, welcome an invitation to a local community event where, while the children are enjoying themselves designing a republican logo, her opinion about being an Australian is taken seriously.

When I'm challenged about my prediction that, properly consulted, most women will want a republic, I hark back to a time in our history where women in all circumstances throughout Australia did support radical change.

At the beginning of 1972, the position of Australian women had hardly advanced since Federation. The Depression and the aftermath of the Second World War had all but destroyed the achievements of the early feminists and that talented minority of women who had moved early into the professions and other influential positions. Women, despite their heroic wartime efforts, had been put firmly back into their officially sanctioned place, the home.

In 1972, with scant resources, no experience, and virulent opposition from community leaders and the media, a small group of women - young mothers, students and age pensioners - were able to spark a movement for women's equality that took off nationally, helped elect the Whitlam government and ensured that it delivered on its promises to women.

Coming from nowhere, the Women's Electoral Lobby in a few months had branches in all states, in remote country towns, in Darwin, Cairns and Launceston. In every federal electorate in 1972, candidates answered the lengthy and confronting WEL questionnaire, because they knew that winning the seat depended on it.

With that bit of history firmly in mind, we are about to establish an Australian Republican Movement women's network for women all over the country, especially in country towns and outlying suburbs. It will operate through forums organised by local women's groups. I envisage that women will discuss not only various models for an Australian head of state, but what sort of new and improved community life we might have in a republic, what sort of artistic expression it might inspire. Will we have a republican domestic architecture as enduring, practical and distinctive as the Federation house?

In another hundred years, how would we like the visual images of 2001 to appear to our great grand-children? When they look at the photos of the year in this decade when we celebrate our republic, there will be plenty of women, in the front rows as well as making up the crowds?

Susan Ryan is deputy chairwoman of the Australian Republican Movement. She was a founding member of the Women's Electoral Lobby, and was Minister Assisting on the Status of Women in the Hawke cabinet.