The Australian Women's Register

Mary Owen was founding Coordinator of The Working Women’s Centre Melbourne, 1975-1986, when it was absorbed into the Australian Council of Trade Unions. She was a staff member of AAESDA (Association of Architects, Engineers, Surveyors & Draughtsmen of Australia), 1965 -1975 and a member of La Trobe University Council 1983-1990. She was appointed Deputy Chancellor of La Trobe University 1989. A founding member of Emily’s List, Mary Owen was also a Member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) for over forty-three years. She represented WEL on many Government committees, making a significant impact on policies advancing the status of women, especially the fight for equal pay.

In 1986 the first Mary Owen Dinner was organised in Melbourne to celebrate Mary’s retirement. Held annually, the event lasted twenty years. There was always a female keynote speaker and the audience, normally in the order of 600 women, wearing the feminist colours of purple, green and white, was a sight to behold. The last dinner was held in 2005.

Mary Owen was a very early supporter of the Australian Women’s Archives Project, which began as a community based organisation’s response to a request from Mary Owen for help with conserving the records of her long and varied contribution to public life.

Born in 1921, Mary was a woman who effected change – and made Australia a better, more equal place for all of us coming after her. She died 23 March, 2017.

Jane Elix was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby from 1985-86.

Mavis Jackson was a microbiologist. She founded International House (University of Melbourne) and served as President of the Lyceum Club from 1973-75.

Mavis Freeman worked with Macfarlane Burnet during the 1930s and, with Burnet, succeeded in identifying the microbe responsible for Q fever. She became only the second female scientist to join the AIF and served in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War II, undertaking research into safe methods for blood transfusion in malarial regions.

Galbraith, a prominent Victorian naturalist, joined the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria in 1923 and in 1970 was awarded their Australian Natural History Medallion. In 1950 she published Wildflowers of Victoria which by 1970 had gone to three editions.

In February 1890, Dr Constance Stone became the first woman to be registered with the Medical Board of Victoria, paving the way for medical women in Melbourne, Australia, Working mainly with women and children in free clinics, she gave low-income women the opportunity to be treated in private, free from the embarrassment of examination in front of male medical students. She founded the Victorian Medical Women’s Society and was a member of a number of women’s organisations, including the Victorian Women’s Franchise League. Her major achievement was the foundation of the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital.

Jane Fletcher published a number of books on nature and nature study, and broadcast on 7ZL Hobart and 3LO Melbourne. In 1934 she became the first woman to lecture to the Royal Society of Tasmania. She was an outstanding bird observer with a particular interest in crakes and rails.

Teacher, kindergarten activist, and philanthropist, Ada Mary a’Beckett was born in Adelaide in 1872. Throughout her career she worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in biology at the University of Melbourne as well as teaching at various schools throughout Victoria. She was very closely involved in the kindergarten movement, helping to establish the Kindergarten Training College in Kew. Ada was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 3 June 1935, and had a kindergarten named after her the following year. She died in 1948 in Melbourne.

Amy Rivett was a medical practitioner who specialised in gynaecology. She was a disciple of Marie Stopes and advocated birth control. During WWI she worked in several hospitals in Brisbane. After the war she moved into private practice, first on her own and then, from 1946, with her brother Edward in Sydney. She was a founding member of the Queensland Medical Women’s Society.

Mary Rivett was trained as a psychologist and lectured briefly at the University of Sydney. With her sister Elsie she formed the free Children’s Library and Crafts Club in 1922. In 1934 they formed the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement which after their death became the Creative Leisure Movement.

Jean Macnamara, born in 1899 at Beechworth, Victoria, and a graduate of the University of Melbourne, was a physician at the Children’s Hospital Melbourne in 1922 and 1923, a consultant and medical officer to the Poliomyelitis Committee of Victoria 1925-1931, and medical officer, Yooralla Hospital School for Crippled Children 1928-1951. During 1931-1933 she held the Rockefeller Foundation travelling scholarship, furthering her studies on poliomyelitis. While in America she learnt about the virus myxomatosis and it was largely due to her efforts that the Australian Government held field trials testing the virus as a means to eradicating Australia’s rabbit problem. She was on the part-time staff of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research 1933-1937. As Mrs Annie Jean Connor (she married Dr Ivan Connor in 1934), she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to the welfare of children in 1935, and was known as Dame Jean Macnamara.

Clarke, a scientist with the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre at the University of Melbourne from 1982, received a Personal Chair in Botany at the University of Melbourne in 1985 and became Lieutenant Governor of Victoria in 1997.

Clarke was the first female Chairperson of the CSIRO, a position which she held from 1991 until 1996.

Suzanne Cory (AC FAA FRS) is an Australian molecular biologist of international renown. She has worked on the genetics of the immune system and cancer and has lobbied her country to invest in science.

She was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research between 1996 and 2009, after spending eight years as Joint Head of the Molecular Biology Unit with her husband, Jerry Adams, before her appointment as Director.

In 1998 she received the Australia Prize, in 2001 the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science, followed by the Royal medal in 2002 and the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize in 2009. She was the first elected female President of the Australian Academy of Science and took office on 7 May 2010 for a four-year term. In 2011 the Suzanne Cory High School, a public high school that caters to 800 students from years 9-12, opened in Cory’s honour in 2011.

Dame Margaret Guilfoyle was the first woman to be appointed to federal Cabinet with portfolio, when, in 1975 she became Education and then Social Security Minister in the Fraser Liberal Government. In 1980 she became the first woman to hold an economic portfolio when she became Minister for Finance. On 31 December 1979 Margaret Guilfoyle was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (Dames Commander) for her services to public and parliamentary service. She left parliament in 1987.

Margaret Farmer was a social worker and psychotherapist. She was a foundation member of a group of child care centres established in the 1970s in Caulfield, Victoria. She was a volunteer visitor for 17 years of the Anti-Cancer Council Breast Cancer Support Service.

Helen O’Connell was the first Australian woman to complete urology training. Her work on female genital anatomy, published in 1998, was pathbreaking. In particular, her research on the anatomy of the clitoris drew worldwide attention.

Alice Henry was a feminist journalist and union activist who became a prominent and respected figure in the American women’s and trade union movements in the early twentieth century.

Feminist playwrite Suzanne Spunner’s works include: Not still lives; Edna for the garden; Running up a dress; Dragged Screaming to Paradise; Overcome by Chlorine; Radio for Help and The Ingkata’s Wife.

A founding member of the Home Cooking Theatre Company, in 1987 Spunner moved with her family to Darwin and established Paradise Productions. A board member of The Australian National Playwrights Centre, in Sydney, and 24 HR ART: the Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, she has been the recipient of Fellowships from the Literature Board of The Australian Council in 1988, 1991 and 1994. Both Dragged Screaming to Paradise and The Ingkata’s Wife were highly commended by The Jessie Litchfield Award for Northern Territory Literature.

Lesley Vick specialises in medico-legal ethics. Using her research and policy development skills she is actively involved in the legal aspects of equality for women, reproductive health, human rights and free-thinking philosophy. She was the senior adviser to the Leader of the Australian Democrats 1985-1992 and Chief of Staff in the Leaders office from 1986.

Lesley Vick was educated at Mentone Girls Grammar; the University of Melbourne (Bachelor of Laws); and La Trobe University (Master of Arts).

Wendy Lowenstein wrote a number of the most celebrated oral histories in Australia, focusing on the lives and struggles of working class people. She is also one of Australia’s best known historians of folklore. A member of many activist organisations since the age of fifteen, Wendy contributed to both social justice and aspects of Australian history which had, until she tackled them, been largely ignored.

Zelda D’Aprano was an active unionist and an activist in the women’s movement. She chained herself across the doors of the Commonwealth Building and later the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in Melbourne, Victoria in protest against the inadequacy of the decision on the Equal Pay case in 1969. D’Aprano was one of the initiators of the Women’s Action Committee in 1970, and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Melbourne in 1971. She was a member of the Australian Women’s Party and was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1950-1971.

In the late 1950s Oldmeadow, with her husband Courtney, founded Oldmeadow Booksellers. In 1974, they opened Dromkeen, which has become an internationally recognised children’s literature museum.

Nina Mikhailovna Christesen AM (née Maximoff) pioneered the study of Russian in Australia and founded the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne in 1946. She remained at the head of the department until her retirement in 1977.

In the 1987 Australia Day Honours Christesen was made a Member of the Order of Australia “in recognition of service to education, particularly to the study of Slavic language and culture”.

Lillian Wells was the first moderator of the New South Wales synod of the Uniting Church (1977) . On 31 December 1977 she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (civil) for services to the church.

Dr Pauline Armstrong was a long time activist and her later work as a researcher and historian resulted in the publication of her historical and biographical book Frank Hardy and the making of Power without Glory (2000). She was passionately involved in the Save Our Sons movement during the Vietnam War.

Patsy Adam-Smith introduced many readers to Australian history. Of her many publications three in particular stand out: The Anzacs (1978), Australian Women at War (1984) and Prisoners of War (1992).

On Australia Day 1994 Patricia Adam-Smith was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to community history, particularly through the preservation of national traditions and folklore and the recording of oral histories. She also received an Order of the British Empire – Officer (Civil) (OBE) in the Queens Birthday Honours list on 14 June 1980 for her services to literature.

During the 1970’s Sinn was employed as a designer with Prue Acton. Upon her return from London she started her own business called Hedgehog.