The Australian Women's Register

Anne Conlon was the daughter of John and Patricia Carden. She was educated at St. Joseph’s Convent Neutral Bay, and Monte Sant’Angelo College North Sydney where she was dux in 1956. She won a Teachers’ College Scholarship to the University of Sydney, living at Sancta Sophia College. She graduated BA in 1961 and MA 1973. She taught at public high schools from 1961 until 1968, but spent 1964-65 on a postgraduate scholarship at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

In 1967 she married Telford Conlon, with whom she had two children. In 1968 she became research assistant to Professor John M Ward, at the University of Sydney. She was a founding member of the NSW Women’s Electoral Lobby, and in 1973 was a convenor for its first national conference in Canberra. For WEL, she wrote a submission to the Henderson Commission into Poverty, and with Edna Ryan, to the National Wage Case of 1974. This was later expanded into Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work, published in 1975. She was one of the few women in WEL who belonged to the ALP, and was an active member of the Mosman branch. She contested the 1972 Mosman by election as a Labor candidate.

In 1976 she was appointed a lecturer at the Trade Union Training Authority, and in 1977 she became a founding member of the NSW Women’s Advisory Council. From 1978, she worked as a public servant on women’s issues, including amendments to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act of 1977. The NSW Women’s Advisory Council holds an annual lecture in memory of Anne Conlon.