The Australian Women's Register

After her husband died, Anne Gilfillan took over the management of their farm at Tarlee, South Australia, despite negativity from bank managers and neighbours.

Dorothy Brenton and her husband arrived in Western Australia as young children. They ran a farm outside Denmark in Western Australia.

Rosalie Bennetts grew up on a dairy farm in Gippsland, Victoria.

Gail Guthrie is a Western Australian wool farmer. When the wool price collapsed in the 1980s-90s she and her husband decided to add value to the wool they produced by trying to develop a wool that did not itch from their own Merino fleeces.

Kay Ebsary runs a farm in partnership with her husband in South Australia.

In 1994 Muriel Dick was 73 years old and running a farm in Southern Victoria. Her husband had died some fourteen years earlier and she was managing things herself.

Esther Price was a journalist contributing to rural publications, running her own promotions and design business, looking after her two children and working on her farm when the first ABC Rural Woman of the Year Award was established.

Clare McShane was a regional winner (Tasmania) of the ABC Rural Woman of the Year award in 1994.

Deborah Thiele was the inaugural national winner of the Australian Rural Woman of the Year Award in 1994. A graduate of the prestigious Roseworthy Agricultural College (now a campus of the University of Adelaide) not long after it opened its doors to women, she was the first woman to be appointed as an Agricultural Science Senior in the South Australian Education Department. A teacher with a rapidly advancing career in the Department of Education, she returned to farming when she married her husband, Anton. She is joint owner of their farm at Loxton in eastern South Australia. Since 2000 she has worked as an Agricultural Consultant and Lecturer, specialising in Farm Business Management.

In 2007, she stood for the federal electorate of Barker as the National Party Candidate. Prior to that, she stood for election to the South Australian Legislative Council. She stood again at the S.A election in 2010.

Thiele had an impressive record of community engagement at the time she won the award, and continues to maintain that record.

Ruth Paterson was Tasmania’s Rural Woman of the Year in 1994. She was the first Australian woman to chair an agricultural field day committee, which she did to extraordinary effect when she organised the Tasmanian AGFEST in the early 1990s. Eleven percent of Tasmania’s total population attended in 1994; no other field day in no other state could boast such a massive turn out.

After winning the award, Ruth took up a job with the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, with the aim of encouraging a rural woman’s network and advising the government on issues that effect rural women.

Maisie Hodgetts was brought up in Scotland and moved permanently to Australia with her husband and three children in 1973. They settles on a small farm in Denmark, Western Australia. Sadly, Maisie’s husband died in a drowning accident three years later, before the farm was fully established. Maisie decided to stay in Australia and make a go of the farm on her own.

A retired Uniting Church Minister, Dorothy McRae-McMahon was a former Minister of the Pitt Street, Sydney Church, which was renowned for its work in human rights and local activism. She received recognition for her work with the award of the Australian Government Peace Medal in 1987 and in 1988 with the Australian Human Rights Medal. In 1997, she came out as a lesbian at the National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Perth and resigned from her position later in the year, citing the focus on her sexuality, which she felt was affecting the church.

A lawyer by training, Eve Mahlab is a successful businesswoman who has worked to improve the lives of women in Australia. A member of the Co-ordinating committee of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in Victoria from 1972-1976, and again after 1980, she was a member of the Victorian Government Committee of Inquiry into the Status of Women from 1975-76. She was an active member of the Liberal Party, having stood for pre-selection unsuccessfully on a number of occasions. She was named Businesswoman of the Year in 1982 and in 1998 was awarded an Order of Australia in the Officer category for ‘service to government, business and the community, particularly to women’. In 2001 she was awarded a Centenary Medal ‘for service to the community through business and commerce’.

Eve Mahlab was interviewed by Kim Rubenstein for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

A founding member of the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales in 1891, Dora Montefiore worked for the women’s suffrage cause in both Australia and the United Kingdom. On her return to England she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and was arrested for agitating in the lobby of the House of Commons for votes for women and was imprisoned in October 1906. As a socialist she was a member of the Women’s Freedom League and was a delegate to many international and socialist conferences.

Margret RoadKnight was an activist in the women’s liberation movement in Australia during the 1970s. She began her singing career in Melbourne in 1963. In 1973 she supported a women’s liberation initiative, the She Concerts, which were held in Sydney and Melbourne. She was well-known for her song ‘Girls in Our Town’ which was one of the first songs to explore the isolation of young Australian married women living in suburbia. She has performed solo and in collaboration with many local and overseas performers, singing jazz, blues, folk, gospel and songs raising issues of social justice, both in Australia and overseas.

Jocelynne Scutt has worked consistently in her capacity as lawyer, activist and writer to improve the lives of women generally and by changing the laws on rape and domestic violence. She founded the feminist publisher, Artemis and was a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in both Canberra and Sydney.

A graduate in law from the University of Western Australia in 1969, Scutt undertook postgraduate studies in law at the University of Sydney, Southern Methodist University and the University of Michigan in the United States, and Cambridge University in England. She has worked with the Australian Institute of Criminology and as director of research with the Legal and Constitutional Committee of the parliament of Victoria. From 1981-82 she worked at the Sydney Bar and then was Deputy Chairperson of the Law Reform Commission, Victoria. In 1986 she returned to private practice in Melbourne. She served as the first Anti-Discrimination Commissioner of Tasmania from 1999-2004. In 2007 she accepted a judicial post on the Fiji High Court.

Scutt is a member of the UN Committee Against Trafficking, a International Alliance of Women (IAW) representative on International Criminal Court Coalition (ICC Coalition) and a board member of the Women’s History Network in the United Kingdom. She was called to the English Bar in 2014.

Jocelynne Scutt was interviewed by Nikki Henningham for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Oral History Project. For details of the interview see the National Library of Australia CATALOGUE RECORD.

Dale Spender has distinguished herself as a writer on feminist and women’s issues. Whilst living in England from 1974-86 she was active in feminist groups there, serving on the executive of the Fawcett Society from 1983-87. On her return to Australia she was appointed an honorary fellow at the University of Queensland.

Sue Walpole was appointed the Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner in 1993, becoming well-known in the role. She assisted with education campaigns which were designed to make the Sex Discrimination Act more accessible and available to women. She held the position until 1997.

Born in 1904, Daisy Marchisotti developed an interest in left-wing politics in the 1940s. She eventually joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in the 1950s, giving up a better-paying job as a stenographer to work for the party. In 1964 she was part of a CPA women’s delegation to the Soviet Union.

Marchisotti took an active interest in indigenous affairs and was involved with the Queensland Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (QCAATI) and the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI). She edited the Federal Council’s newsletter and wrote articles on indigenous issues for FCAATSI and the CPA.

In 1982 she was still fighting for Aboriginal rights. After being arrested for joining an Aboriginal protest outside the Commonwealth Games venue in Brisbane, she told the magistrate: “I am seventy-eight years old and a pensioner. I did not take part in my action lightly. [It was] my belief that the only way to change Queensland’s racist laws was to take the action I did.”

Florence Buchanan spent much of her life working in Anglican missions on Thursday and Moa Islands, north of Australia, despite a number of health problems. In 1887 she migrated to Australia, landing in Bundaberg, Queensland with her two brothers. She later assumed responsibility for the fundamentalist non-denominational South Seas Evangelical Mission, also know as the Queensland Kanaka Mission. During the 1890s she worked on Thursday Island and was ordained there as a deaconess in 1908. In the same year she went to Moa Island to conduct the Anglican mission and teach school. In 1911 she resigned from her position, due to ill-health, but continued to teach until her return to Brisbane in 1913.

The first Rural Women’s Network was established in Victoria in 1986, under the auspices of the Office of Rural Affairs in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in response to activism by Victorian rural women, including Mary Salce. The aim was to link rural women’s groups and individuals into a loose network supported by government infrastructure, to enable the sharing of ideas, issues, information and support, and to encourage women to develop a more active voice in government decision-making.

Mother Mary Gertrude of the Order of St John of God, trained as a nurse at the Order’s hospital in Perth, Western Australia. After nursing in Western Australia and Victoria, from 1929 she worked at the Beagle Bay mission in the north of Western Australia where four of her sisters, all members of the same religious order, preceded her. She cared for Aboriginal patients suffering from Hansen’s bacillus (leprosy). In 1947 she was appointed provincial superior of the North-West and served in that capacity until 1953. She held the position again from 1956 until 1962. In 1948 she was appointed MBE for her work.

A founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in 1972, Beatrice Faust was an activist for women’s rights, particularly in relation to abortion law reform. She served as president of the Victorian Abortion Law Repeal Association in 1966. She co-founded the Victorian Union of Civil Liberties in 1965 and has lobbied for relaxation on censorship laws as well as on issues of equal opportunity for women. In 2001 she was awarded a Centenary Medal ‘for service to the community through women’s issues and in 2004 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia ‘for service to the community in the areas of social, political and employment reform and through provoking debate and raising public awareness of issues affecting women’s rights’.

Germaine Greer established her international reputation as a feminist through the publication of The Female Eunuch in 1970. As an academic her expertise was in English Literature, having completed a MA thesis on Byron at Sydney University and a PhD on Shakespeare at Cambridge University in 1967. While in London, she wrote for the radical paper Oz, espousing controversial views on the nature of feminism in that period. She has continued to contribute to the feminist debate from a libertarian perspective, but it is difficult to categorise her feminist position.

In 2003, Professor Greer received an Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne. She received a
Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) from the University of Sydney in 2005.

A member of the Aboriginal Bidjara Nation, Marcia Langton is an authority on social issues concerning Aboriginal people. She holds the Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies in the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. During the 1970s she was active in the Women’s Liberation movement, drawing attention to the oppression of black women. She continued to work for Aboriginal causes and became a key participant in the Wik Land rights negotiations which were conducted during the late 1990s. She has appeared in film and television portraying strong Aboriginal characters. In 1993 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia ‘for service as an anthropologist and advocate of Aboriginal issues’. In 2001 she was admitted as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of New South Wales Governor, Lachlan Macquarie, was an active supporter of her husband’s plan to transform the penal settlement at Sydney into a thriving settler colony. She is said to have taken a an interest in the welfare of women convicts and the local Aboriginal people. Her significant role in the establishment of the colony is memorialised in many landmarks in and around Sydney, New South Wales, including Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, Campbelltown and the various Elizabeth Streets that pepper the map of Sydney.

She and another prominent Elizabeth (Macarthur) the wife of prominent colonial pastoralist John Macarthur, helped to introduce haymaking to New South Wales.

Ida McAulay was elected president of the Tasmanian Women’s Suffrage Association on its inauguration in 1903, a few days before Tasmanian women were granted the franchise. She remained president until 1905. After the achievement of the franchise, the Association, later renamed the Tasmanian Women’s Political Association, focussed on lobbying for improvements in girls’ education.