The Australian Women's Register

A well known figure in Sydney political and socially active organizations and a staunch defender of civil liberties. Mary McNish stood for the Australia Party in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections for Willoughby in 1971 and 1973.

Carole Medcalf, a social and environmental activist, has a particular interest and expertise in women’s issues. She represented the Australian Greens in the 1991 elections for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Bulli. Carole Medcalf was active in many community organizations before she became a Greens political candidate in 1991. She was Chairperson of the Wollongong Youth Refuge and was on the Illawarra Area Assistance Scheme Consultative Committee. She was involved with the Wollongong Women’s Refuge, the Illawarra Campaign against Racism, Women for Survival, and the Jobs for Women support group. She was a community worker at the Wollongong Women’s Centre and taught at the Wollongong T.A.F.E.
She was also active in the establishment of the Carinya Half-Way House for recovering addicts. Carole has one son.

A political activist, Kylie Moon contested the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections for Parramatta in 1999 as a Democratic Socialist Party member. In 2004 she was a Socialist Alliance Party candidate in the New South Wales Senate. Kylie Moon was active in student campaigns against education cuts, university fees, and has helped organise school walkouts against racism. She has also been involved in the organization of International Women’s Day marches. She is the Western Sydney Resistance organiser in 2005.

An activist, particularly in regard to women’s issues, Judith Mundey represented the Communist Party of Australia in the 1967 and 1968 elections for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Phillip and in the 1980 House of Representatives election for Sydney. She became the first woman President of the Communist Party of Australia 1979-82, having been Secretary of the Sydney District Committee of the party 1973-79. She was also one of a group of women who established the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia in 1969.

Judy Mundey was born in Sydney and educated at Eastlakes and Mascot Public Schools, and at St George Girls’ High School. She later completed an Arts degree and a Law degree at Macquarie University. In 1965 she married Jack Mundey, of BLF and Green Bans fame, and they had one son.

Jenny Ryde was a long term activist for human rights, social justice, peace and the environment. She was involved in organising such events as the International Women’s Day March and the Reclaim the Night, Palm Sunday and Hiroshima Day marches. She lives in the inner suburbs of Sydney.

She was a candidate for the Australian Greens in the following elections:
New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Drummoyne, 1995
New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Port Jackson, 1999
House of Representatives, Grayndler, 1996
House of Representatives, Sydney, 1998.
In her 1999 campaign she advocated drug law reform, and she was in favour of needle exchanges and safe injecting rooms for addicts.

Christine Townend is a passionate woman whose life and talents have been devoted to the cause of animal care and liberation. As an Australian Democrats member she contested the following elections:

• New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Willoughby 1978, 1984;
• House of Representatives, Grayndler, 1977;
• Senate, NSW, 1983.
• In 1988 Christine stood on behalf of the Environment Group in the New South Wales Legislative Council elections.

Virginia Walker had a life long passion for social justice and worked through many organisations to achieve it. As an Australia Party candidate she contested the elections for the House of Representatives seat of Phillip in 1972 and 1974 and for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Waverley in 1973. She joined the Australian Labor Party in 1976 and stood unsuccessfully for the Woollahra Municipal Council in 1980 and 1983. In May 2000 she was awarded the McKell Inaugural Award for services to the ALP and in 2014 a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).

Joy Wallace is a committed environmental and social activist in the Lismore area. She has been involved in local campaigns concerned with housing, health, youth, unemployment and women’s issues. Joy represented the Australian Greens in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections for Lismore in 1991 and in the 1993 NSW Senate elections.

Brigitte Williams was a once only candidate who represented the Australian Democrats in the 1999 elections for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Oxley. She believes in community action and is active in Landcare and the local Catchment Management Committee. Brigitte has worked in the hospitality industry in managing positions in a hotel and a caravan park (1980-82). She then managed a market garden and was Secretary for the Bellinger River Action Group (1984-94) while completing her tertiary qualifications (B.A., Dip. Ed.). She has taught English and History at tertiary and secondary level, and by correspondence.

Betty Fisher (nee Dawson) was born 8 September 1925 in Yorkshire, England arriving in South Australia in 1927 on the ‘SS Benalla’. A feminist and advocate for Aboriginal rights and conservation, Betty was International Women’s Day president for eight years and the first female president of the Conservation Council of South Australia.

Betty Fisher received a Flinders University medal for services to women, was a 1988 Bicentenary medallist and served on the SA State Schools Organisations State Council. She was a member of the National Fitness Council of Australia. She was also a key witness at the Hindmarsh Island Royal Commission, where she produced notes and tape recordings from the 1960s which confirmed the site was of significant cultural importance to Aboriginal women.

Author and committee member Maybanke Anderson was a vociferous advocate for women. She founded and edited the fortnightly paper, Woman’s Voice.

A devout Catholic, Annie Golding was president of the Women’s Progressive Association in Sydney from 1904. She lobbied for equal pay for women, and equal opportunity in the work force.

Jean Daley was the first woman in Victoria to stand for Federal parliament as an endorsed Labor candidate when she stood for the seat of Kooyong in 1922. As woman organiser for the Australian Labor Party, she established the Labor Women’s Interstate Executive in 1929.

Francis Egan was co-proprietor of the Barrier Café at Broken Hill, New South Wales, during the First World War. In 1915 she famously tarred and feathered the president of the Hotel, Club and Restaurant Employees’ Union (the HC & REU) after he threatened the livelihood of herself and her family by refusing to give her union membership.

A member of the Tasmanian Greens, Peg Putt was elected to the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Tasmania representing the electorate of Denison in 1993. She was re-elected in 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2006. In 1998 she became leader of the Greens after the election in which she was the only Greens candidate to retain her seat. She retired from Parliament in 2008.

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.

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.

Ailsa O’Connor was a radical artist who was a member of the Social Realist Group and the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne. She joined the Communist party in 1944 and was a founding member of the Union of Australian Women in 1953. She participated in the feminist movement during the 1970s.

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.

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.”

Born to English parents, and daughter of the Surveyor General, Mary Emily Twynam married wealthy pastoralist James ‘Jim’ Cunningham and became an important and formative figure in the developing pastoralist community in the Tuggeranong district. She was a compassionate, sensitive and intellectually curious woman whose capacity for friendship and kindness turned her homestead ‘Tuggranong’ into the social focal point of the community. Her early married years were taken up with raising eight children and battling with the bouts of serious depression that would shadow her for her entire life. As her children grew she found time to indulge in her love of gardening as well as pursue her passion for poetry and the written word. Cunningham was also an outspoken advocate for conscription during the two referenda in 1916 and was dedicated to fundraising for soldiers in the Great War.

Read more about Diane Bell in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Camille Agnes Becker Paul in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Emily Dorothea Pavy was an advocate for the welfare of factory workers before becoming a lawyer to pursue women’s issues. Known for her dedicated and meticulous work, Pavy was a trailblazer both as a sociologist and a lawyer.

Read more about Emily Dorothea Pavy in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Marie-Louise Uhr in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Motivated by a burning sense of injustice, Elizabeth Eggleston was a trailblazer in advocating justice for Aboriginal people. An academic lawyer and activist – she was the first doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Law at Monash University – Eggleston’s research revealed systematic discrimination of Indigenous peoples in the administration of justice. She was a founder of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service in 1972.

A proud Tanganekald and Meintangk woman from the Coorong region and the south east of South Australia, Irene Watson was the first Aboriginal person to graduate from the University of Adelaide with a law degree, in 1985. She was also the first Aboriginal PhD graduate (2000) at the university, winning the Bonython Law Prize for best thesis. Her research motivation has been clear from the outset: to gain a better understanding of the Australian legal system that is underpinned by the unlawful foundation of Terra Nullius.

Watson’s work has made a significant impression on everyday legal practice in respect of centring an Indigenous perspective in the long processes of law reform. In 2015 she published Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law the first work to assess the legality and impact of colonisation from the viewpoint of Aboriginal law, rather than from that of the dominant Western legal tradition.

Watson has been involved in the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in South Australia since its inception in 1973, working as a member, solicitor and director. She has taught in all three South Australian universities and was a research fellow with the University of Sydney Law School. She is currently a research Professor of Law at the University of South Australia and she continues to work as an advocate for First Nations Peoples in international law.

Watson was involved with the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples between 1990 and 1994 and has more recently, in 2009 and 2012, made interventions before the UN Human Rights Council Expert Advisory Committee of the current position of Indigenous peoples.

In 2016, Watson was appointed The University of South Australia’s inaugural Indigenous pro-Vice Chancellor.

Irene Watson 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 AustraliaCATALOGUE RECORD.