The Australian Women's Register

The Women’s Literary Society was formed in Sydney in 1889 with the object of ‘mutual help in the study of general literature’. Later its activities were defined as ‘searching out and bringing before the meetings such matters as shall be of interest and improvement to members. Discussion upon important topics of the day. Papers upon various matters of interest, criticism upon literary or artistic work or theories upon practical matters.’ It is believed to be the first Australian women’s group to meet at night.

Prominent members included Rose Scott, Maybanke Anderson and Dora Montefiore. In 1891 members of this group were instrumental in forming the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales.

One of a series, the Third Women and Labour Conference intended to encourage research and experience sharing which furthered women’s understanding of their participation in the workforce and Australian society. More than 100 sessions were conducted with papers and workshops covering topics such as women and work, technological change and its impact upon women’s employment, women and the family, the programs to assist women to take up “non-traditional” employment, migrant women, women’s studies, feminist theory and practice, lesbianism, women and ageing, women and the media, women and art, work and unions, feminist literary criticisms and the strategies for women in the 80s (discussed by guest speakers Deborah McCulloch and Bettina Cass). The conference aimed to ensure the participation of a wide range of women and to promote contributions on important topics.

The Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women (now BPW Australia) was formed in 1947 as an umbrella body for the then six existing Business and Professional Women’s Clubs across the country. The first Club had been formed in Melbourne in 1925. Membership was initially open to women holding responsible positions in a professional, business, industrial or educational organisation, and to women giving distinguished service to the community. It thus largely represented the interests of middle-class women. It is now open to women in the workforce more broadly.

The Federation was very involved in campaigning for equal pay and equal opportunities for women in employment. By 1980 the number of clubs in the Federation rose to almost 100, representing over 3500 members, although it has since declined. Since its inception the Federation has been affiliated with the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (now BPW International). The Federation continues to work to elevate the status of women generally, remove discrimination and to present the views of business and professional women to government.

It still also operates to provide a space for women’s networking.

The social activism of quite young women is graphically captured in the activities of the Girls Social and Political Union, which flourished between 1914 and 1917. It was a discussion group formed by Ellinor Walker in 1914, when she was just 18, with a friend, and around 20 other young women. The aims of the group were to promote mutual awareness of matters South Australian, Australian, Imperial and international to make the most effective use of their voting rights.

They discussed a wide range of social, political and economic topics, some of which bear currency today—’large pensions being granted to Government servants at the present time of so-called economy’; sweated labour; the wheat scheme, land values taxation.

The Civic League was inaugurated in Sydney on 25 October 1907 by members of the Women’s Club with the objects to inform and organize public sentiment in civic matters and to promote the study, careful framing and systematic agitation of measures of social improvement. It was resolved in 1909 to reconstruct the Civic League on a wider basis outside the Club.

The Association of Women’s Forum Club of Australia was established in 1941 with the aim fostering public speaking abilities in women. By 1988, some eighty clubs had been established although only thirty seven were currently active. In 1997 the Association, by now limited entirely to the Association of Queensland Women’s Forum Clubs, was renamed the Forum Communicators Association and was no longer exclusively a women’s association. The Association produces constitutions, syllabuses, newsletters and holds biennial conferences.

The Bardon Women’s Club was formed in 1926 with the aim of providing a vehicle for community involvement for the women in this suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, as long as they were not Catholic. The initiative of Mrs. Vera Jones, a local mother and an ex-schoolteacher with a Masters of Science from the University of Queensland, the club was open to non-Catholic women who wanted to ‘widen their own horizons’, who wanted ‘a voice in the community’ and also needed some entertainment and ‘a social focus’. The club amended its constitution in 1996 to allow membership to non-Protestant women, in accordance with State government anti-discrimination legislation. It ceased operation in 1998.

The Women’s Voluntary National Register, Queensland State Council, was established by a gathering of representatives from Queensland women’s organisations at a meeting in Brisbane, Queensland on April 26th 1939. It was part of a federal government scheme to determine how many women would be able to provide ‘manpower’ and national service, if required, when the nation went to war. The list of organizations associated with the register provides evidence of the large number of women who were members of clubs and organizations in the interwar period.

The Australian Women’s Land Army, Queensland Division, was established in July 1942, to help ‘fight on the food front.’ Queensland women comprised almost one quarter of the nation’s enlistees for war on this front. At its peak, 3,000 women were members of the Australian Women’s Land Army, 700 of who came from Queensland.

The ‘Women’s Place Women’s Space’ steering committee was formed in 1989 with the aim of securing a building and funding to resource a women’s centre in Brisbane; a building that would provide ‘a space for women by women for women, in Brisbane’. An ex-director of the University of Queensland Health Service, Dr Janet Irwin, is credited with initiating the concept, which received the public support of 173 women’s organizations, representing 200,000 women throughout Queensland. The then Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Sally Anne Atkinson, gave the proposal her strong support

The Women’s Community Aid Association was established in the 1970s in order to lobby local, state and federal governments for funding to establish a Women’s Resource and Education Centre in Brisbane.

The Lady Musgrave Lodge Committee was the initiative of a group of Brisbane women who felt that there was a need to provide a good home for working women and girls in Brisbane. The committee raised and administered funding to support the lodge where respectable young women could ‘take rest or board while waiting a new situation.’ Primarily designed to be a first port of call for young emigrant women arriving in the colony, it was also a place to stay for local working women and girls between jobs. It was named for its first patron, Queensland Governor’s wife, Lady Lucinda Musgrave.

The Ithaca Benevolent Society was established in 1900 by a group of Brisbane women to relieve poverty and hardship amongst the ‘deserving poor’. With the passage of time, the interests of the society evolved to encompass more women-centred interests. They were particularly concerned with the interests of mothers and their children, and spokespeople at the time claimed the association was instrumental in campaigns that sought to set up systems of state aid for mothers.

Julia Bensusan was founding secretary of the Sydney Foundling Institution, later renamed the Infants’ Home, Ashfield. She served on the Board from 1874 until her death in 1878. All members of the first committee were described as ‘ women of prominence in Australia… who tried to use their influence to improve social conditions’.

The Association of Queensland Women’s Forum Clubs was established in 1947 to operate as a central administrative and supervisory body for the growing number of Women’s Forum Clubs that formed in Queensland after 1945. The first of these clubs was established in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1941, with the aim of fostering public speaking amongst women. The club maintained a non- party political, non-sectarian stance, and was unaffiliated with any other organizations, except The National Council of Women. The association still exists, under the name of Forum Communicators Association Inc. It acts as the umbrella body for twenty-three (in 2004) forum clubs across Queensland.

Barbara Fawkes was chief education officer and examiner for the General Nursing Council for England and Wales; principal tutor sister at the Middlesex Hospital, London; and president of the International Council of Nurses. Granted a fellowship by the Red Cross to study in America, Fawkes obtained a BSc in Nursing at Columbia University. Sponsored by the Florence Nightingale Foundation she toured Australia and New Zealand in 1953 studying Australia’s hospitals and nurse training methods. She was made a Fellow of the New South Wales College of Nursing and a Life Governor of the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1984. She received an OBE for her services to nursing. Fawkes visited Australia on many occasions and lived in Melbourne in her retirement in the 1980s, while continuing to serve on medical boards and participate in conferences.

The Women’s Club was founded in 1901 by Dr Mary Booth to provide a place where women interested in public, professional, scientific and artistic work ‘might spend their leisure moments and associate together.’ The first committee also included Lady David and Rose Scott. It began with 100 members – rising to 807 by 1929. Within the Club there was a debating group and a Thursday Group, while the Sydney University Women Graduates Association and the Professional Women Workers Association were also associated with it. The annual reports of these last two associations are included with those of the Women’s Club.

Edith Ada Fry was born in England in 1858, the eighth child of James Kight and Amelia Fry and the youngest sister of Arthur Fry. When the family came to Sydney in the early 1870s they lived at “Sunnyholt”, Blacktown; after her father’s death in 1896 Edith moved with her mother and sister Katie to “Headingley” in Coogee and later to the North Shore. Edith was prominent in the early days of the women’s movement in New South Wales; in the early 1890s she joined the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, was a member of its council and later honorary treasurer. It was during this time that she met Rose Scott, who became a close friend. A founding member in 1896 of the National Council of Women of New South Wales, she held various offices and was later appointed Honorary Life Vice-President. She was one of the Council’s delegates at the Quinquennial Meeting of the International Council of Women held in Rome in 1913. She was also a founding member of the Women’s Club in 1901, served on the Executive in its formative years and was made an Honarary Life Member. Edith Fry died in Sydney in 1940.

Ella Simon went to school on Purfleet Aboriginal reserve, New South Wales, until the age of twelve. She then worked in Gloucester and Sydney, but returned to Purfleet in 1932 to nurse her sick grandmother, Kundaibark. She married Joe Simon in the mid-1930s, and they travelled around New South Wales, helping Aboriginal people. In 1957 Ella was granted her ‘certificate of exemption’ from the restrictions imposed by the Aborigines Welfare Board. In 1960 she formed a branch of the Country Women’s Association on Purfleet reserve and became its president. She opened the Gillawarra gift shop selling Aboriginal artefacts. She improved the living conditions on Purfleet, by supplying new stoves and introducing electricity. She continued caring for Aboriginal children and the sick. In 1962 she was named Lady of Distinction by Quota and appointed a justice of the peace. She dictated her life story for the book Through My Eyes during 1976-78.

The Australian Women’s Ski Club was founded in Sydney in September 1932 and a Victorian branch was formed in November of the same year. The New South Wales branch was disbanded in March 1963. The Victorian branch continues to operate at Mt Buller, Victoria.

Cootamundra Home began as the Cootamundra hospital, in operation from 1897 to 1910, and reopened in 1911 as the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls. It was maintained by the Aborigines Welfare Board until 1968. This was the place where Aboriginal girls were placed after forcible removal from their parents under the Aborigines Protection Act of 1909. The idea was to segregate ‘part-Aboriginal’ children from their families and assimilate them into the mainstream community. The girls were not allowed to remain in any contact with their families, and were later sent to work as domestic servants. The building that housed the Home was later taken over by the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship as a Christian vocational, cultural and agricultural training centre called Bimbadeen College.

Merle Jackomos, of Yorta Yorta descent, grew up at Cummeragunja, New South Wales. During the famous walk-off of the Cummeragunja people who crossed into Victoria in 1939, Merle and her family were amongst those who stayed to make sure that the station was not closed and sold off by the government. She married Alick Jackomos in 1951, and became involved with the Aborigines Advancement League of Victoria. She helped found the National Aboriginal and Islander Women’s Council of which she became Victorian vice-president, and the Northcote Aboriginal women’s refuge. In 1972 she was elected to the Aboriginal Affairs Advisory Council. She was later appointed director of Aboriginal Hostels Ltd, and in 1981 was elected to the National Aboriginal Conference, of which she remained a member until its abolition in 1985.

Bronwyn Bancroft completed a Diploma in Visual Arts at the Canberra School of Arts in 1980, and then moved to Sydney where she became involved with the Aboriginal Medical Service’s Fashion Show in 1985. Following the success of the fashion parade, she opened the shop ‘Designer Aboriginals’ in Rozelle, as an outlet for her own designs and the designs of other Aboriginal artists. In 1990 she moved from retail to wholesale production of fabrics in order to concentrate on painting and design. Her work was exhibited in Paris at the Printemps Fashion Parade in 1987, and also in London at the 1989 Australian Fashion: The Contemporary Art exhibition. In 1989 her paintings were included in nine exhibitions. Her first solo exhibition of paintings was held in Sydney in 1989, and in 1991 she collaborated with Sally Morgan to produce an exhibition of prints at the Warrnambool Art Gallery, Victoria.

Australian Women in Agriculture (AWiA) was founded on St Valentines Day, February 14, 1993, and by 2004 was a national body of around 500 members. Members come from a large cross section of industries and include farmers, scientists, educators, communicators and others. All members bring a wealth of talents to the organisation and to agriculture. The group is represented on government boards as well as at local levels where industry and rural issues are addressed.
Australian Women in Agriculture is committed to promoting the advancement of women in agriculture by:
• uniting and raising the profile of women in agriculture;
• addressing rural and agricultural inequalities;
• working to ensure the survival of agriculture for future generations;
• securing local, regional, national and international recognition; and,
• achieving the status of a political and economic force.