The Australian Women's Register

Eva Bacon settled in Australia after Hitler’s invasion of Austria in 1938. Jim McIlroy, in his tribute to Eva in the Green Left Weekly, writes that “she continued her life-long struggle for peace, socialism and the emancipation of women in her new homeland through her activism in the Communist Party of Australia and a variety of other progressive organisations.”

Eva was a member of the Communist Party of Australia, the Union of Australian Women and the Women’s Electoral Lobby. She was also a founding member of the International Women’s Day Committee. She was married to her husband Ted for almost 50 years and they had one daughter, Barbara.

(Source: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1994/155/155p5d.htm accessed 18/11/2002)

First established in Sydney, and later in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Adelaide the movement protested against conscription of Australians to fight in the Vietnam war. The movement made conscription of men under 18 who were not eligible to vote at that time a focus of their campaign.

In 1970, five Save Our Sons women were jailed in Melbourne for handing out anti-conscription pamphlets whilst on government property. They included Jean Maclean, Rene Miller and Jo Maclaine-Cross.

Recognised as a National Living Treasure, Margaret Whitlam achieved public figure status after 1972 as the wife of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. She was outspoken on many issues affecting women and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for International Women’s Year in 1974.

International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) is an Australian based non-government organisation, established in 1985, which undertakes projects in partnership with women from around the world, giving priority to working with women who suffer poverty and oppression.

IWDA addresses economics, power, leadership, safety, security and systemic change to advance women’s rights and gender equality in Australia, the region and the world.

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.

The Foundation for Australian Agricultural Women was established as a national organisation to provide for disadvantaged rural women and to advance all women in agricultural occupations and rural communities around Australia.

The Feminist Club of New South Wales was formed in 1914 to work for ‘equality of status, opportunity and payment between men and women in all spheres.’ They group concerned itself with a broad range of issues, including child welfare, adoption, divorce laws, women’s influence in politics and ‘Aborigines.’

Sybylla Feminist Press was established as a printing cooperative in 1976 and since 1982 has run a small publishing program producing titles that explore feminist and left perspectives. The publications include fiction and non-fiction by women, with a special interest in new writers and work that is innovative in style.

Diana Graham was a member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) Rape Law Reform Action Group from 1976, and co-convenor of the WEL Family Law Action Group from 1977.

Jennie Scott Griffiths was a champion of women’s rights and a campaigner in many labour and socialist groups in Australia, Fiji and the United States. She served with Kate Dwyer on the Women’s Anti-Conscription Committee and with Vida Goldstein in the Women’s Peace Army, and also belonged to the Social Democratic League and the Feminist Club.

Jennie contributed to and edited a number of papers and magazines in Australia and the Pacific, including the Australian Woman’s Weekly (editor, 1913-1916), from which she was sacked in 1916 for opposing conscription. Jennie even replaced Dame Mary Gilmore sometimes, as editor of the women’s page of the Australian Worker.

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.

The National Council of Women of Australia was founded in 1931, with Ivy Moss as President, to act as an umbrella organisation for the existing National Councils of Women in each state. The first of these, the National Council of Women of New South Wales, had been formed in 1896. Like all National Councils of Women, it functions as a political lobby group, attempting to influence local, state and federal governments as well as participating in international activities through its affiliation with the International Council of Women (established in 1888 at Seneca Falls in the United States of America) which has consultative status with the United Nations.

The national Council grew out of the Federal Council of the National Council of Women, which had been established in 1924 ‘with the object of enhancing the power of the [state] Councils in dealing with matters of Australian concern.’ Later, Councils established in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory also affiliated with this national body. Until the 1940s at least, the Council was a major focal point for middle-class women’s activism.

The current aims of NCWA are:
To work for the removal of all discrimination against women and to promote the equal status of women and men in law and in fact.
To act as a link for networking and a co-ordinator between State and Territory Councils of Women.
To act as a voice or Agent of communication at national and international levels on issues and concerns of women.
To develop national policies and responsibilities on behalf of women on an Australia wide basis.
To maintain the affiliation with the International Council of Women and monitor the implementation of its plans of action and policies at national level.

The National Social Welfare Commission was created by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972. It was abolished in 1975 following the election of the Fraser Liberal-National Party Government.

As Chair of the Commission, Marie Coleman introduced the Australian Assistance Plan..

The Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia was established by Marie Coleman, who was appointed its first Director.

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.

The Australian Reproductive Health Alliance worked for the improvement in the well-being and status of women and the development of reproductive health. ARHA promoted knowledge, education and research relating to the development of family planning and other reproductive health services, paying particular attention to the needs of indigenous people, both within Australia and internationally. It ceased operation on 30 September 2011.

Canberra Mothercraft Society (CMS) was established in 1929, one of many women’s organisations at the time which formed around the National Council of Women in the Australian Capital Territory to meet the needs of public servants being transferred to the new capital city, and of workmen engaged in building it.

Hanna Neumann was Professor and Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics, School of General Studies, Australian National University from 1964-71. Previously she worked as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Hull and University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 1946-63.

Neumann became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1969.

The Children’s Library and Crafts Club was established in 1922 by two sisters, Doris and Elsie Rivett. It was succeeded by the Children’s Library and Craft Movement and in the 1970s became the Creative Leisure Movement.

The Children’s Library and Crafts Movement succeeded the free Children’s Library and Crafts Club and was established in 1934. Doris Rivett was a founder and secretary-organiser until 1961.

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.

Dorothy Hill was the first female Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (1956); the first Australian woman elected to the Royal Society (1965); the first female President of the Australian Academy of Science (1970); and the first woman in an Australian university to be president of her university’s professorial board (1971-1972).

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.

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.

Established in 1896, the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne was the first women’s hospital in Victoria, operated for women by women. Originally housed in William Street, Melbourne, new premises were purchased with money raised by Victorian women contributing to Dr Constance Stone’s ‘Shilling Fund’. The hospital moved to its Lonsdale Street site in 1946. In 1989 it was relocated to the Monash Medical Centre at Clayton.

Established in 1896 as the Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, as a clinic in a local church hall, The Queen Victoria Hospital was one of three hospitals in the world founded, managed and staffed by women, ‘For Women, By Women’, for the benefit of poor women uncomfortable with male doctors. There were eleven female founding doctors led by Dr Constance Stone.

The hospital was funded by an appeal coinciding with Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. After three years, there were enough funds to move into separate premises, the old Governess Institute in Mint Lane. Known as the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, the name changed to the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital when the Queen died in 1901.

In 1946, the hospital moved into premises vacated by the Royal Melbourne Hospital on Lonsdale Street. In 1965, it became Monash University’s teaching hospital for obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatrics, at which point it became a ‘Family Hospital’ that treated and employed males.

In 1977 the hospital amalgamated with McCulloch House and was renamed the Queen Victoria Medical Centre. The years later , in 1987, it merged with Moorabbin Hospital and moved to Clayton. In 1991 it was involved with yet another merger, this time with Prince Henry’s Hospital, to form the Monash Medical Centre.

A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia. She supported herself largely by writing articles for urban newspapers on such topics as ‘native cannibalism’ and the ‘doomed’ fate of Indigenous peoples. Bates also published her work on Indigenous kinship systems, marriage laws, language and religion in books and articles. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Aboriginal welfare work in 1934.

Bates’ birth year was changed from 1863 to 1859 on 16 January 2018 after consulting the references in Bob Reece’s work Daisy Bates: Grand dame of the desert and Susanna De Vries’ book Desert Queen: The many lives and loves of Daisy Bates.