The Australian Women's Register

Aileen Lynch (née Ryan) a public servant since 1917, was appointed officer-in-charge of the Women’s Australian National Services. She inaugurated a scheme on which the Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) was based.

In 1941 she became superintendent of the AWLA in New South Wales (NSW). Appointed Commonwealth superintendent in July 1942, Aileen Lynch remained at this post until she was officially relieved of her position on 9 April 1946. After the war she resumed her former occupation in the Premier’s Department.

Kitty McEwan was educated at Ormiston Ladies’ College and became a freelance journalist working with Australian Home Beautiful in 1929. Interested in the game of golf, she began writing about women and golf, for the Radiator in 1937 and the Sun News-Pictorial in 1938. She organised fund-raising for patriotic appeals during World War II. In June 1942 McEwan was appointed superintendent in Victoria of the Australian Women’s Land Army, a position she held until March 1946. After the war she returned to journalism, writing for the Sun News-Pictorial from which she retired in 1966. Kitty McEwan served as honorary publicity officer and an executive member of the National Council of Women Victoria and a councillor of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She died on 17 August 1969, aged 75 years.

Appointed lady superintendent of the New South Wales Army Nursing Service Reserve (NSWANSR), Nellie Gould left Australia on 17 January 1900 with thirteen nursing sisters to serve in the Boer War as part of the British Army. The nursing contingent returned to Australia in 1902.

On 27th September 1914 Nellie Gould enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and served in Egypt, caring for Gallipoli casualties, followed by service in France and then England. She returned to Australia in January 1919 and was discharged on 3 March. She was unfit to take up nursing duties again and from 1920 she received a war service pension.

In 1916 Nellie Gould was awarded the Royal Red Cross Medal (1st class) for her war work.

The Army Nursing Service Reserve was established in 1899 and attached to the New South Wales Army Medical Corps. This was the first official female army nurses’ organisation in the Australian colonies. Nurse Nellie Gould was appointed lady superintendent of the Reserve. On the 17 January 1900 Nurse Gould left with thirteen nursing sisters to serve in the Boer War as part of the British Army. The nursing contingent returned to Australia in 1902. The Reserve was replaced by the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS), that was formed post Federation.

Clare Stevenson was appointed Director of the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force on 9 June 1941. Thus she became head of the first Women’s Service formed in Australia for ground-staff duties with an armed force. After the war Stevenson returned to her executive position with Berlei Ltd. Also she became involved with community work. For forty years she was affiliated with the Services Canteens Trust Fund. Clare Stevenson, with a group of friends, helped initiate the Scholarship Trust Fund for Civilian Widows’ Children. She also helped establish the Kings Cross Community Aid Centre as well as the Carer’s Association of New South Wales. On 11 June 1960 Clare Stevenson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for social welfare services on behalf of ex-servicewomen. On Australia Day 1988 she received the Member of the Order of Australia award for service to the community and to the welfare of veterans.

The Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) was formed in March 1941 after considerable lobbying by women keen to serve and by the Chief of the Air Staff who wanted to release male personnel serving in Australia for service overseas. The WAAAF was the first and largest of the World War II Australian Women’s Services. It was disbanded in December 1947.

At the end of the World War II, surplus funds were divided between the different state Women’s Land Army groups. New South Wales was allocated 500 pounds. A group of ‘girls’ who had worked at the New South Wales Australian Women’s Land Army Headquarters, established a committee. Aileen Lynch former AWLA superintendent in NSW suggested that the money be placed in an account which would be used to establish a club to further the interests of all ex-members of the AWLA in welfare, training and advisory capacity. The club was to have a city base where the girls could continue their wartime friendship and arrange return visits to the country centres where they had worked. [1]

[1] Scott, Jean. Girls with Grit p. 157

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was widely regarded as the ‘queen of Australia’s philanthropic community’. She was Patron of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Victoria and supported 110 charitable organisations annually.

On 11 June 2001, Haines became a Member of the Order of Australia ‘for service to the Australian Parliament and to politics, particularly as Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Democrats, and to the community.’

Haines was appointed to the Senate to fill a casual vacancy in South Australia in 1977. In 1986 she became the first woman to lead an Australian political party when she was elected leader of the Australian Democrats.

(Source: http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours_list/resultDetail.cfm?awardsID=709341 accessed 17/04/2002 and Emma Grahame in Australian Feminism: A Companion.)

Rosemary Calder served as First Assistant Secretary (Head) of the Office of the Status of Women from 2000-2003.

As a member of the Monash University alumni, she was honoured by the University in 2002 with a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa). She was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Political and Social Inquiry in the Faculty of Arts from 2003.

First Assistant Secretary, Office of the Status of Women 1988-1993.

Pru Goward served as Executive Director of the Office of the Status of Women from 1997. In July 2001 she became the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, appointed for a term of five years. In 2004 she was also appointed Commissioner Responsible for Age Discrimination.

In 2004 she was nominated by The Australian as one of the forty most influential Australians and by the Australian Financial Review as one of the country’s top cultural and industrial relations influencers. Her speeches have been reproduced in published collections and in 2001 she was awarded a Centenary Medal for her services to journalism and women’s rights.

In 2007 she stood successfully as a candidate for the Liberal Party of Australia in the seat of Goulburn in the Legislative Assembly at the New South Wales state election, which was held on 24 March. She was re-elected in 2011 and again in 2015 and is a minister in the Liberal state government.

Elizabeth Beveridge was a Foundation member and President of the Country Women’s Association (CWA) in Tasmania.

Kate Deakin (1850-1937) was Alfred Deakin’s sister and close companion. She was tutor to his two eldest children and taught music at various times during her life.

In 1990 Joan Kirner was elected the first woman Premier for the State of Victoria. She held the position for two years but her legacy will extend for much longer. As the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews said in a statement after her death:

“Through her decades of advocacy for gender equality, [Joan Kirner] fundamentally changed [The Victorian ALP] and our society. In the process, she raised a generation of Victorian Labor women – one of whom became Prime Minister…
She fought every day for fairness. Our state is stronger for her service and our lives are greater for her friendship. She was our first female Premier and because of her work, she won’t be the last.”

Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of the 1942 Banka Island massacre. Post-war, she was Matron of Melbourne’s Fairfield Hospital.

Nancy Wake, whom the Gestapo code-named “the White Mouse” was the Allies’ most decorated servicewoman of World War II. The youngest of six children, Nancy Wake came to Australia with her parents when she was 20 months old. In the early 1930s she went first to England and then Paris as a freelance journalist and there met and married Henri Fiocca, a wealthy French industrialist. When the French government surrendered, after the German Army invaded in May 1940, Nancy Wake joined the French Resistance working as a courier and saboteur. For these ‘special operations in France’ Wake was awarded the George Medal (17 July 1945). Wake worked for the Intelligence Department at the British Air Ministry, after the war. She married John Forward, in 1957, before returning to Australia to live. In December 2001, Nancy Wake left Port Macquarie, New South Wales to live in Europe.

On 22 February 2004 Nancy Wake was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia. The award recognises the significant contribution and commitment of Nancy Wake, stemming from her outstanding actions in wartime, in encouraging community appreciation and understanding of the past sacrifices made by Australian men and women in times of conflict, and to a lasting legacy of peace.

Nancy Wake moved to London to live in 2001. She died there, in Kingston Hospital on 7 August 2011.

In 1895 Augusta Zadow was appointed the first female Factory Inspector in South Australia.

Ellis Rowan was a botanical artist who had no formal art training. She received encouragement from her family and husband, Frederick Charles Rowan, whom she married in 1873, to develop her own style in painting wildflowers.
Her work was exhibited in both Australia and overseas for which she won a variety of art prizes.

Fay Surtees Marles AM (née Pearce) is a former Australian public servant. She served as Victorian Commissioner of Equal Opportunity from 1977 to 1987 and Chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 2001 to 2004.

Ola Cohn was the first Australian sculptor to carve large commissions free-hand in stone. She created the statue for the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, South Australia, and carved the famous Fairies’ Tree in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens. Examples of Ola Cohn’s work in bronze, stone and wood are in state and provincial galleries nationwide. On 1 January 1965, Cohn was appointed a Member of the British Empire for her work in the service of art, especially sculpture. Her studio home in Gipps St, East Melbourne, is now known as the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre.

Marjorie Tipping is a prolific writer and historian of art and colonial Australia. In 1990, based on her many published scholarly works, she became the first woman to earn the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination from the University of Melbourne. Tipping’s books include Eugene von Guerard’s Australian Landscapes (1975) Ludwig Becker: Artist & Naturalist with the Burke & Wills Expedition (1978), Melbourne on the Yarra (1978) and Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (1988).

Tipping was the first woman president (1972-1975) and fellow (1968) of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. She was a member of the Victorian Council of the Arts and numerous other committees and community organizations, often in a voluntary capacity. Tipping was appointed as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (13 June 1981), for her contribution to the Arts.

Tipping is the patron of and one of the founders of the E W Tipping Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children and Adults, established in 1970. Tipping has travelled on six continents; her interests include music, theatre, archaeology, Australiana, and Chinese art.

Source(s): Personal Communication (2002), Who’s Who of Australian Women, Who’s Who 2002.

Bev Buckingham settled in Australia in 1967. She became the first female jockey in the southern hemisphere to win 1000 races. After a fall at the Elwick Racecourse (Hobart) in May 1998 she was wheelchair-bound, but regained her strength and mobility until she was able to walk again unaided.

Margaret Blackwood graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BSc in 1938 and MSc in 1940. During the Second World War she served with the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force and then was granted an ex-service postgraduate scholarship for Cambridge, where she gained a PhD for her work in plant genetics. In 1951 Blackwood returned to Melbourne and was a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne until 1974. She was then elected a member of the University Council and in 1980 became the first female Deputy Chancellor. She held both these positions until her retirement in 1983. She was appointed as a Member of the British Empire in 1964 for work in botany and was appointed a Dame (Order of the British Empire – Dames Commander) for her services to education in 1980.

On June 24, 2010, Julia Gillard became the first woman Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia and retained her position after the federal election, which was held on 21 August 2010. She led a minority Labor Government, supported by a member of the Greens party and three Independents. She lost the prime ministership on 27 June 2013, when Kevin Rudd challenged her for the position and won. She retired from parliament in August 2013.

Her career in parliamentary politics began when she was elected Member of the House of Representatives for Lalor (Victoria) in 1998 and re-elected in 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010. She became Deputy Leader of the Opposition (ALP) in December 2006. On the election of the Labor Government in November 2007, she assumed the position of Deputy Prime Minister and took on the portfolios of Employment and Workplace Relations, Education and Social Inclusion.

In 2017, Julia Gillard was made a Companion in the General Division of the Order of Australia ‘for eminent service to the Parliament of Australia, particularly as Prime Minister, through seminal contributions to economic and social development, particularly policy reform in the areas of education, disability care, workplace relations, health, foreign affairs and the environment, and as a role model to women.’

Pioneering Australian feminist Dr Anne Summers AO is a best-selling author and journalist with a long career in politics, the media, business and the non-government sector in Australia, Europe and the United States. Anne is a leader of the generation and the movement that has improved women’s rights in Australia. Her first book Damned Whores and God’s Police changed the way Australia viewed women. Her contribution has earned her community respect: she has received five honorary doctorates and in 1989 became an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to journalism and women’s affairs. She won a Walkley Award for journalism in the same year.

Summers is a former editor of Good Weekend who regularly writes an opinion column for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was a founder of the important feminist journal, Refractory Girl, in the 1970s.

Lawrence became Australia’s first woman State Premier (WA) on 12 February 1990. She began her parliamentary career by winning the seat of Subiaco for the Australian Labor Party in 1986.
She entered Federal politics on 12 March 1994, as the Member for Fremantle, and was appointed Minister for Human Services and Health and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women on 25 March 1994 until 11 March 1996. On 23 November 2001, Lawrence was appointed Shadow Minister for Reconciliation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, the Arts, and the Status of Women.

Lawrence is a supporter of numerous organisations and is Patron of the Western Australia Netball Association and a Foundation Committee Member of EMILY’S List.

She retired from the Australian Parliament at the 2007 general election, which was held in November 2007.