The Australian Women's Register

Margaret Farmer was a social worker and psychotherapist. She was a foundation member of a group of child care centres established in the 1970s in Caulfield, Victoria. She was a volunteer visitor for 17 years of the Anti-Cancer Council Breast Cancer Support Service.

Adela Pankhurst was a feminist and pacifist whose political affiliations shifted from communism to strong anti-communism over her lifetime of activism. Born in England, the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, Adela was involved with the British suffrage movement from her teenage years and then the Women’s Social and Political Union which was founded by her mother and sisters in 1904. She later became estranged from her family and moved to Melbourne in 1914 partly for health reasons. Once there she worked with Vida Goldstein and the Women’s Political Association and campaigned against conscription particularly with the Women’s Peace Army. She also joined the Victorian Socialist Party. She married Tom Walsh, a fellow anti-conscriptionist, in 1917. After the war they moved to Sydney and had five children. They were foundation members of the Communist Party of Australia, but soon withdrew. Adela’s evolving anti-communism became starkly apparent when, in 1928, she founded the Australian Women’s Guild of Empire. Pankhurst used this conservative patriotic organisation as a platform to advocate the need for industrial cooperation, and she frequently spoke out against strikes. She ended her public life in 1943 with her husband’s death.

The Cancer Council Victoria is a public institution created by an Act of Parliament in 1936. It operates as a charity, relies heavily on volunteer support, and raises and spends $3-4 per head of population annually.

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)

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.

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.

Elizabeth Tindle was president of the Australian Women’s Weight Lifting Association, Adelaide 1964. She was a researcher at the UNESCO Charles Darwin Research Station, Galapagos Islands Ecuador, where she studied flamingos and flightless cormorants in 1976. She completed her doctoral thesis on Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and effects, and alcohol-related disabilities.

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.

Helen O’Connell was the first Australian woman to complete urology training. Her work on female genital anatomy, published in 1998, was pathbreaking. In particular, her research on the anatomy of the clitoris drew worldwide attention.

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.

Established by Florence McKenzie in 1934, the Electrical Association for Women was a non-profit organisation that provided for women’s electrical needs.

In 200 Australian Women Rosemary Broomham writes: Florence McKenzie shared the then widely held belief that electricity could free women from much of the drudgery of housework. Women could become members of the Association for a modest annual subscription, use the club rooms in Clarence St, Sydney, attend lectures and excursions, receive advice on all electrical matters, and have their appliances tested for safety. The Association’s showroom also allowed comparison of electrical appliances from different manufacturers. In conjunction with the Association’s activities, Mrs McKenzie compiled a cookery book with an electrical guide. Published in 1936, this went to seven editions, the last of which was released in 1954 under the auspices of the Sydney County Council.

Julie has had a long involvement with Zonta, a worldwide organization of executives in business and the professions working together to advance the status of women. She is currently President of the Zonta Sydney Breakfast Club, Director of the National Foundation for Australian Women and Founder, Alumni Association of Social Ecologists.

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.

Spinifex Press is an independent feminist press, publishing innovative and controversial fiction and non-fiction by Australian and international authors.

It was established by Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne in the early 1990s.

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.

Feminist playwrite Suzanne Spunner’s works include: Not still lives; Edna for the garden; Running up a dress; Dragged Screaming to Paradise; Overcome by Chlorine; Radio for Help and The Ingkata’s Wife.

A founding member of the Home Cooking Theatre Company, in 1987 Spunner moved with her family to Darwin and established Paradise Productions. A board member of The Australian National Playwrights Centre, in Sydney, and 24 HR ART: the Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art, she has been the recipient of Fellowships from the Literature Board of The Australian Council in 1988, 1991 and 1994. Both Dragged Screaming to Paradise and The Ingkata’s Wife were highly commended by The Jessie Litchfield Award for Northern Territory Literature.

Women performers from the Australian Performing Group and women from the Women’s Movement established the Melbourne Women’s Theatre Group. The Group, which rejected gender stereotypes both on and off stage, nurtured the advancement of women performers, directors, technicians, musicians, designers and writers.

Out of the Frying Pan (1974), Sister’s Delight Festival (1974), She’ll be Right Mate (1976) and Edges (1977) were some of the programmes produced.

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.

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..