The Australian Women's Register

Marie Coleman was Director from 1975.

The Family Support Program was a youth refuge program introduced under the Office of Child Care when Marie Coleman was Director.

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.

Sexual Health and Family Planning Australia is the representative national body for eight, independent Australian state family planning organisations which deliver the Australian Family Planning Program. At national and international levels a key objective of all Australian Family Planning Organisations is to promote safe sex practices, health and well being and protective behaviours in order to empower people to make informed choices for themselves.

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.

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.

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.

Marie Coleman was the Acting Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 1994.

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.

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.

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.

Ida Lee (later Marriott) approached geography historically, and reconstructed the exploration of Australia by the British through the study of logbooks, journals and lost charts found in British repositories, notably the Admiralty.

Jane Fletcher published a number of books on nature and nature study, and broadcast on 7ZL Hobart and 3LO Melbourne. In 1934 she became the first woman to lecture to the Royal Society of Tasmania. She was an outstanding bird observer with a particular interest in crakes and rails.

Teacher, kindergarten activist, and philanthropist, Ada Mary a’Beckett was born in Adelaide in 1872. Throughout her career she worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in biology at the University of Melbourne as well as teaching at various schools throughout Victoria. She was very closely involved in the kindergarten movement, helping to establish the Kindergarten Training College in Kew. Ada was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 3 June 1935, and had a kindergarten named after her the following year. She died in 1948 in Melbourne.

The Lyceum Club (Melbourne), established in 1912, was directly modelled on the lyceum clubs of England. Membership is restricted to women graduates and other women who had distinguished themselves in art, music, literature, philanthropy or public service.

The FKUV was established in 1908 to unite all free kindergartens and to maintain high standards of supervision, with the provision of trained kindergarten teachers deemed essential.

John Smyth (Professor of Education) and Ellen Pye (State Education Department) developed a training course that relied on co-operation between the Kindergarten Training College and the FKU. In 1917 the union was granted registration by the Council of Public Instruction as a training centre for kindergarten teachers. In 1922, as enrolments increased, the union moved to premises in Kew. Autonomy was granted to the Training College by the FKU in 1964 and it became the Kindergarten Teachers’ College.

See also The Free Kindergarten Union of Victorian 1908-1980 by Lyndsay Gardiner.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Elizabeth Kenny developed a new treatment for infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis). Guided by Dr Aeneas McDonnell of Toowoomba, she developed a thorough knowledge of human musculature. [1]

Although Kenny never completed any nursing training or registered as a nurse, she opened a hospital at Clifton, near Toowoomba, in 1913. In 1915 she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) and completed 12 round sea voyages between England and Australia with the returning wounded. During this time she earned her promotion to Sister, a title she used all her life. [2]

During the 1930s she established clinics in Brisbane with the backing of the State government, but with opposition from the medical profession. In 1940 she moved to the United States of America where her methods were widely acclaimed and gradually accepted world wide. Kenny returned to Queensland in 1951 and died in Toowoomba on 30 November 1952.

[1] 200 Australian Women p. 124
[2] ibid

Olive Pink was a botanical artist and anthropologist who campaigned for the rights of Aboriginal people. She was one of few women anthropologists working in a male dominated field in the 1930s and 1940s. Pink positioned herself as an expert on Aboriginal people and campaigned from this basis in her criticism of government officials, missionaries and pastoralists.

Amy Rivett was a medical practitioner who specialised in gynaecology. She was a disciple of Marie Stopes and advocated birth control. During WWI she worked in several hospitals in Brisbane. After the war she moved into private practice, first on her own and then, from 1946, with her brother Edward in Sydney. She was a founding member of the Queensland Medical Women’s Society.

The Queensland Medical Women’s Society (QMWS) was founded in 1929 with the aim to further the professional development of Medical Women by education, research and improvement of professional opportunities. It promotes the health and welfare of all Australians, particularly women and children.

As of 2004, the QMWS:

Holds meetings throughout the year, at which a guest speaker presents a topic of clinical or medico-social consequence
Hold meeting/workshops with other groups of professional women incorporating matters of mutual interest
Sends newsletters to members
Provides an annual directory of members annually to encourage professional net-working
Provides mentoring opportunities

Ruth Medd has served on the Board of Directors for the National Foundation for Australian Women since 1997. Her ongoing interest in the advancement of women is focused on increasing women’s representation on Boards of Management and educating women about investment. She has been a senior manager in the telecommunications field.

Mary Rivett was trained as a psychologist and lectured briefly at the University of Sydney. With her sister Elsie she formed the free Children’s Library and Crafts Club in 1922. In 1934 they formed the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement which after their death became the Creative Leisure Movement.

Emily Creaghe was the only woman member of Ernest Favenc’s exploring party across Northern Australia in 1883.