The Australian Women's Register

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.

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.

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)

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.

Lesley Vick specialises in medico-legal ethics. Using her research and policy development skills she is actively involved in the legal aspects of equality for women, reproductive health, human rights and free-thinking philosophy. She was the senior adviser to the Leader of the Australian Democrats 1985-1992 and Chief of Staff in the Leaders office from 1986.

Lesley Vick was educated at Mentone Girls Grammar; the University of Melbourne (Bachelor of Laws); and La Trobe University (Master of Arts).

Helen Macpherson Schutt, who was charitable in life, bequeathed the majority of her considerable wealth to Victorian charities on her death in 1951. The Helen Macpherson Schutt Trust subsequently donated to hospitals, art galleries, museums, aged care homes, educational institutions and medical research bodies throughout Victoria, according to the stipulations of its benefactor. In 2001, the Trust marked the 50th year of its operation by publishing a brief biography of its benefactor, and by changing its name to the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust in order to honour her family, and recognise the origin of her wealth.

Wendy Lowenstein wrote a number of the most celebrated oral histories in Australia, focusing on the lives and struggles of working class people. She is also one of Australia’s best known historians of folklore. A member of many activist organisations since the age of fifteen, Wendy contributed to both social justice and aspects of Australian history which had, until she tackled them, been largely ignored.

Nancy Cato was an acclaimed author. She published several historical novels and biographies and two volumes of poetry. Cato was also a strong campaigner for environmental conservation.

Dame Enid Lyons AD GBE was the first woman elected to the Australian federal Parliament, in 1943. She was also the first woman in federal Cabinet. She was appointed as a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 11 May 1937 for her public services to Australia and as a Dame of the Order of Australia (AD) on 26 January 1980.

Zelda D’Aprano was an active unionist and an activist in the women’s movement. She chained herself across the doors of the Commonwealth Building and later the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in Melbourne, Victoria in protest against the inadequacy of the decision on the Equal Pay case in 1969. D’Aprano was one of the initiators of the Women’s Action Committee in 1970, and the Women’s Liberation Movement in Melbourne in 1971. She was a member of the Australian Women’s Party and was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1950-1971.

Kay Daniels taught and published widely in the fields of women’s, social and colonial history. Until her two-volume work Women in Australia: An Annotated Guide to Records was published in 1977, it had been generally believed that women could not be included in history as they lived within the family and there were no records of their lives in the public sphere.
She spent part of her life as a Commonwealth public servant in Canberra, contributing in areas of cultural policy and intellectual property rights.

In the late 1950s Oldmeadow, with her husband Courtney, founded Oldmeadow Booksellers. In 1974, they opened Dromkeen, which has become an internationally recognised children’s literature museum.

Nina Mikhailovna Christesen AM (née Maximoff) pioneered the study of Russian in Australia and founded the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne in 1946. She remained at the head of the department until her retirement in 1977.

In the 1987 Australia Day Honours Christesen was made a Member of the Order of Australia “in recognition of service to education, particularly to the study of Slavic language and culture”.

Dr Ruth Sanger was an internationally known expert in blood grouping, who for many years worked for the Medical Research Council in London.

Ruth Sanger, the daughter of Hubert and Katharine Mary Ross (née Cameron) Sanger, obtained her Science Degree from Sydney of University in 1940. She then worked in the blood-grouping laboratory of the Sydney Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service. After the Second World War Sanger moved to London and worked for Dr Robert Race, her future husband, at the Medical Research Council. In 1950 she co-wrote Blood Groups in Man, with her husband and they released their sixth and final edition in 1975. Dr Sanger also contributed papers to medical and genetic journals. She was admitted as a fellow of Britain’s Royal Society in 1972 and in the same year she was a joint recipient of the Gairdner Foundation Award. In 1983 Dr Sanger retired as director of the British Medical Research Council, a position she had held for ten years. She was a member of the International Society of Blood Transfusion and an affiliate of similar groups in Canada, Germany, Mexico and Norway. The British Blood Transfusion Society has established the Race and Sanger Award.

Lillian Wells was the first moderator of the New South Wales synod of the Uniting Church (1977) . On 31 December 1977 she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (civil) for services to the church.

Lillian Holt was a member of the first generation of Aboriginal high school and university graduates and had an impressive track record of full time work, study and concomitant achievements. She traversed new terrain in order that younger ones might follow.

Lillian worked or studied full time since the age of 17. She worked as an educator in Aboriginal affairs and education “25 hours a day, eight days a week”! She was appointed as a University of Melbourne Fellow in 2003 -2005, prior to that she was Director of the Centre for Indigenous Education, University of Melbourne.

Lillian Holt passed away on her birthday in February 2020, at the age of 75.

Judith Wright expressed her love of Australia and its people in her poetry. She was also a respected writer on poetry. Later in her life Wright was well known as a conservationist and campaigner for Aboriginal rights. Wright, a descendant of a pioneering pastoralist family, began writing poetry at the age of six for her ailing mother. At the age of 14 she became a boarder at the New England Girls School, and it was during her time there that she decided to become a poet.

After completing an Arts course at the University of Sydney, Wright worked in a variety of positions including that of research officer at Queensland University, where she helped Clem Christesen to edit Meanjin.

In 1975, Wright was the first woman appointed to the Council of Australian National University as the Governor-General’s nominee. She was founder and later president of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, and member of the National Parks Association of New South Wales and the South Coast Conservation Council. Wright was a patron of many organisations including: Campaign Against Nuclear Power (Queensland); Townsville Women’s Shelter; Amnesty International (Victoria.); Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and the National Forests Action Council (Victoria.).

In 1991, Wright became the second Australian – after Michael Thwaites in 1940 – to receive the Queen’s gold medal for poetry.

Joan Williams concludes her obituary on Judith Wright in The Guardian on July 5, 2000 with:
“Judith Wright is not a romantic, but makes her judgement on changes in the economy and lifestyle, the growth of industry and the swing from country to city. In her own way she has taken a step further for us in the expression of Australian national, spiritual and environment values in her poetry.”

Dr Pauline Armstrong was a long time activist and her later work as a researcher and historian resulted in the publication of her historical and biographical book Frank Hardy and the making of Power without Glory (2000). She was passionately involved in the Save Our Sons movement during the Vietnam War.

Professor Meredith Edwards AM has enjoyed an extensive career as lecturer, researcher and policy analyst in economics. She is best known for developing policies around AUSTUDY, Child Support, HECS and long-term unemployment initiatives. She is currently Emeritus Professor, Australia and New Zealand School of Government ( ANZSOG) Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra.

Edna Walling is best known for her contribution to Australian landscape architecture design. She was also a talented amateur photographer, and used the many photographs of gardens she took to illustrate the books and articles she wrote. Walling also created portrait photography.

Patsy Adam-Smith introduced many readers to Australian history. Of her many publications three in particular stand out: The Anzacs (1978), Australian Women at War (1984) and Prisoners of War (1992).

On Australia Day 1994 Patricia Adam-Smith was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to community history, particularly through the preservation of national traditions and folklore and the recording of oral histories. She also received an Order of the British Empire – Officer (Civil) (OBE) in the Queens Birthday Honours list on 14 June 1980 for her services to literature.

During the 1970’s Sinn was employed as a designer with Prue Acton. Upon her return from London she started her own business called Hedgehog.

Mary Delahunty won the seat of Northcote (Legislative Assembly) for the Australian Labor Party, in a by-election in August 1998. She held the ministerial portfolios of Education, the Centenary of Federation, Planning, Arts and Women’s Affairs. Before entering politics, she was Managing Director of her own media consultancy company, also a former ABC journalist and long time member of the Journalist’s Union. She retired from politics at the state election in November 2006.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Sherryl Garbutt was elected to the seat of Greensborough in 1989 at a by-election following the death of Pauline Toner; the seat of Greensborough was abolished in the 1990 redistribution. She was the Member (ALP) of Parliament for the Bundoora electorate from 1992-2006 and held the portfolios of Environment and Conservation and Women’s Affairs from 1999-2002 and Community Services from 2002-06. She did not contest the 2006 election.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Judy Jackson was elected to the House of Assembly in the Tasmanian Parliament representing the electorate of Denison in 1986. During her parliamentary career, she held the ministerial portfolios of Health and Human Services from 1998-2002 and Attorney-General from 2002 until her retirement in 2006.

Fran Bladen was elected a State Member (ALP) for Franklin in Tasmania and held her seat from 1986 to 2002. She held several ministerial portfolios from 1989 to 1992, and returned to the ministry as Secretary to Cabinet in 1998. She resigned from the Legislative Assembly in 2002 to unsuccessfully contest the Legislative Council seat of Huon.