The Australian Women's Register

CAPOW! is a networking coalition for women’s non-government organisations (NGOs) in Australia Since its foundation in 1992 at a WEL national conference CAPOW! has played a major role in developing cooperative ventures and mechanisms across the women’s movement. It held twice-yearly face-to-face meetings for this purpose.

CAPOW! helped coordinate NGO forums to facilitate submissions to the federal government and the United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, (September 1995). It has since worked to follow up the commitments made by the Government and NGOs at Beijing, and continues to encourage women’s’ NGOs to make submissions to the government.

By 1996 the CAPOW network linked more than sixty national women’s organisations and served to improve information flow and coordination of advocacy in international as well as domestic spheres.

Formed under the leadership of Sara Dowse, the Office of Women’s Affairs (OWA) was the bureaucratic support unit of the women’s adviser to the Prime Minister, a position created in 1973 under the Whitlam Labour government. OWA became the state apparatus through which many Australian feminists worked to achieve measures of women’s advancement in equal employment opportunity, legislation and law reform, health funding, refuges, childcare, arts and sport, media representations and school curricula.
The OWA played an important role in securing government funding for women’s services. The Office was originally located in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. However, in 1977, under the Fraser Liberal government, bureaucrats announced the Office was to move to the Department of Home Affairs, representing a significant loss of status given Home Affairs was ranked 26th out of 27 ministries in seniority. Dowse resigned over this move, having always argued for the importance of having the Office located in the chief policy-making agency of the government (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet). The Office (by then called the Office of the Status of Women) was restored to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 1983 when Labour returned to office; prominent feminist academic Anne Summers was then appointed its head.

Sources: Sawer, M. 1996 and Caine, B. 1998

The Women’s Constitutional Convention met at Parliament House, Canberra, 29-30 January 1998. Discussions included whether or not Australia should become a republic, women’s place in politics and the status of women in Australia.
Source: RAAM

An amphitheatre located in the eucalypt lawn was erected as a memorial to Dr Burbidge’s contribution to Australian botany.

The Catholic Women’s League Australia (CWLA) was established in 1975. It evolved from the Australian Council of Catholic Women, which began in 1928. Its major objectives are to enable women to participate more effectively in working for and building Christianity by promoting the spiritual, cultural, intellectual and social development of women. It aims to foster ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue and provides a national forum for the voice of the Catholic Women’s League Organisations in Australia.

The Catholic Women’s League Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn was established on 8 November 1945. It began as a small group in St Christopher’s Parish, Canberra to provide hostesses for official parish occasions and to raise money for the church community. It spread later to the city of Goulburn, to town and country centres outside the Archdiocese. Its affiliation with the Federal Council of Catholic Women of Australia in 1953 meant that its agenda broadened from parish affairs to the wider community and to matters of national and global importance to women and their families. It now promotes the intellectual, spiritual, cultural and social welfare of women. It is affiliated with the Catholic Women’s League Australia Inc.

The Ordination of Catholic Women was founded by Zoe Hancock and Marie Louise Uhr in December 1993 to advocate the inclusion of women as ordained priests in the Catholic church. A national organisation, it held its first conference in Canberra in 1994 and its first international conference in 1999. It maintains a national office in Canberra, with regional convenors in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, South Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria and contacts in South Australia, North Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The National Labor Women’s Network ( NLWN) was established in 1996 and is the peak women’s organisation within the Australian Labor Party. It aims to increase the numbers of women active in the Labor Party at all levels, to facilitate and strengthen relationships between the state Labor women’s organisations and the National Network. Membership is open to all current financial women members of the Australian Labor Party. The National Executive comprises representatives from all states and territories. The current Convenor is Nicola Roxon, Federal Member for Gellibrand, Victoria.

The Federal Women’s Committee ( FWC) was established at the inaugural meeting of the Federal Council of the Liberal Party in August 1945. It is the peak body representing women in the Liberal Party and acts as a voice for women in the development of policy and party organisational matters. Its aims are to promote and encourage women to become involved in political life, to contribute effectively to the formulation of policy and to assist the Party in implementing its decisions through effective community interaction.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) was founded in 1961 as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. The Institute is Australia’s premier institution for information about the cultures and lifestyles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. AIATSIS research staff conduct high-quality research and administer research grants. The Institute’s award-winning in-house publisher, Aboriginal Studies Press, publishes an extensive array of books, cassettes and CDs, films and videos, reports, and the Institute’s journal, Australian Aboriginal Studies. The Library holds the world’s most extensive collections of printed, audio, and visual material on Australian Indigenous topics, including the writing of, and oral interviews with, indigenous women.

Seven Writers was a group of Canberra-based women writers who met regularly to debate and critique one another’s work.

This entry was sponsored by a generous donation from Christine Foley.

The Marian Eldridge Award is a national award to encourage an aspiring female writer to undertake a literary activity such as a short course of study, or to complete a project, or attend a writers’ week or a conference. There is no age limit.

The award was established in 1998 under the auspices of the National Foundation for Australian Women, as a legacy of Marian Eldridge (1 February 1936 – 14 February 1997), an acclaimed short story writer, a novelist, poet and teacher who spent most of her creative writing years in Canberra, where inter alia she was instrumental in establishing the ACT Writers’ Centre.

In the last months of her life she planned a gift to establish a professional development award to nurture writers. She said that the recipient should not be established but someone whose writing showed promise, and that the writing need not be fiction. Marian said that “when trying to assist aspiring writers ‘every little bit helps’ and that such recognition would be an important milestone in a developing literary career.

An Advisory Group selected by Marian Eldridge’s family decides each year on guidelines for applicants, assesses applications and selects the recipient of the award.

The first four competitions ($1000 cash prize) were confined to residents of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and New South Wales (NSW), and brought in a total of 78 applications. The winners of those competitions of were:
•Sarah St Vincent Welch (1998)
•Julie Simpson (1999)
•Rose de Angelis (2000)
•Elanna Herbert (2001)

A wider Advisory Group has since been established, which now includes representatives from the National Library of Australia, the School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra and the ACT Cultural Council. From its fifth year, the award was open to applicants throughout Australia. National competition winners have been:
•Annah Faulkner (2002/2003)
•Caroline Lee (2005).

The award amount is currently $1500.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)

The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) was a division of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It was established early in 1987 to advise the Prime Minister directly on issues relating to Australian multicultural society. The purpose of the office was to be that of a ‘bridge-builder’, linking community and government to further the policy of multiculturalism. To that end, it had a liaison and Community Information Branch and a Policy and Research Branch. The focus of the community information program was on building upon research undertaken and evaluating ongoing projects. Although most staff were located in Canberra, there were Regional Coordinators in each State and in the Northern Territory, so there was some attention to decentralised services.

In early 1995 the functions of the OMA were to be transferred to the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. For administration purposes, OMA officially ceased to be part of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on 26 January 1995.

The review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants was established by Cabinet decision and announced by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Malcolm Fraser, on August 31, 1977. Established in order to ensure that the changing needs of migrants were being met by available resources, the review was conducted under prime ministerial authority in order to circumvent some allegedly obstructionist senior bureaucrats in the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. The first meeting of the Review Group, which was chaired by Mr Frank Galbally, C.B.E, was held on 1 September 1977. The committee of review consulted widely, seeking submissions from individuals and organisations, government and non-government. Advice from migrant community groups was actively sought.

The report brought down by the review group, Migrant Services and Programs, was submitted to
the Prime Minister on 27 April 1978 and tabled by him on 30 May 1978. It was made available in Arabic, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese. In it, the Review Group came down with a total number of fifty-seven recommended improvements to
programs and services involving expenditure of about $50 million in such areas as initial settlement and education, especially the teaching of English, with emphasis placed on the role of ethnic communities themselves, and other levels of government, to encourage multiculturalism.

Of particular significance to migrant women was recommendation number 43, which stated ‘the implementation of the general recommendations of the Report, which have been framed in recognition of the special problems of migrant women, should take particular account of their needs’.

Conducted at a time, according to the committee, when Australia was ‘at a critical stage in the development of a cohesive, united, multicultural nation’, the Galbally review of Post Arrival Programs and Services to Migrants marks an important development in the evolution of Australian official policy towards settlers from one of assimilation to multiculturalism. Its pointed reference to the needs of women also marked a moment when ethnic and gender politics connected.

In 1977, when the Galbally review of Post-Arrival Migrant Programs and Services was announced, Senator Margaret Guilfoyle wrote to the Prime Minister advising him of the specific problems and special needs of migrant women. In June of that year, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser asked the Office of Women’s Affairs to set up an Interdepartmental Working Group Taskforce on Migrant Women. Officers from the following department were involved:

• Immigration and Ethnic Affairs
• Social Security
• Employment and Industrial Relations
• Productivity
• Health
• Education
• School’s Commission

Under extremely trying conditions, including endless delays caused by the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, the taskforce completed its report in November, just making the deadline to be considered by the Galbally Review. Among other things, the report recommended that ‘wherever possible action should be taken to provide services through or in co-operation with ethnic organisations and migrant women’.

The report was regarded as a valuable resource for implementation of Recommendation 43 of the Galbally Report.

On August 6 2005 hundreds of women (and a few men) from all around Australia gathered in Canberra to celebrate the 30th anniversary of International Women’s Year (IWY) and the 60th Anniversary of the Declaration on Women in the United Nations Charter.

Organised by the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW), UNIFEM Australia, the Jessie Street Trust, and the Jessie Street National Women’s Library, and supported by a host of sponsors the event celebrated 30 years of achievements by women and for women, in Australia and worldwide. Participants got a centre stage view of IWY events, including the Mexico Conference, and some keyhole glimpses of how that year and what flowed from it has changed the lives of women around the world.

Highlights of the day included ‘snapshot’ talks with Sara Dowse and other speakers, recreating the events of IWY and reflecting on the present and future. Australian journalist Maxine McKew compered the formal reception and Elizabeth Reid, who led the Australian delegation to the 1975 Mexico Conference, reprised the speech she gave to that historic conference.

Inaugurated on October 10th, 1957, the Canberra Women’s Bowling Club was the first all women’s bowling club in Canberra. Prior to its formation, only the wives or sisters of Canberra City Bowling Club members could play the sport, so one aim of the women’s club was to open it to more participants.

Located on Wentworth Avenue, in the Canberra suburb of Kingston, the first green was installed in 1958 and the second in 1969. The clubhouse was officially opened on 25th February 1961. Until the opening of the Kingston green and clubhouse, members played on the Parliament House green, at the Canberra Bowling Club and on the private green at the Victoria Hotel in Queanbeyan.

The Canberra Women’s Bowling Club’s closure in 1992 was occasioned by dwindling membership and inflation. Membership peaked during the 1960s at about 136 and later dropped to 46.

The ANU Women’s History Group operated from 1982 to 1987. The Group held regular meetings and talks on various aspects of Women’s History. It also sent out monthly newsletters which kept members in touch with other activities, for instance, the Feminism Year at the Humanities Research Centre of the ANU in 1986.

The U3A Warrani Chorale is a choir for senior women organised by volunteers, which is affiliated with the University of the Third Age, Australian Capital Territory. It was established in 1998 by its musical director and conductor, Pixie Gray, OAM, and its piano accompanist, Barbara Hall, OAM, and provides tuition in vocal and choral techniques and musicianship to its members. It holds annual free public concerts, as well as regularly performing at events organised by a wide range of community organizations. Its repertoire is drawn from a range of musical styles such as madrigals, classical, modern and sacred music, spirituals, ballads, folk songs and jazz, all usually sung in four part harmony. In 2006 it participated in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Choir of the Year competition. Its name, ‘Warrani’, is derived from an Aboriginal word for ‘to sing’.

The Business and Professional Women’s Club of Canberra formed in 1954, affiliated to the Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women (now BPW Australia) which had formed in 1947, which was in turn part of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women which had formed in Geneva in 1930. The Club remained active until the 1990s, with separate clubs for Woden and Belconnen meeting in the 1980s.

Soroptimist International is a worldwide organisation for women in management and the professions working through service projects to advance human rights and the status of women. Soroptimists work at all levels of civil society, local, national and international, and are involved with a wide spectrum of women’s concerns. The Soroptimist Club of Canberra was chartered on 1 April 1955 and has met continuously since then.

For almost 20 years the Women’s House in O’Connor was an important feminist space providing support for community based women’s groups and organisations. Activities and events at the house reflected the changing shape of the women’s movement, both locally and nationally, as well as local women’s involvement in broader political campaigns. The House was the first centre for community based women’s services in Canberra with Canberra Women’s Liberation, Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Abortion Counselling Service and the Rape Crisis Counselling Service as the first tenants. Over the years many of the women involved formed significant groups and connections at the House, contributing to the establishment of some of the key women’s services in Canberra. Lesbian Line, a telephone support service for women, operated out of the House for a number of years in the late 1980s and early nineties. An even wider range of women’s groups used the House for meetings. By the mid 1990s there were more women-specific services established in Canberra, both government and non-government. This meant that the House was being used less often after having provided a critically significant place for a diverse range of Canberra women to meet, work, organise and party.

Following preparatory work and approaches to government by the National Council of Women (ACT) and the Nursery Kindergarten Society, the Emergency Housekeeper Service commenced in Canberra in April 1947. A Committee of Management, chaired by the National Council of Women, was established in February 1947 with representatives from the Canberra Mothercraft Society, the Nursery Kindergarten Society and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). An organising secretary, Ella Buttsworth, was appointed in March 1947. In July 1977, responsibility for providing the service passed to the ACT Division of the Australian Red Cross Society. With ACT self-government in 1989, Home Help Service ACT adopted its own constitution, becoming an incorporated association. It now operates as a community sector not-for-profit organisation that provides quality in-home support to the elderly and people with disabilities and their carers in the ACT, under the Home and Community Care Program and the Veterans’ Home Care Program.

The Canberra Branch is the oldest of four located in the Australian Capital Territory. All four belong to the Monaro Group of the Country Women’s Association of NSW. The Canberra Branch was founded in 1946. By March 1953 the members had raised enough funds to build their own rooms on the edge of what was then the Central Business District of Canberra. In the early 1980s high-rise office blocks were being built next to the rooms and the branch was able to negotiate the sale of its lease to a developer who provided the branch with a large area of the ground floor of a new building on Barry Drive. The branch provides education, health and social welfare support to its community with the funds it raises and through its crafts and cooking.

The Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory was established by the Commonwealth Seat of Government Supreme Court Act, 1933. It commenced operation from 1 January 1934 as the superior court of record for matters originating in the ACT. It has unlimited jurisdiction within the territory in civil matters (although matters involving less than $250 000 are usually brought in the Magistrates Court), and hears the most serious criminal matters.

Within the Australian court system it is one of eight state and territory Supreme Courts having unlimited jurisdiction in their respective parts of Australia. These Supreme Courts are second only to the High Court of Australia as the final court of appeal in the Australian judicial hierarchy.

The ANU Club for Women Inc was established in 1961 by the Vice Chancellor’s wife, Lady Molly Huxley. It was formed to provide support to the families of academics, staff, and visitors coming to the University.

Originally membership of the Club consisted mostly of wives of academics, past Vice Chancellors’ wives and professional officers of the ANU. Today, however, members include all staff, as well as those who have a close association with the ANU.

The Club has various sub-groups, including: the Monday Group; the Bushwalking Group, the Morning Book Reading Group; and the Evening Book Reading Group.