The Australian Women's Register

The Business and Professional Women’s Club of Perth (later BPW Perth Club) was founded in 1946, largely due to the efforts of Clara Behrend (an advertising executive) who had been a member of the Club in Melbourne. She organised a meeting at which some 30 women joined the new Club and the lawyer Margaret Battye was elected president. Membership grew rapidly, reaching 148 by 1958, but was only open to women who earned a salary or were self employed. Early members included teachers, nurses and hairdressers as well as business managers and other professionals.

Its activities were initially mainly social, but in the 1950s the Club took part in campaigns for equal pay, and also took an interest in broader social issues such as gambling, facilities for disabled children and new migrants, as well as fund raising for various causes. They became increasingly focussed on improving women’s working conditions and increasing their career prospects. It has campaigned on inequalities in superannuation and for affirmative action. It has investigated facilities for women returning to work and encouraged girls to take up non-traditional employment. Like other such clubs, it was explicitly founded to provide a space for women’s networking, and to work for their professional interests.

The Business Girls and Professional Women’s Club of Newcastle (later the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Newcastle, and then BPW Newcastle Club) was formed in 1931 with the stated aims of assisting the Young Women’s Christian Association and the community, and of stimulating thinking and increasing knowledge of current affairs. Its foundation president was Marjorie Mulvey, Initially its focussed on social activities and on social service – operating a Free Children’s Library and providing scholarships for under-privileged girls. Subsequently it devoted itself more specifically to issues relating to the status of women, particularly in employment. Like other such clubs, it was explicitly founded to provide a space for women’s networking, and to work for their professional interests.

The National Italian-Australian Women’s Association, established in 1985 by the founding president, Franca Arena, aims to recognise and promote the contribution of Italo-Australian women to Australian society. It has organised two international conferences in Sydney in 1985 and 1988, and published Forza e Coraggio/Give me strength (1989), a selection of Italian migrant women’s experiences.

Franca Arena was born in Genoa, Italy, and migrated to Australia in 1959. She was the founding member of the Migrant Women’s Association, president of the National Italian-Australian Women’s Association, founder of the New South Wales Ethnic Community Council, won a Churchill Fellowship, and was Commissioner of the Education Commission of New South Wales. In 1981, she was the first woman from a non-English speaking background to be elected to the New South Wales Parliament, where she served for seventeen years. Arena resigned from the Australian Labor Party in November 1997, remaining in parliament as an Independent until her resignation from Parliament in March, 1999.

Dora Hunter was raised by two missionaries, Miss Hyde and Miss Butler, firstly at Quorn and then at Eden Hills, South Australia. She started working as a servant in a private home, and later got a job in a kindergarten. Following that, she worked as a Child Care Worker at the Central Methodist Mission in Adelaide for nine years. She did two years’ training in the Aboriginal Task Force at the Institute of Technology in Adelaide, and worked in a Government position as an Aboriginal Community Worker. She has been involved with the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and the Young People’s Branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She enjoys playing music, and has often played in old people’s homes and children’s homes as well as at church meetings.

Roslyn Watson is an Aboriginal Australian ballet dancer and choreographer of international renown. Born in Brisbane of Biri descent, she has danced in a number of Australian companies since beginning her career in the early 1970s. She has danced internationally, and with international companies, including the prestigious Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Maureen Watson was born in Rockhampton in 1930. Of Biri descent, spent her early life in rural Queensland, moving to Brisbane with her five sons in 1970. She became heavily involved in the struggle for indigenous right and justice throughout the 1970s and 80s, as her participation in protests at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games testified to. She developed a well deserved reputation as a storyteller, her major medium for the promotion of Aboriginal culture.

Maude Tongerie was born in 1927 at Anna Creek, about 80 miles west of Oodnadatta in South Australia. She lived with her people (Arabunna) until the age of nine, when she was taken to the Finke River Mission for an eye treatment. She then went to live with an aunt in Oodnadatta so that she could learn English, and from there she went to Colebrook Home, a non-Government Aboriginal mission, in Quorn. At the age of 15 she started to work as a domestic with a family near Adelaide. She married George Tongerie, a young Aboriginal man who served in the Air Force during the war. In the early 1970s Maude became involved with the Department for Community Welfare, and has worked as a Social Worker with Aboriginal families, particularly in the Juvenile Courts.

Patricia O’Shane was born in Northern Queensland in 1941. A noted activist for Indigenous rights, her achievements in the public sphere have been remarkable. She was the first Aboriginal Australian barrister (1976) and the first woman to be appointed to the New South Wales Metropolitan Water, Sewerage and Drainage Board (1979). When she was appointed permanent head of the New South Wales Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs in 1981, she became not only the first Aboriginal person but also the first woman to become a permanent head of ministry in Australia.

Val Bryant was the first Aboriginal person to work in the Department of the Prime Minister. She is an Aboriginal health worker with both practical and academic understandings of the health issues confronting indigenous communities. She has published extensively on the problems of substance abuse in Aboriginal communities and has established and run rehabilitation centres in Sydney and Western Australia.

Hetty Perkins was an Aranda woman from Central Australia. From the age of 14 she worked as a kitchen-hand at a hotel in Arltunga, and rode out mustering and watering cattle for the hotel owner. She had eleven children, and her son Charles Perkins became the first Aboriginal person to hold a senior public service appointment. Hetty worked on a cattle station for some time before moving to Alice Springs to work as a nursemaid in a European family. She later lived on Telegraph Station near Alice Springs, and worked in Alice Springs as a cook. Later, she moved to Jay Creek Settlement. She looked after many children as well as her own, and urged Aboriginal children to keep out of trouble.

Caroline Archer was born in 1922 and is best known for her leadership in the 1970s of the One People of Australian League (OPAL), an organisation that sought to promote the interests of Aboriginal people. She was appointed executive officer of OPAL in 1972, becoming the first Aboriginal person to hold the position.

Fanny Reading, medical practitioner and activist for Zionist and Jewish women’s causes, was born near Minsk in Russia in 1884. After her family migrated to Australia, Reading taught Hebrew to private students before entering the University of Melbourne to study music and later medicine. Graduating in 1922, she moved to Sydney to join her brother’s medical practice. In 1923, inspired by the visit of Zionist emissary Bella Pevsner, she founded the Council of Jewish Women – a Zionist organisation which was also active on a range of women’s issues, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

In 1925 she travelled to the United States, Europe and Palestine, and helped organise a conference for the International Council of Jewish Women. In 1929 she organised a conference in Sydney at which the National Council of Jewish Women was formed.

In 1973, the first national conference on Sexism in Education was convened by the Women’s Liberation Movement, fuelled by concern for the position of women and girls in society and Women’s Studies courses were established at Flinders and Adelaide Universities. Teachers and Students quickly became aware of a shortage of materials in this area and a group of women educators began meeting in 1974 to redress this. In July 1975 the Women’s Studies Resource Centre was established at Wattle Park Teachers College funded by a grant from the Australian National Advisory Committee for International Women’s Year. After moving several times the WSRC relocated to its present address in the suburb of North Adelaide.

Initiated by women already in the art world, the Women’s Art Movement (hereinafter named W.A.M.) was part of an international trend somewhat belated in Australia, which lead women artists to look at their position as women in society and to analyse their position as artists through a feminist frame. The W.A.M offered women artists support within an alternative group structure. The group began with the aim of supporting and promoting women artists, educating members on the problem of discrimination and working with one another to overcome sexism in the arts and society. Fifty women ranging in age from 18 to 65 attended the first meeting. As attendance numbers grew, funding was required. Such monetary resources were obtained from the South Australia Arts Grant Advisory Committee (A.G.A.C), the Community Arts Board (C.A.B), and the Visual Arts Board (V.A.B) for salary and administrative costs, workshops and the publication of the book Women’s Art Movement 1978-1979, Adelaide, South Australia, respectively.

The Australian Federation of Graduate Women (South Australia) Inc. was founded in 1914 as the Women Graduates’ Club, a sub-society of the Adelaide University Women Students’ Club. Its aims as adopted at the first meeting on 7 July 1914 were “To provide social intercourse among women graduates” and “to deal with questions primarily affecting University graduates”. From 1923 the association became an affiliate of the National Federation of Graduate Women (then known as the National Federation of University Women).

The national body of the Australian Federation of University Women was renamed to the Australian Federation of Graduate Women (AFGW) in December 2009. Presumably, this was when the New South Wales branch also changed its name.

The University of Queensland Women Graduates’ Association was established at a meeting in September 1920. It became part of the Australian Federation of University Women following the establishment of that organisation in 1922.

The Northern Territory chapter of the Australian Federation of Graduate Women. In accordance with national regulations of the AFGW, the Northern Territory branch was in abeyance from c.2013 due to insufficient membership numbers.

The Canberra Association of Women Graduates was formed in 1944 with the aim of facilitating ‘inter-communication and co-operation between women of universities of all nations’ (1944 Constitution). The Association was affiliated with the Australian Federation of University Women and the International Federation of University Women. Membership was comprised of women holding degrees from any university recognised by the Australian Federation of University Women.

In 2009, in line with resolutions of the affiliated National body, the organisation changed its name to the Australian Federation of Graduate Women (Australian Capital Territory) Inc.

As of 2010, Tasmanian membership of the Australian Federation of Graduate Women was being managed through the ACT branch.

Eleanor Mary Hinder (1893-1963) was a pioneer in the field of industrial welfare in Australia with her appointment as Superintendent of Staff Welfare for the department store, Farmer & Co. Ltd, in Sydney during WWI. She later achieved international prominence in this field. From 1926 to 1928, Hinder assisted in the development of the new industrial department of the National Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association of China, in Shanghai . She held the position of Chief of the Industrial and Social Division of Shanghai Municipal Council from January 1933 until August 1942, when the Japanese occupation of Shanghai forced her repatriation to Britain. Hinder’s next appointment, from December 1942 to October 1944, was to the International Labour Organisation. in Montreal where she served as Special Consultant on Asian Questions., and she subsequently held several other positions with the United Nations. Outside of her professional life, Hinder was also involved with a numbers of women’s organisations.

The Australia Group of the Liaison Committee of Women’s International Organisations was formed in April 1950 to gain status and representation at United Nations meetings held in Australia and South East Asia. The Australian Group operated for some time to combine national and international functions, but in 1954 it was resolved to limit activities to those of “a group of organisations” specially concerned with such subjects as human rights, the status of women, and the nationality of married women.

The Australian Group organised Australian participation in various international-agency conferences in the South-East Asian area, notably the United Nations Commissions on the Status of Women, and the United Nations Seminar on Civic Responsibilities and Increased Participation of Asian Women in Public Life (1957).

In 1963 the Liaison Committee headquarters group in London voluntarily withdrew from consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and the Australia Group, feeling that the Australian Committee was no longer necessary, ceased to function later in that year.

Lady Phyllis Cilento was born in Sydney on 13th March 1894 and educated in Adelaide, graduating MB, BS from the University of Adelaide. She did postgraduate work at hospitals and clinics in Malaysia, New Guinea, London, Paris and New York. Later moving to Brisbane with her husband, (doctor and medical administrator, Sir Ralph Cilento) she became a prominent member of the Queensland women’s movement and highly influential in broader areas of public health. She was a medical columnist, broadcaster, journalist and author of several books. Her interests lay in nutrition, vitamin therapy, family planning and antenatal and childcare. She founded the Queensland Mothercraft Association in 1930; the Queensland branch of the Business and Professional Women’s Club and was president of the Queensland Medical Women’s Association (1938-1947).

The Zonta Club of Perth, a women’s service club, was founded in 1971. It is part of Zonta International, a world-wide organisation of business and professional women working together to advance the legal, political, economic and professional status of women. Zonta clubs support Zonta International service and award programmes, and also provide support for local community projects by fundraising or active involvement, particularly those dealing with women’s issues such as economic self-sufficiency, legal equality, access to education and health, and eradication of violence.

The Zonta Club of Sydney was chartered in 1966. Originally part of District 16, the Zonta Club of Sydney now belongs to District 24.

The Zonta Club of Adelaide was officially chartered on April 17, 1969. Allthea Tebbutt was elected as the first president of the Club, alongside Board Members Irene Jeffries, Dr Catherine Ellis, Geraldine Little, Joyce Cupples, Brenda Coulter and Judith Hay.