The Australian Women's Register

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.

The League of Women Voters Victoria began in August 1945 when three women’s organisations agreed to combine: the Victorian Women’s Citizens Movement, the League of Women Voters, and Women for Canberra. The first President of the League was Mrs Julia Rapke JP OBE.

The League aims to encourage people, young and old, to regard their vote as a privilege and a right, to be exercised seriously.

Each year there are three events held, two marking important milestones for Victorian women voters and a seminar to encourage young women to get to know women politicians:

– March 31, 1909 when Victorian women first gained the right to vote in State elections, and
– May 12, 1924 when Victorian were first able to stand for the Victorian Parliament.
– Young Women’s Leadership Seminar held at Parliament House, organised by the Parliament’s Education Office.

The Bessie Mabel Rischbeith Memorial Trust is conducted under the auspices of the League as a tribute to a remarkable Australian woman.

Formed in 1921, became The Australian Federation of Women Voters in 1924. The Federation were early advocates of women’s rights at state, federal and international levels. The Federation was comprised of affiliated State Leagues including New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.