- Born
- 21 May 1929
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - Died
- 25 June 2003
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - Occupation
- Songwriter, Poet and Novelist
Summary
Glen Tomasetti was born in Melbourne, Australia. An academically and musically gifted woman, she was well-known throughout the Australian folk music circuit, working on commerical television and cutting eleven albums in the 1960s. A left-leaning environmentalist and feminist, Glen was vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War and was a member of the Save Our Sons Movement in Victoria. In 1967 she made headlines when she was subpoened to court for witholding one-sixth of her income tax on the grounds that this was the exact proportion used by the Holt government to finance the war in Vietnam.
She became a hero of the feminist movement in 1969 when she adapted the words to an old shearing gang ballad, 'All among the wool boys'. Glen's version 'Don't be too Polite, Girls' was written to support the 1969 case for equal pay that was being heard by the high court.
Glen Tomasetti had three children and believed that motherhood was the emotional core of her life. She has been described as "a woman of singular passion that found focus in motherhood, friendship, art, the environment and justice for the oppressed. Her creativity was multifaceted. She was a historian, poet, novelist and actor. She was formidably intelligent and her god had bestowed on her extraordinary physical beauty."
