May Holman was the eldest of nine children of John Barkell Holman, miner, and Katherine Mary Holman (nee Rowe). The family lived at Broken Hill, New South Wales, before moving to Cue in Western Australia. May was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Perth. On leaving school, she found employment at the Perth Trades Hall and the Westralian Worker. In 1914 she married Peter Joseph Gardiner, a Labor Party member for the State parliament, but the marriage could not withstand their varied professional commitments and ended in divorce in 1920.

Holman's mother was an active member of Labor women's organisations in Perth. Her father was a Labor politician and member of the Timber Workers' Union. After his death in 1925, May Holman became secretary of the Union and won preselection for her father's seat, Forrest, where timber was the dominant industry. She was instrumental in formulating the Timber Industries Regulation Act in 1926. Holman retained her seat through four elections. She was president of the Labor Women's Central Executive from 1927; secretary of the Parliamentary Labor Party from 1933; and member of the royal commission into sanitation and slum clearance in Perth in 1938.

May Holman died in a car accident on the day that she was re-elected to Parliament in 1939. She was buried in Karrakatta cemetery.

Sources used to compile this entry: May Holman Papers, 1893 - 1939, COMAP56; JS Battye Library of West Australian History, State Library of Western Australia; Radi, Heather (ed.), 200 Australian Women: A Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press, Sydney, 1988, 258 pp. Also available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-78644.