The Australian Women's Register

Ludo McFerran was a member of the Elsie Women’s Refuge Collective, and was the National Manager of the ‘Safe at Home, Safe at Work’ project at the University of New South Wales, leading the fight for dedicated paid family and domestic violence leave. She was awarded the Tony Fitzgerald Memorial Community Award by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2015. She was also a founding member of the International Domestic Violence at Work Network.

At the international level, Ludo’s expertise was recognised by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2013 when it called on her to speak on a side event panel to end workplace violence against women held at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In the lead up to ILO’s adoption of the Violence and Harassment in the World of Work Convention, 2019 (No.190), Ludo – as representative of the Women and Work Group Sydney University – took part as observer for the workers’ group in the Geneva Meeting of Experts on Violence against Women and Men in the World of Work (3–6 October 2016). Ludo’s experience of collective bargaining outcomes in favour of domestic violence leave was one of the important background resources for R206, paragraph 18 which reads ‘Appropriate measures to mitigate the impacts of domestic violence in the world of work referred to in Article 10(f) of the Convention could include:
(a) leave for victims of domestic violence; …’

She has written extensively on the Australian experience in prevention and protection of women workers faced with violence and harassment.