The Australian Women's Register

Margaret Preston was the first woman to be commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales to produce a self-portrait. In 1996 one of her hand-coloured woodcuts of a Western Australian banksia from 1929 was commemorated on an Australia Day postage stamp.

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Trish Worth was elected to the House of Representative of the Australian Parliament as the Member for Adelaide, South Australia in 1993. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing on 26 November 2001 in the Howard Government. She was defeated at the 2004 election.

Spence ran as a South Australian delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1897, the first woman political candidate in Australia. She was also active in the Women’s Suffrage League and the South Australian National Council of Women.

The Olive Pink Society was formed in 1988 and works to address issues of race and gender in anthropology. It publishes the Bulletin of the Olive Pink Society.

Chris Gallus was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs on 26 November 2001.

She was elected to the House of Representatives (Liberal Party) in 1990 for the seat of Hawker, which was later abolished, and for the seat of Hindmarsh in 1993 and subsequent elections.

Elected to the Senate for South Australia in 1984 (Liberal Party), Amanda Vanstone was appointed Minister for Family and Community Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women on 30 January 2001.

Amana Vanstone was honoured with an AO in the Australia Day Honours list in 2020 for distinguished service to the Parliament of Australia, to the people of South Australia, and to the community.

In 1919, Susan Benny was elected a member of South Australia’s Brighton Council, thus becoming Australia’s first woman politician. She held her seat for two elections and left local government after failing to become mayor in 1922.

Margaret Reid is the first woman to have been elected President of the Senate. She held this position for six years, from 20 August 1996 to 18 August 2002. In 2004 she was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to the Australian Parliament and the community.

Nancy Cato was an acclaimed author. She published several historical novels and biographies and two volumes of poetry. Cato was also a strong campaigner for environmental conservation.

A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia. She supported herself largely by writing articles for urban newspapers on such topics as ‘native cannibalism’ and the ‘doomed’ fate of Indigenous peoples. Bates also published her work on Indigenous kinship systems, marriage laws, language and religion in books and articles. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Aboriginal welfare work in 1934.

Bates’ birth year was changed from 1863 to 1859 on 16 January 2018 after consulting the references in Bob Reece’s work Daisy Bates: Grand dame of the desert and Susanna De Vries’ book Desert Queen: The many lives and loves of Daisy Bates.

Teacher, kindergarten activist, and philanthropist, Ada Mary a’Beckett was born in Adelaide in 1872. Throughout her career she worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in biology at the University of Melbourne as well as teaching at various schools throughout Victoria. She was very closely involved in the kindergarten movement, helping to establish the Kindergarten Training College in Kew. Ada was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 3 June 1935, and had a kindergarten named after her the following year. She died in 1948 in Melbourne.