The Australian Women's Register

Mary Mackillop was appointed head of the Penola Catholic School in 1866. In March of that year she was formally committed into the Institute of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. In 1871, almost half the members of the Institute were dismissed by Bishop Sheil, and Mackillop was excommunicated for alleged insubordination. The excommunication was lifted as early as February 1872, when she was reinstated as superior of the Institute. She was elected superior general under the new Roman Constitutions in 1875. Mackillop founded a teacher training centre for the Institute in Sydney in 1888, enabling it to become a leader in Catholic education.

In 1923, following the death of her father James, Nell Martyn took over as managing director of the Steel Company of Australia. The company specialised in manganese and chrome steel, and employed over 100 workers. Martyn was a popular employer and a regular speaker at YWCA gatherings. When she died of cancer at the age of 39, over 1000 mourners attended her funeral.

Ethel McLennan was awarded her Doctor of Science degree in 1921 for a study of the endophytic fungus associated with the seed of the grass Lolium. She was awarded a fellowship by the International Federation of University Women in 1926, and became a central figure in the Botany Department at the University of Melbourne. She became associate professor in 1931, and enjoyed an excellent reputation nationwide as a leading plant pathologist and mycologist.

May Maxwell began her professional life as an actor but switched to journalism in 1907 when she discovered that it was a more stable career option than the theatre.

Louisa Meredith sailed for Sydney with her husband Charles in 1839. A keen naturalist, she collected plant, insect and seaweed specimens in Tasmania and was a member of the Tasmania Royal Society. She published several volumes of poetry as well as her accounts of colonial life, and often illustrated these works herself.

After winning a Bulletin prize in 1913 for a sonnet about Canberra, Nina Murdoch published a book of verse, Songs of the Open Air. She was one of the first women general reporters at the Sydney Sun, and from 1922 was working in Melbourne at the Sun News-Pictorial using the pen-name ‘Manin’. She was the first woman permitted to cover Senate debates. In 1930, Murdoch published Seventh Heaven, a Joyous Discovery of Europe, based on her own travels. Another book, She Travelled Alone in Spain, followed five years later. Her last book, Portrait in Youth of Sir John Longstaff, was published in 1948.

Nettie Palmer became involved in the suffrage movement and the socialist movement while she was completing her tertiary studies in London. It was there that she met her husband, Vance Palmer, and by 1917 the couple had returned to Australia with their first daughter, Aileen. A second daughter, Helen, was born that year. The family lived at Emerald, Victoria. Both Vance and Nettie were opponents of censorship and conscription, and Nettie had a regular column in the Argus. She also wrote for the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail and the Bulletin Red Page. Her essay on Modern Australian Literature 1900-1923 was published in 1924. Nettie Palmer became editor of the anti-fascist journal for women, Women Today, and edited memoirs, published short stories and poetry anthologies, made translations, and lectured to young writers.

Ethel Richardson was educated at Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne, and the Royal Conservatorium at Leipzig. As Henry Handel Richardson, she became one of Australia’s best-known and best-loved novelists, finding fame with Maurice Guest (1908) and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (published in three parts between 1917 and 1929).

Kathleen Robinson trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. With Lewis Casson and Dame Sybil Thorndike’s Australian tour, she played minor parts in Media, St Joan, Madame Plays Nap and Macbeth. From 1932-35, Robinson ran the Westminster Theatre in London with Osmond Daltry. In 1940 she returned to Australia and formed Whitehall Productions at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross, Sydney. She opened an academy for dramatic art in 1944.

Brettena was a mature woman of 43 when she became involved in politics – by then a widow, a business owner, and the mother of several children. In 1888 she formed the Australian Women’s Suffrage Society, later enveloped by the Victorian Women’s Franchise League. A freethinker, Smyth was opposed to orthodox religion and strongly advocated the use of birth control. In 1893 she published The Limitation of Offspring, and she sold rubber pessaries at her grocery shop. Smyth was a competent public speaker and a respected Melbourne identity in the 1890s.

Martha Webster came to Australia to assist her brother, Henry Gyles Turner, in his role as a leading member of the Melbourne Unitarian Church. She was herself elected a regular minister in October 1873. In May 1884, Webster was present at the meeting which resolved to form the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society, and she became active in the Australian Women’s Suffrage Society in later years.

Joan Rosanove completed her legal studies at the University of Melbourne, and was admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor in June 1919. In 1923 she became the first woman in Victoria to sign the Victorian Bar roll. The bulk of her work was in criminal and matrimonial cases. Rosanove was appointed Q.C. in 1965, and took silk in New South Wales two years later. She made a significant contribution to legal reform, particularly as it concerned the status of women.

Mary Penfold founded and ran the business that became Penfolds Wines in South Australia.

Jane Sutherland arrived in Sydney with her family in 1864. She studied at the National Gallery School of Design, and held a number of exhibitions from 1878. Sutherland was a leader in the movement away from the nineteenth-century tradition of studio art, and toward the plein-air style, sketching directly from nature.

A talented pianist, Louise Hanson-Dyer founded the music publishing company, Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, in Paris in 1928. With her first husband, James Dyer, she donated £10,000 to establish a permanent orchestra in Melbourne. Upon her death, she bequeathed over £200,000 to the University of Melbourne. The Louise Hanson-Dyer Music Library at the University is named in her honour.

Caroline Wilson has been chief football writer for The Age newspaper since 1999. She was the first woman to cover Australian Rules football on a full-time basis and is a multiple winner of Australian Football Media Association awards, including most outstanding football writer and most outstanding feature writer (2000, 2003, 2005). Wilson was also voted the AFL Players’ Association’s football writer of the year in 1999.

Betty Paterson and her sister Esther were prodigies born into the elite of Melbourne’s bohemian set. Father (Hugh) and uncle (John Ford) were both artists and her first playmates were her neighbours, the children of Frederick McCubbin.

Art impinged upon every facet of her life throughout its entire course. Her Art Deco cartoons were published regularly in magazines such as The Bulletin and Aussie. Her illustrated interpretations of ‘permissive’ 1920s society resonated with those she depicted – she became artist-by-appointment to the flappers.

Betty Paterson married twice, and had one child, a daughter, Barbara.

The Melbourne Working Women’s Centre was the first trade union women’s research and advisory centre in Australia. Established in 1975, under the auspices of the white collar union peak body, the Australian Council of Salaried and Professional Associations (ACSPA), it operated as an independent lobby and research group concentrating on women’s issues in employment. When the ACSPA amalgamated with the ACTU in 1979, so too did the Working Women’s Centre. It became defunct in 1984.

The Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) was established in Melbourne in 1972 by Beatrice Faust. She was inspired by feminists in the United States who had been rating presidential candidates. The organisation quickly spread to Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra and in 1978 WEL Australia was formed as a coalition of state, territory and regional groups. Primarily a women’s political lobby group, WEL surveyed political candidates and their policies affecting women, wrote submissions and developed media skills for women to lobby for the inclusion of women in the area of government policy. Originally the WEL campaign was based on six demands: equal pay, equal employment opportunity, equal access to education, free contraceptive services, abortion on demand and free 24-hour childcare.

Established in 1896, the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne was the first women’s hospital in Victoria, operated for women by women. Originally housed in William Street, Melbourne, new premises were purchased with money raised by Victorian women contributing to Dr Constance Stone’s ‘Shilling Fund’. The hospital moved to its Lonsdale Street site in 1946. In 1989 it was relocated to the Monash Medical Centre at Clayton.

Established in 1896 as the Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, as a clinic in a local church hall, The Queen Victoria Hospital was one of three hospitals in the world founded, managed and staffed by women, ‘For Women, By Women’, for the benefit of poor women uncomfortable with male doctors. There were eleven female founding doctors led by Dr Constance Stone.

The hospital was funded by an appeal coinciding with Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. After three years, there were enough funds to move into separate premises, the old Governess Institute in Mint Lane. Known as the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, the name changed to the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital when the Queen died in 1901.

In 1946, the hospital moved into premises vacated by the Royal Melbourne Hospital on Lonsdale Street. In 1965, it became Monash University’s teaching hospital for obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatrics, at which point it became a ‘Family Hospital’ that treated and employed males.

In 1977 the hospital amalgamated with McCulloch House and was renamed the Queen Victoria Medical Centre. The years later , in 1987, it merged with Moorabbin Hospital and moved to Clayton. In 1991 it was involved with yet another merger, this time with Prince Henry’s Hospital, to form the Monash Medical Centre.

The Lyceum Club (Melbourne), established in 1912, was directly modelled on the lyceum clubs of England. Membership is restricted to women graduates and other women who had distinguished themselves in art, music, literature, philanthropy or public service.

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.

The Office of Women’s Policy, located in the Department of Premier and Cabinet provides strategic policy advice to the Victorian Government on issues of concern to women.

The Women’s Action Committee grew out of initial meetings held by Dr Zelda D’Aprano, Alva Geikie and Thelma Solomon in 1970. WAC’s campaigns highlighted the inequality of women’s pay scales by paying only 75% of the fares when riding on public transport. WAC incorporated itself into the growing Melbourne women’s liberation movement in mid 1972.