The Australian Women's Register

Invented in Chicago in 1887 and derived from the game of baseball, softball was introduced to Australia in 1939 when Canadian Gordon Young became director of physical education in New South Wales and promoted the game in schools. The game found its way to Victoria during the Second World War, when U.S. Army Sergeant William Duvernet organised softball as a recreational activity for U.S. nurses stationed there. Another American, Mack Gilley, brought the game to Queensland in 1946.

Tennis Australia began as the Lawn Tennis Association of Australasia in 1904, when it was housed in Sydney, New South Wales. At this time, the Association was affiliated with New Zealand for the purposes of organising the Davis Cup and the Australasian Championships, but the two national bodies separated in 1922. In 1926, the Association moved to Melbourne where it became the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia and was presided over by (Sir) Norman Brookes until 1955. Following a worldwide growth in open tennis in the 1970s and 1980s, the Association became a company in 1984 and was renamed Tennis Australia in 1986.

In 1990, the Australian Bowls Council (now Bowls Australia Inc.), the national administrative body for men’s bowling, was affiliated with 2,225 clubs. The Australian Women’s Bowling Council was parallel, with 2,185 affiliated clubs. By the late 1990s, Australia could boast 43% of the world’s bowling population.

The 1956 Australian Netball was the first team to ever beat England on home soil. The team revolutionised the way the sport was played and the tour was important to the establishment of an internationally consistent set of rules.

The Hockeyroos are one of Australia’s most successful sporting teams. Their three gold medals from the past four Olympic Games, two World Cups, six Champions Trophies and two Commonwealth Games golds highlights the team’s outstanding run of success. The Hockeyroos have been crowned Australia’s Team of the Year five times and were unanimously awarded the Best Australian Team at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

The Australian Opals is the Australian National Women’s Basketball Team.

For over fifty years, union policy in Broken Hill prohibited married women from taking on paid employment unless they were professionally trained. Clerical and retail positions were to be kept open for young unmarried women or widows.

Although their story is old as the Christian Church and as varied as the denominations of that church, deaconesses have always been associated with outreach work aimed at offering spiritual an pastoral guidance. Protestant equivalents of the Catholic sisterhood, deaconesses in the modern era are trained and paid Christian workers who assist in the ministry of the church. Although duties and training have varied across denominations and historical and cultural settings, there has been one constant theme. Historically, deaconesses in Australia have brought the gospel of Jesus Christ and provided Christian care to disadvantaged people.

Aussie Spirit Softball, the nickname for The Australian Open Women’s softball team, is one of Australia’s most successful sporting teams. Since softbal1996, Australia has medalled at all four events with Bronze in Atlanta (1996) Sydney (2000) and Beijing (2008) and Silver in Athens (2004).

Australia won the first ever International Softball Federation’s Women’s World Championship in 1965.

The Aussie Stingers, officially the Australian Women’s Water Polo team, won gold at the Sydney Olympic in 2000 and bronze, in a tense shoot out against Hungary, at Beijing in 2008.

The Stingers are a team with an incredible record of success, having place regularly at both the regularly held World Cup and World Championship events.

The City of Canberra is home to elite sportswomen, such as champion basketballer, Lauren Jackson and influential administrators like Heather Reid, CEO of Capital Football. It is represented at a national level by teams like the Canberra Capitals in the Women’s National Basketball League and the Canberra Darters in the Australian Netball League. But perhaps, more importantly, Canberra is home to the largest number of ordinary weekend warriors in all Australia. According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics report, published in 2012, 78.8 % of Canberra women regularly participate in Sport and Recreation, 9.7% more than the nearest ‘rival’ Tasmania at 69.1%. If we combine this record with the important role that Canberra has played as a developer of elite talent, through the Australian Institute of Sport, and the development of policy to promote and encourage women in sport through the Australian Sports Commission’s Women’s Sports Unit, then it most certainly is not overstating it to say that women have been very important in putting Canberra on the map of the sporting world.

The history of golf in Canberra is as old as the history of the city itself and women’s involvement features almost from the outset.

To mark the centenary of Australia’s Federation in 2001, the Victorian Women’s Trust curated an exhibition entitled ‘Ordinary Women, Extraordinary lives’. The exhibition showcased the lives and stories of many influential Victorian women.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have made a significant contribution to their countries and communities that have often gone unacknowledged.

This entry is an ever-growing record of resources and entries on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in the Register.

Australian women have had an active role in Australian politics since Henrietta Dugdale formed the first Australian women’s suffrage society in 1884. Just over ten years later, in 1895, South Australian women became the first Australian women eligible to vote. When the Commonwealth Franchise Act was passed in 1902, all women (except for Aboriginal women) were eligible to vote for, and sit in, Federal Parliament.

In 1921 Edith Cowan became the first woman to be elected into any Australian Parliament when she was elected to the Legislative Assembly as a member for West Perth. In 1943, Dame Enid Lyons and Senator Dorothy Tangney became the first women elected into the Commonwealth parliament, with Lyons to the House of Representatives as a member of the United Australia Party and Tangney to the Senate as a member of the Australian Party.

As of January 2019, there are 45 (30%) women in the lower house and 30 (39.47%) in the upper house, meaning women only make up a third of all people in the Commonwealth Parliament.

After suffering an electoral defeat in the 1970s, the Australian Labor Party recognised the need to attract more women to the party. Thus, in 1981 ‘the party endorsed a quota requiring that women hold 25 per cent of all internal party positions’ and in 1994 the party also adopted an Affirmative Action Rule, with the aim of ‘achieving preselection of women for 35 per cent of winnable seats at all parliamentary elections by 2002.’

In 1996 the Australian Labor Party established the National Labor Women’s Network and, in the same year, EMILY’s list was formed by a group of Labor women.

‘Between 1994 and 2010 the preselection of women candidates increased from 14.5 per cent to 35.6 per cent.’ In addition, in January 2012 the party has adopted a 40:40:20 quota system, meaning 40 per cent of seats must be filled by women.

Formed in 1992, the Australian Greens adopted gender equity as a founding principle. At the 2010 federal election, the Greens ‘reached a record high for any party… with women comprising 71.4 per cent or more than two-thirds of their total candidates.’

Since its formation in 1944, the Liberal Party has ‘inherited a tradition of women’s political activism’ and offered a women’s policy statement in both the 1946 and 1949 elections.

A Federal Women’s Committee was established in 1945 and incorporated in the party’s constitution the following year. Since then, ‘The Committee has had representation on the Federal Executive… and the party’s federal Constitution requires the vice-president of the party to be a woman.’

Women have been active in seeking protection of the environment since before the Federation of Australia in 1901.

To read more about women in the environment movement visit our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

The contribution of Australian women to botany has been significant. Whether as botanical scientists, botanical artists or botanical collectors, women have made, and continue to make, an everlasting impact in this field.

This entry is an ever-growing record of resources and entries on women and botany in the Register.