The Australian Women's Register

A member of the Liberal Party of Australia, Judith Troeth was elected as a Senator for Victoria in the Parliament of Australia in 1993. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy from October 1997 until October 1998, when she moved to become Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. She held that position until October 2004. She retired at the 2010 federal election, but remained in the Senate until her term expired on 30 June 2011.

Nancy Burbidge worked at the CSIRO between 1946-1973, rising from systematic botanist to Curator of the Herbarium. From 1973 to 1977 she was scientific leader of the Flora of Australia project. Burbidge published several books on Australian plants.

Helen Coonan is a former Australian politician, who was a Liberal member of the Australian Senate representing New South Wales from July 1996 to August 2011. On 26 November 2001, she was appointed Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer in the Howard Government. She was re-elected in 2001 and 2007. From 2004-07, she served as Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Since leaving politics in 2011, Coonan has transitioned into the corporate world, and vouches for the seminal importance of the law, including legal training, legal practise and legal experience as a common thread underpinning her capacity to perform across a diverse professional and public landscape for a very long time.

Go to ‘Details’ below to read a reflective essay written by Helen Coonan for the Trailblazing Women and the Law Project.

Margaret Reynolds was a Senator for Queensland from 1983 until 1999. First elected to the Senate in 1983, she was re-elected in 1984, 1987 and 1993. Reynolds worked as primary and remedial teacher then a tutor before entering parliament. She also served on the Townsville City Council from 1979-1983. Reynolds’ responsibilities have included: Federal Government representative on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 1992-1995; Minister assisting PM on Status of Women 1988-1990; Chair of the Parliamentary Adviser to the United Nations; and Minister for Local Government 1987-1990. Reynolds has been a member of the Australian Labor Party since 1971, and has held many positions in the ALP.

Reynolds retired from parliamentary politics in 1999. She is now the National President of the United Nations Association of Australia and an Adjunct Professor and Sessional Lecturer in the School of Political science and international studies, University of Queensland.

Irene Longman was the first woman to both stand for and be elected to the Queensland Parliament. She was a member of the Country and Progressive National Party for the electorate of Bulimba from 11 May 1929 to 11 June 1932. Longman moved Address-in-Reply to the Governor’s Opening of Parliament Speech on 21 August 1929.

The federal government (Whitlam) appointed the International Women’s Year National Advisory Committee to oversee the distribution of government funding for projects between 1974 and 1976 associated with the United Nations-proclaimed International Year of Women (1975). Australia’s activities for the International Year of Women were also supported by a secretariat under Elizabeth Reid, the women’s advisor to the Prime Minister. Reid also convened the committee. Membership included Ruby Hammond, Irene Greenwood, Caroline Jones, Margaret Whitlam and Shirley Castley.

The committee attracted criticism from some activists in the Women’s Liberation movement over spending priorities. However, seed and grant funding assisted the development of many important organizations and publications including the Working Women’s Centre and Dr Kay Daniels’s Women in Australia An Annotated Guide to Records.

A member of the Australian Labor Party, Katy Gallagher was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Parliament of the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.), representing the electorate of Molonglo, in October 2001. She was re-elected in 2004, 2008 and 2012 and served as Chief Minister from 16 May 2011 to 2014.

In 2014 Gallagher resigned from the A.C.T. government to seek preselection to the Australian Senate. She was appointed to fill the casual vacancy caused by the retirement of Senator Kate Lundy in 2015, and elected in her own right a year later, in 2016. After a brief interruption during the parliamentary elegibility crisis of 2018, when she was forced to stand down because she had not renounced her British citizenship prior to her nomination in 2016, she was re-elected as Senator for Canberra in 2019.

A member of the ACT Greens, Kerrie Tucker was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory representing the electorate of Molonglo in 1995. She served in the Parliament until 2004.

Ethel Turner’s first book, Seven Little Australians, was published in 1894. Translated into ten languages, it was made into a stage play in 1915 and a film in 1939. In 1953 it was televised in Britain, and in 1973 and 1975 by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

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.

The Australian Servicewomen’s Memorial was dedicated by the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the Hon. Bruce Scott MP, on 27 March 1999. The Memorial, designed by Sydney sculptor, Anne Ferguson, commemorates all women who served, suffered and died in the defence of Australia.

Mary Delahunty won the seat of Northcote (Legislative Assembly) for the Australian Labor Party, in a by-election in August 1998. She held the ministerial portfolios of Education, the Centenary of Federation, Planning, Arts and Women’s Affairs. Before entering politics, she was Managing Director of her own media consultancy company, also a former ABC journalist and long time member of the Journalist’s Union. She retired from politics at the state election in November 2006.

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.

Dame Enid Lyons AD GBE was the first woman elected to the Australian federal Parliament, in 1943. She was also the first woman in federal Cabinet. She was appointed as a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) on 11 May 1937 for her public services to Australia and as a Dame of the Order of Australia (AD) on 26 January 1980.

Established in 1950, the Union of Australian Women is a left-wing social change organisation. Its aim is to work for the status and wellbeing of women across the world

Professor Meredith Edwards AM has enjoyed an extensive career as lecturer, researcher and policy analyst in economics. She is best known for developing policies around AUSTUDY, Child Support, HECS and long-term unemployment initiatives. She is currently Emeritus Professor, Australia and New Zealand School of Government ( ANZSOG) Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra.

Edna Walling is best known for her contribution to Australian landscape architecture design. She was also a talented amateur photographer, and used the many photographs of gardens she took to illustrate the books and articles she wrote. Walling also created portrait photography.

Recognised as a National Living Treasure, Margaret Whitlam achieved public figure status after 1972 as the wife of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. She was outspoken on many issues affecting women and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for International Women’s Year in 1974.

The National Council of Women of Australia was founded in 1931, with Ivy Moss as President, to act as an umbrella organisation for the existing National Councils of Women in each state. The first of these, the National Council of Women of New South Wales, had been formed in 1896. Like all National Councils of Women, it functions as a political lobby group, attempting to influence local, state and federal governments as well as participating in international activities through its affiliation with the International Council of Women (established in 1888 at Seneca Falls in the United States of America) which has consultative status with the United Nations.

The national Council grew out of the Federal Council of the National Council of Women, which had been established in 1924 ‘with the object of enhancing the power of the [state] Councils in dealing with matters of Australian concern.’ Later, Councils established in the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory also affiliated with this national body. Until the 1940s at least, the Council was a major focal point for middle-class women’s activism.

The current aims of NCWA are:
To work for the removal of all discrimination against women and to promote the equal status of women and men in law and in fact.
To act as a link for networking and a co-ordinator between State and Territory Councils of Women.
To act as a voice or Agent of communication at national and international levels on issues and concerns of women.
To develop national policies and responsibilities on behalf of women on an Australia wide basis.
To maintain the affiliation with the International Council of Women and monitor the implementation of its plans of action and policies at national level.

Dame Margaret Guilfoyle was the first woman to be appointed to federal Cabinet with portfolio, when, in 1975 she became Education and then Social Security Minister in the Fraser Liberal Government. In 1980 she became the first woman to hold an economic portfolio when she became Minister for Finance. On 31 December 1979 Margaret Guilfoyle was appointed to the Order of the British Empire (Dames Commander) for her services to public and parliamentary service. She left parliament in 1987.

Hanna Neumann was Professor and Head of the Department of Pure Mathematics, School of General Studies, Australian National University from 1964-71. Previously she worked as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Hull and University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 1946-63.

Neumann became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1969.

Clarke, a scientist with the Plant Cell Biology Research Centre at the University of Melbourne from 1982, received a Personal Chair in Botany at the University of Melbourne in 1985 and became Lieutenant Governor of Victoria in 1997.

Clarke was the first female Chairperson of the CSIRO, a position which she held from 1991 until 1996.

Ruth Medd has served on the Board of Directors for the National Foundation for Australian Women since 1997. Her ongoing interest in the advancement of women is focused on increasing women’s representation on Boards of Management and educating women about investment. She has been a senior manager in the telecommunications field.

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.

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.

In 1973 Elizabeth Reid became the first adviser on women’s affairs to a head of state, being appointed in this capacity for Australian Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Reid went on to work as an adviser, administrator, consultant, educator and researcher in an international setting on issues of women and development, health and population. She is currently based in Canberra, a Visiting Fellow, State, Society and Governance Program, College of Asia and the Pacific, at the Australian National University, and an analyst, programmer, consultant and trainer in development and humanitarian assistance.

Sara Dowse is a prize-winning writer of reviews and Canberra-themed fiction. A feminist and women’s rights activist, she was a member of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Women’s Electoral Lobby-ACT. She became the inaugural head of the Women’s Affairs Section of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (now Office of the Status of Women) for the Whitlam government.

(This entry is sponsored by generous donation from Christine Foley.)