The Australian Women's Register

Read more about Rachel Perkins in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Ellen (Ella) Stack in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Maila Stivens in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Sigrid Thornton in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Marie-Louise Uhr in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Isobel Mary White in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Susan Hollingsworth was a widow with three of her eleven children and six grandchildren living at home in Hall, a small village in the north of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT – now the ACT) when World War One broke out. When two of her sons-in-law enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) she offered safe haven to her daughters and their children who moved back to Hall. Her son Clyde died in France in 1917 aged 23 years. Susan was well-known as a supporter of the Red Cross in their fundraising ventures.

Ellen Rohrmann was living with family in Singapore when World War I broke out. Declared an enemy alien by the ruling British, she and other relatives were transported to Australia and initially interned at Bourke, New South Wales before being moved to the Molonglo Concentration Camp in the Federal Capital Territory where Ellen died in 1918.

Catherine ‘Katie’ Sheaffe represented the Tharwa community on the Federal Capital Territory War Food Fund committee during World War I.

Angie Ballard was paralysed as a result of a car accident as a child. Her first Paralympic Games were in Sydney (2000). She went on to win a bronze medal in Athens (2004) and two silver medals at the Paralympic Games in London (2012). She was a gold medal winner at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

Anna Flanagan began playing hockey when she was five years old. She made her international debut when she was eighteen and went on to represent Australia as a member of the Australian women’s hockey team at both Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Jenny Aitchison was elected as the Member for Maitland representing the Australian Labor Party in the Legislative Assembly of the New South Wales Parliament in 2015.

Heidi Yates is Head of General Practice at Legal Aid ACT, a position she has held since 2015. A well-known solicitor and human-rights advocate, Heidi has been appointed to roles including Executive Director of the ACT Women’s Legal Centre, advisor to the ACT Human Rights and Discrimination Commissioner and a Clinical Education Convenor at the ANU College of Law.

Heidi’s professional reputation is well-established at a national level as an advocate for the development and funding of free legal services across Australia (particularly for victims of family violence) and as a trailblazer in gender-related law reform.

Heidi has also been a spokesperson and advocate at a local and federal level for the removal of legislative discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. She has undertaken this work through roles including spokesperson for the community law reform group ‘Good Process’ and as the inaugural chair of the ACT LGBTIQ Ministerial Advisory Council.

After just two years of practice, her work was recognised when she won the ACT Law Society’s Young Lawyer Award in 2008. In 2011, Heidi was also a state finalist in the Young Australian of the Year Awards.

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

Marie Sexton (nee Kinsella) co-drafted the constitution of the Women Lawyers’ Association of New South Wales and was the organisation’s first honorary secretary. The eldest of five children of Edward Parnell (Ted) Kinsella and his Belgian wife, Marie Louise Josephine Graff, the then Kinsella matriculated from Fort Street Girls’ High School and went on to earn three qualifications from the University of Sydney: a Bachelor of Arts in 1943; a Diploma in Education in 1944; and a Bachelor of Laws in 1949. (It was during a year-long stint as teaching assistant at Inverell High School in northern New South Wales that Kinsella decided that teaching was not for her, had her last day on 29 January 1945 and thence turned her sights to the study of law). She began working as an associate to her father, then Mr Justice Kinsella of the Industrial Commission of New South Wales. On 18 January 1950, Mr Justice Kinsella was elevated to the Supreme Court of New South Wales; Kinsella became clerk associate to her father and clerk of arraigns. Although admitted to the New South Wales Bar on 11 February 1949, Kinsella did not practise at the Bar. She later worked in the Department of Territories, Sydney, and the Attorney-General’s Department in Canberra, producing the respected Annotated Constitution. Kinsella retired in 1980.

Hedda Morrison was an ethnographic photographer who worked extensively in China, Borneo and later Australia, where she settled in 1967. She was influenced by Neue Sachlichkeit, or the ‘new realist’ style. Morrison’s photographs were widely disseminated in books, including the seminal Sarawak: Vanishing World, and Travels of a Photographer. Morrison was a resourceful photographer, using two car batteries to power her portable enlarger while without power for six years in Sarawak, and storing her negatives in an airtight chest using silica gel as a drying agent to overcome the perils of a tropical climate. Morrison worked largely in black and white, except for in the early 1950s.

Professor Marian Simms is internationally prominent for her work in the fields of gender studies and political science, ethics governance and Indigenous research policy. She has held senior academic and administrative roles in Australia and New Zealand and has long-standing interests in research culture and governance in New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa and Australia. She is a former president of the Australasian Political Studies Association (APSA), a former editor of the Association’s journal, and has published prodigiously. Marian has attended the Women’s Caucus of APSA from its inception. From 2011 to 2016 she was Executive Director for Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences at the Australian Research Council.

Val Plumwood was an eminent Australian environmental philosopher.

Bec Goddard was the coach of the 2017 Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) premiership team, the Adelaide Crows. She was also the recipient of the 2017 Football Woman of the Year Award.

Poet and publisher Marjorie Pizer founded the Pinchgut Press with her husband in 1947.

Marjorie was also a psychotherapist for more than 50 years.

Lady Mildred Watt’s obituary in the Canberra Times reports that she obtained a university medal in philosophy at Sydney and was a highly literate writer. She was also a Russian scholar and translator, who at one time translated a book on Australian foreign policy written by a Soviet official into English. Her manuscript was then donated to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Lady Mildred Mary Watt was the wife of Sir Alan Watt, a diplomat and public servant, and together they had four children.

Isis Holt won a gold medal in the T35 100m at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Therese Vassarotti was a pioneer and role model for women and girls and their participation in the Australian Catholic Church. From 2001 to 2005 Therese was the Executive Officer for the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s Commission for Australian Catholic Women.

Moya Bailey, née Blackall, graduated from Sydney University MB BS in 1929 and pursued her obstetric qualifications in England, completing them in 1936. She practiced in the Australian Capital Territory and was an active member of the Canberra Croquet Club for thirty-three years. Her appointment as Member of the Order of the British Empire on 1 January 1960 was ‘in recognition of her outstanding service for over twenty years to the community of the Australian Capital Territory and surrounding districts as a member of the medical profession, particularly in the field of obstetrics’.

Originally a member of the Australia Party, Maureen Worsley was one of the first women to be elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory in September 1974. She resigned from the party in 1977 and intended to stand as an Independent in the 1977 election, but her marriage breakdown meant she had to find full-time work. As a result she did not contest the 1979 election but was an Independent candidate for the electorate of Canberra in the 1982 election for the House of Assembly. She died of emphysema in 2001.