The Australian Women's Register

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Tasmania is primarily dedicated to promoting total abstinence from alcohol and other harmful drugs and all members sign a pledge to this effect. Under its broader agenda of ‘home protection’ and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle, however, it has been involved in wide range of social and political reform activities mostly relating to the welfare of women and children. Importantly, influenced by its sister organisation in the United States, the WCTU became a major supporter of the campaign for women’s suffrage in Tasmania as it was believed that power at the ballot box was the only way to achieve their goals. While at its most influential in the years up to WWI, the movement continues today.

The first meeting of Women Lawyers Association of Tasmania was held on 17 May 1976, and the association remained active until 1979, when meetings stopped for a short time. The organisation was reformed in 1985, following a meeting at Ross on 24 February 1985 when a motion was passed that the association was a viable proposition and should be continued.

The Women Lawyers Association of Tasmania was incorporated in 2002 and in 2008 the organisation changed its name to Tasmanian Women Lawyers.

The Tasmania Law Reform Institute is Tasmania’s principal law reform body. Established on 23 July 2001 through a signed agreement between the State Government, the University of Tasmania and the Law Society of Tasmania, it is based in the Faculty of Law at the University’s Sandy Bay campus. Its functions include the review of laws with a view to:

• modernising the law;
• eliminating defects in the law;
• simplifying the law;
• consolidating any laws;
• repealing laws that are obsolete or unnecessary;
• creating uniformity between laws of other States and the Commonwealth.

The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) became active in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1885 and by 1888 the movement had spread to Launceston.

During the 1930s, the Hobart branch of the YWCA dis-affiliated itself from the national movement.

The creche was named after its Founder, President and Patron Dame Marjorie Parker.