The Australian Women's Register

Read more about Janet Holmes à Court in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Marion Louisa Holmes in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Marion Phoebe Holmes in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

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

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

Read more about Colma Derlua Monica Keating in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Glenda Joyce Kickett in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Flora Annie Margaret Landells in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

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

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

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

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

Read more about Della Rae Morrison in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Read more about Evelyn Helena Parker in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

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

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

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

Gina Rinehart was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2022 for distinguished service to the mining sector, to the community through philanthropic initiatives, and to sport as a patron.

Read more about Grecian Edith Sandwell in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

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

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

Read more about Elizabeth Marchant Truswell in our sister publication The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia.

Margaret Battye was the only child of Nellie May (née Robertson) and Charles Battye, a librarian. She graduated from the University of Western Australia (LL.B., 1931; B.A., 1933) and was admitted to the Bar in 1933. In June of 1933 she reputedly became the first woman to represent a client in a Western Australian court of law, and in so doing, according to the presiding magistrate, ‘created legal history’ by being the first woman to appear before him as a barrister. She won the case. From 1936 she practised on her own as a barrister and solicitor, and from 1939 worked for the Council for Civil Liberties.

Battye was active in several Western Australian women’s organisations, including the local branch of the Australian Federation of University Women, the Women’s Services Guilds, the Perth Business and Professional Women’s Club, the Karrakatta and the Soroptimist Clubs. She acted as honorary legal adviser to almost all the women’s organisations in Perth during the 1930s and 40s. She was also active in the Liberal Party of Australia’s Western Australian division and was given responsibility for the foundation of the State women’s committee. She chaired a national committee for the United Nations’ commission into the status of women

She became ill with Grave’s disease and passed away in 1949.

Hally Kienzle was living in Fiji with her German-born husband when war broke out in 1914. Although her husband was a naturalised British subject, he and his family were deported to Australia for internment as enemy aliens. From October 1917 they were interned in the Bourke Concentration Camp before they were transferred to the Molonglo Concentration Camp in May 1918. Hally was released on parole on 29 May 1919 while her husband was imprisoned in Holsworthy Camp until 22 October 1919.

Australian-born Daisy Schoeffel, with her German-born but naturalised British husband and their two British born children, were deported from Fiji to Australia in November 1917 and interned in harsh conditions as enemy aliens first in the Bourke Concentration Camp, New South Wales and then moved to the Molonglo Concentration Camp at Fyshwick in the then Federal Capital Territory (now the Australian Capital Territory). Finally released in May 1919, Daisy wrote to a Western Australian Member of Parliament – Hon. Henry Gregory – expressing her anger and humiliation at the injustice of their treatment, the shame of their status and the depth and breadth of the suffering they experienced in the camps and pleaded against the forced deportation to Germany of her family. This letter provides the basis of this entry with relation to her imprisonment during World War One.

In 1987 Deborah Bennett-Borlase became the first woman appointed as a Magistrate to the Perth Courts of Petty Sessions in Western Australia

Laura Coles began shooting at a local club as a teenager, later moving to competitive clay pigeon shooting. She worked as an exercise physiologist, before going on to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.