The Australian Women's Register

Established in 1896, the Queen Victoria Hospital in Melbourne was the first women’s hospital in Victoria, operated for women by women. Originally housed in William Street, Melbourne, new premises were purchased with money raised by Victorian women contributing to Dr Constance Stone’s ‘Shilling Fund’. The hospital moved to its Lonsdale Street site in 1946. In 1989 it was relocated to the Monash Medical Centre at Clayton.

Established in 1896 as the Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, as a clinic in a local church hall, The Queen Victoria Hospital was one of three hospitals in the world founded, managed and staffed by women, ‘For Women, By Women’, for the benefit of poor women uncomfortable with male doctors. There were eleven female founding doctors led by Dr Constance Stone.

The hospital was funded by an appeal coinciding with Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. After three years, there were enough funds to move into separate premises, the old Governess Institute in Mint Lane. Known as the Queen Victoria Hospital for Women and Children, the name changed to the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital when the Queen died in 1901.

In 1946, the hospital moved into premises vacated by the Royal Melbourne Hospital on Lonsdale Street. In 1965, it became Monash University’s teaching hospital for obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatrics, at which point it became a ‘Family Hospital’ that treated and employed males.

In 1977 the hospital amalgamated with McCulloch House and was renamed the Queen Victoria Medical Centre. The years later , in 1987, it merged with Moorabbin Hospital and moved to Clayton. In 1991 it was involved with yet another merger, this time with Prince Henry’s Hospital, to form the Monash Medical Centre.

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.

Ida Lee (later Marriott) approached geography historically, and reconstructed the exploration of Australia by the British through the study of logbooks, journals and lost charts found in British repositories, notably the Admiralty.

Jane Fletcher published a number of books on nature and nature study, and broadcast on 7ZL Hobart and 3LO Melbourne. In 1934 she became the first woman to lecture to the Royal Society of Tasmania. She was an outstanding bird observer with a particular interest in crakes and rails.

Teacher, kindergarten activist, and philanthropist, Ada Mary a’Beckett was born in Adelaide in 1872. Throughout her career she worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in biology at the University of Melbourne as well as teaching at various schools throughout Victoria. She was very closely involved in the kindergarten movement, helping to establish the Kindergarten Training College in Kew. Ada was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 3 June 1935, and had a kindergarten named after her the following year. She died in 1948 in Melbourne.

The Lyceum Club (Melbourne), established in 1912, was directly modelled on the lyceum clubs of England. Membership is restricted to women graduates and other women who had distinguished themselves in art, music, literature, philanthropy or public service.

The FKUV was established in 1908 to unite all free kindergartens and to maintain high standards of supervision, with the provision of trained kindergarten teachers deemed essential.

John Smyth (Professor of Education) and Ellen Pye (State Education Department) developed a training course that relied on co-operation between the Kindergarten Training College and the FKU. In 1917 the union was granted registration by the Council of Public Instruction as a training centre for kindergarten teachers. In 1922, as enrolments increased, the union moved to premises in Kew. Autonomy was granted to the Training College by the FKU in 1964 and it became the Kindergarten Teachers’ College.

See also The Free Kindergarten Union of Victorian 1908-1980 by Lyndsay Gardiner.

(Source: Historical Note University of Melbourne Archives)

Elizabeth Kenny developed a new treatment for infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis). Guided by Dr Aeneas McDonnell of Toowoomba, she developed a thorough knowledge of human musculature. [1]

Although Kenny never completed any nursing training or registered as a nurse, she opened a hospital at Clifton, near Toowoomba, in 1913. In 1915 she joined the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) and completed 12 round sea voyages between England and Australia with the returning wounded. During this time she earned her promotion to Sister, a title she used all her life. [2]

During the 1930s she established clinics in Brisbane with the backing of the State government, but with opposition from the medical profession. In 1940 she moved to the United States of America where her methods were widely acclaimed and gradually accepted world wide. Kenny returned to Queensland in 1951 and died in Toowoomba on 30 November 1952.

[1] 200 Australian Women p. 124
[2] ibid

Amy Rivett was a medical practitioner who specialised in gynaecology. She was a disciple of Marie Stopes and advocated birth control. During WWI she worked in several hospitals in Brisbane. After the war she moved into private practice, first on her own and then, from 1946, with her brother Edward in Sydney. She was a founding member of the Queensland Medical Women’s Society.

The Queensland Medical Women’s Society (QMWS) was founded in 1929 with the aim to further the professional development of Medical Women by education, research and improvement of professional opportunities. It promotes the health and welfare of all Australians, particularly women and children.

As of 2004, the QMWS:

Holds meetings throughout the year, at which a guest speaker presents a topic of clinical or medico-social consequence
Hold meeting/workshops with other groups of professional women incorporating matters of mutual interest
Sends newsletters to members
Provides an annual directory of members annually to encourage professional net-working
Provides mentoring opportunities

Mary Rivett was trained as a psychologist and lectured briefly at the University of Sydney. With her sister Elsie she formed the free Children’s Library and Crafts Club in 1922. In 1934 they formed the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement which after their death became the Creative Leisure Movement.

The Creative Leisure Movement formed out of the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement after the death of Doris Rivett and her sister Elsie.

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.

The Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) was formed in response to the deaths from the widespread practice of back-yard and self-induced abortion caused by unwanted pregnancies. The Association was campaigning to put an end to the legislation in Australia which enforced abortion as illegal. In Canberra the ALRA was established by Beryl Henderson. Julia Freebury was the Sydney convenor in 1972.

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.)

Susan Ryan was appointed the first Labor Senator for the Australian Capital Territory, in 1975. In the Federal Parliament she was the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister Bob Hawke on the Status of Women 1983-88 and the Minister for Education, 1984-87. She presided over the passage of the federal government’s Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunities in Employment) Act 1986. She later worked in the plastics industry, and in superannuation.

From July 2011 to 2016 she held the newly created position of Age Discrimination Commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission. She was also the Disability Discrimination Commissioner from July 2014 to 2016.

Susan Ryan passed away on 27 September, 2020. She was a woman of many firsts; a trailblazer for Labor women in parliament. As former prime minister, Julia Gillard, observed, ‘Every Australian’s life has been improved by her leadership on gender equality.’

Pamela Denoon was National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby from 1982-84. She actively lobbied for women’s rights in Canberra during the 1980s, and established by bequest the National Foundation for Australian Women and the Pamela Denoon Trust.

The Pamela Denoon Trust was established from a bequest made by Pamela Denoon of $50,000. The aim of the Trust was to advance education in the community through promoting research into social issues affecting women. Grants were allocated by the Trust for a variety of projects: attendance of Indigenous women to National Women’s Conference in October 1991, research on the impact of enterprise bargaining on women, scholarships for girls in secondary schools in Papua New Guinea, programs of the National Women’s Justice Coalition including Pamela’s List, support for the Black Women’s Education Foundation and Women with Disabilities Australia, audiovisual resources on domestic violence, the Australian Women’s Archives Project of the National Foundation for Australian Women, and the activities of Women’s History Month and Women on a Shoestring Collective, among others. The Trust was wound up in 2005 having provided grants of over $90,000 from the original bequest and interest earned.

Maria De Leo was the inaugural National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, 1978-79.

Yvonne Carnahan was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby from 1980-81.

Lorelle Thompson was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby from 1983-84.

Joanne Morgan was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in 1984.

Jane Elix was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby from 1985-86.

Lyn Lee was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, 1986-88.

Joy Taylor was the National Coordinator of the Women’s Electoral Lobby in 1988.

Mavis Jackson was a microbiologist. She founded International House (University of Melbourne) and served as President of the Lyceum Club from 1973-75.