The Australian Women's Register

Deborah Shnookal was active in the Melbourne Women’s Liberation Movement for some years. She was Chairperson and one of the organisers of the Melbourne International Women’s Day rallies in 1975 and during that year worked full-time for the Women’s Abortion Action campaign in Melbourne. She was a staff writer for Direct Action, the paper published by the Socialist Workers Party and represented that party in several state and federal elections including the New South Wales Legislative Assembly election for Phillip in 1976.

In 1989, she co-founded Ocean Press, an independent publishing company with a list focusing on books in English and Spanish on Latin America.  She gained her PhD in history and Latin American Studies at La Trobe University and in 2023 became a research fellow at the University of Melbourne.