by Anne Summers
1901
Miles Franklin publishes My Brilliant Career.
1902
Australian women (except in practice Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) get the right to vote in federal elections and to run for federal office.
All women in New South Wales awarded the vote in state elections.
Ada Evans is the first woman to graduate from the University of Sydney Law School, but until 1918 is denied permission to practise.
1903
Women in Tasmania, including Indigenous women, get the vote in state elections.
Four women, including Vida Goldstein, contest federal parliament seats. None is elected.
1905
White women in Queensland enabled to vote in state elections.
Grata Flos Matilda Greig becomes the first woman in Australia to be admitted to the Bar.
1908
Women in Victoria, including Indigenous women, enabled to vote in state elections.
Dorothea Mackellar writes Australia’s best-known poem, ‘My Country’.
1909
Introduction of Commonwealth old-age pension: women receive equal pay when they turn 65 (reduced to 60 in 1910).
1912
Commonwealth Maternity Allowance Act 1912 provides a £5 grant to mothers on the birth of a child, except to mothers who are ‘Asiatics’ or ‘Aboriginal natives of Australia, Papua or the islands of the Pacific’.
Marriage Act of Victoria 1912 provides for a wife, for the first time in Australia, to be appointed legal guardian of her children on the death of her husband. (Previously he could appoint someone else via his will.)
Fanny Durack is the first Australian woman to win an Olympic gold medal, in swimming, at the Stockholm Games, the first Olympics at which Australian women compete.
1915
White women in Queensland given the right to contest House of Assembly elections.
1916
New South Wales Testator’s Family Maintenance andGuardianship of Infants Act 1916 enables widows in that state, for the first time, to be the legal guardians of their children.
1917
Henry Handel Richardson publishes Australia Felix, the first volume of the trilogy that will become the classic The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.
1918
New South Wales women win the right to contest Legislative Assembly seats.
Women’s Legal Status Act 1918 enables women to practise law in New South Wales.
Anna Teresa Brennan is the first Australian-born woman admitted to the Bar, in Melbourne.
1920
Women in Western Australian win the right to take seats in state parliament.
1921
Women in Tasmania win the right to sit in state parliament.
Edith Cowan becomes the first Australian woman elected to parliament when she wins a state seat in the Western Australian Lower House.
Bessie Rischbieth forms the Australian Federation of Women Voters, a federation of non-party organisations to promote equal citizenship, equal opportunity and equal pay, which continues for the next 60 years.
1922
Country Women’s Association of New South Wales formed at a meeting in Sydney that resolves to ‘break through the wall of isolation that hemmed in so many women’. Most other states soon follow suit.
1923
Victorian women win the right to contest seats in state parliament.
1925
Business and Professional Women’s Club formed and calls for women to have the right to work.
1926
Women in New South Wales gain the right to sit in the Legislative Council.
New South Wales Widows’ Pension Act 1926 provides regular payments to widows and their children.
1927
New South Wales Family Endowment Act 1927 introduces child endowment, but ‘illegitimate’ children are ineligible to receive it.
Millicent Bryant becomes the first woman to receive a flying licence.
1930
Eileen Joyce makes her debut as a concert pianist, playing a Prokofiev concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at a Promenade Concert, London.
1933
First birth-control clinic, operated by the Racial Hygiene Association, opens in Sydney’s Martin Place – for married women only.
1934
Nancy Bird Walton is the first woman in Australia to obtain a commercial flying licence.
1938
Nora Heyson is the first woman to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture with her painting of Mme Elink Schuurman, wife of the Consul-General for the Netherlands.
1940
Christina Stead publishes The Man Who Loved Children, the most lauded of her works of fiction.
1941
Menzies United Australia Party Government, with Australian Labor Party support, introduces national child endowment, paid directly to the mother.
1942
Curtin Labor Government introduces federal widows’ pensions.
Women’s Employment Board established to monitor the wages of women drafted to replace men in essential industries during the Second World War; women’s wages rise dramatically in these industries, sometimes to 100 per cent of the male rate.
Women’s Land Army formed with the aim of establishing ‘a trained mobile force of 10 000 women rural workers’.
POLITICAL RIGHTS
1869
Henrietta Dugdale’s letter to the Melbourne Argus newspaper advocating full citizenship is the first public call for votes for Australian women.
1884
Henrietta Dugdale and Annie Lowe form the first Australian women’s suffrage society in Melbourne.
1888
Louisa Lawson establishes the Dawn, a magazine for women that is strongly feminist and supports rights for women, including the right to vote; it continues to be published until 1905.
1891
Womanhood Suffrage League formed in New South Wales to fight for votes for women.
1894
Women in South Australia, including Indigenous women, become the first in Australia to receive the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
1897
Catherine Helen Spence is the first Australian woman to run for public office when she stands as a candidate for the South Australian delegation to the Australasian Federal Convention. She is not elected.
1899
White women in Western Australia awarded the vote.
1902
The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 gives Australian women the right to vote in federal elections and to run for federal office; in practice, Aboriginal women and men are excluded from voting in federal elections until 1962 because of an interpretation of Section 41 of the Constitution.
Women in New South Wales awarded the vote.
1903
Women in Tasmania, including Indigenous women, get the vote.
Four women, including Vida Goldstein, contest seats in federal parliament. None is elected.
1905
White women in Queensland enabled to vote in state elections.
1908
Women in Victoria, including Indigenous women, enabled to vote in state elections.
1915
Queensland women given the right to contest House of Assembly elections.
1918
New South Wales women win the right to contest Legislative Assembly seats.
1920
Women in Western Australia win the right to stand for state parliament.
1921
Tasmanian women given the right to stand for state parliament.
Edith Cowan becomes the first woman elected to an Australian Parliament, in Western Australia.
1923
Victorian women win the right to contest seats in state parliament.
1926
Women in New South Wales win the right to sit in the Legislative Council.
1943
Dame Enid Lyons (United Australia Party) and Senat
or Dorothy Tangney (Australian Labor Party) elected to federal parliament.
1945
Jessie Street is (the only woman) member of Australian delegation to the San Francisco conference that establishes the United Nations (UN); after agitation from the women delegates (only 1 per cent of the total), the conference makes three landmark decisions: to specifically mention women in the UN Charter preamble, (2) to grant equal employment opportunities for women employed at the UN and its agencies, and (3) to establish a special UN agency to deal with women’s affairs (the Status of Women Commission was established 1946).
1947
Florence Cardell-Oliver is the first woman Cabinet Minister, in Western Australia.
1949
Dame Enid Lyons is the first woman appointed to federal Cabinet but she is not allocated a portfolio.
1962
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island women and men achieve suffrage federally, and at the state level in Western Australia, leaving Queensland as the only state that had not awarded suffrage to Indigenous people in state elections.
1965
Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and men gain the vote in state elections.
1966
Liberal Senator Annabelle Rankin becomes Minister for Housing: the first woman Minister in a federal government to be allocated a portfolio.
1971
Dame Annabelle Rankin appointed High Commissioner to New Zealand, becoming Australia’s first woman ambassador.
1972
Women’s Electoral Lobby surveys all candidates for the federal election and ranks them according to their views on women’s rights. Prime Minister William McMahon scores 1 (out of a possible 40). Opposition Leader Gough Whitlam gets 33.
1976
Liberal Senator Margaret Guilfoyle appointed Minister for Social Security in the Fraser Coalition Government, the first woman Cabinet Minister with portfolio responsibilities.
1980
Margaret Guilfoyle is appointed first woman Minister for Finance.
1983
Australia ratifies UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW).
Senator Susan Ryan appointed Minister for Education in the Hawke Labor Government, the first Labor woman Cabinet Minister.
1986
Joan Child becomes first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Janine Haines elected leader of the Australian Democrats, the first woman to head a political party.
1989
Rosemary Follett, Labor Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, becomes the first woman head of government in Australia.
1990
Carmen Lawrence (Labor) becomes the first woman premier, in Western Australia.
Joan Kirner (Labor) becomes the first woman premier of Victoria.
1994
ALP National Conference passes Affirmative Action rule requiring women to be preselected to 35 per cent of all winnable seats by 2002.
1996
EMILY’s List (Early Money Is Like Yeast – it makes the dough rise) formed by Joan Kirner to fund the election to parliament of progressive Labor women. (To be eligible for support, candidates must be pro-choice and pro-child-care.)
Liberal Senator Margaret Reid becomes the first female president of the Senate.
2000
In a by-election, Jo-Ann Miller wins the state seat of Bundamba in Queensland, becoming the 100th woman elected to an Australian Parliament.
2001
Following the election, women occupy 26.5 per cent of seats in the federal parliament.
After the resignation of a male member, women constitute 52.6 per cent of the Labor Party’s representation in the South Australian Lower House.
Carol Martin becomes the first Aboriginal woman elected to an Australian parliament, winning the Western Australian state seat of Kimberley.
Clare Martin becomes the first woman chief minister of the Northern Territory, after leading the Labor Party to victory.
Jenny Macklin elected deputy leader of the Labor Party, the first woman to hold a leadership position in a major party.
2004
The number of women in federal Cabinet rises to four, the highest number under the Howard Liberal Government.
2007
The Rudd Labor Government has ten women in its leadership team: four in Cabinet, three in the outer ministry, and three parliamentary secretaries.
Julia Gillard becomes the first woman deputy prime minister.
Anna Bligh becomes the first woman premier of Queensland.
2009
Kristina Keneally becomes the first woman premier of New South Wales.
2010
Julia Gillard becomes the first woman prime minister, with four women continuing in Cabinet, three in the outer ministry, and two women parliamentary secretaries. After the 2010 election, there are 12 women in the leadership team: the prime minister, three in Cabinet, two in the outer ministry and six parliamentary secretaries.
2011
Lara Giddings becomes the first woman premier of Tasmania.
In the Gillard Government, the number of women in Cabinet rises to five with the promotion of Tanya Plibersek, with the total number of women ministers and parliamentary secretaries remaining at 12.
2013
Penny Wong becomes the first woman Leader of the Government in the Senate; after a leadership ‘spill’ reinstates former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, the number of women in Cabinet rises to six, with five women in the outer ministry and two women parliamentary secretaries.
Following the 2013 federal election, women occupy 30 per cent of seats in parliament (effective when new Senators take up their positions on 1 July 2014), representing a slight rise in the House of Representatives (from 25 to 26 per cent) and slight decline in the Senate (from 39 to 38 per cent).
In the Abbott Liberal Government, Julie Bishop becomes the first woman Minister for Foreign Affairs and the only woman in Cabinet, with four women in the outer ministry and one woman parliamentary secretary.
Penny Wong becomes the first woman Leader of the Opposition in the Senate.
2014
The number of women in federal Cabinet rises to two, with Sussan Ley appointed Minister for Health.
2015
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, and Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, become the first elected female leadership team in national history. A majority of the Queensland Cabinet are women (8 out of 14).
ALP National Conference commits to a 50 per cent affirmative action target for all party positions and winnable seats within ten years
After a federal leadership ‘spill’, the number of women appointed to Cabinet by the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, rises to five, with one woman in the outer ministry and three women parliamentary secretaries.
Marise Payne becomes the first woman Minister for Defence.
1943
Dame Enid Lyons (United Australia Party) and Senator Dorothy Tangney (Australian Labor Party) elected to federal parliament.
1947
Judith Anderson first performs what will become the signature role of her remarkable theatrical career, Medea, opposite John Gielgud in New York.
1949
Dame Enid Lyons becomes the first woman Cabinet Minister but is not allocated a portfolio.
1958
Zoe Caldwell receives a scholarship to Stratford-on-Avon, the first step in a distinguished theatre career in London and the US.
1959
Federal Matrimonial Causes Act 1959, brought in by the Menzies Coalition Government, abolishes the double standard on adultery, providing that separation for five years is a grounds for divorce; it also enables courts to make orders in divorce proceedings for the support of children of the marriage.
Joan Sutherland first sings what will become her signature role, Lucia di Lammermoor, at Covent Garden and is immediately declared the successor to Nellie Melba.
1961
Joan Sutherland is the first woman named Australian of the Year.
1962
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and men achieve suffrage federally, and at the state level in Western Australia.
Roma Mitchell, a barrister in South Australia, becomes the first woman to be made a Queen’s Counsel.
1963
Margaret Court is the first Australian woman tennis player to win Wimbledon.
1964
Dawn Fraser is the first woman to win gold in the same event in three successive Olympics.
1965
Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and men achieve suffrage at the state level.
Roma Mitchell appointed to South Australian Supreme Court, becoming Australia’s first woman judge.
1966
Commonwealth Public Service abolishes the ‘marriage bar’, which required women to resign from the permanent service when they married.
Liberal Senator Annabelle Rankin becomes Minister for Housing, the first woman Minister in a federal government to hold a portfolio.
1969
Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission rules that ‘equal pay for equal work’ be phased in by 1972.