by Anne Summers
Cathy Freeman is the first Aboriginal person to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
Deirdre O’Connor becomes the first woman Federal Court Judge and President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Lowitja O’Donoghue becomes the first Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).
1991
Jennie George becomes the first woman assistant secretary of the ACTU.
Roma Mitchell becomes the first woman governor, in South Australia.
1992
Some combat positions in the Australian Defence Force opened to women, allowing women to fly combat aircraft and to serve on submarines.
Prostitution decriminalised in the ACT.
Anglican Church ordains 11 women ministers.
The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 is amended to strengthen its sexual harassment provisions, and to extend the operation of the Act to industrial awards.
Leneen Forde becomes first woman governor of Queensland.
Janet Holmes a Court becomes the first woman to be appointed to the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
1993
Elizabeth Evatt, President of the Australian Law Reform Commission, is the first Australian member on the UN Human Rights Committee (elected in 1992).
Australian-based film director Jane Campion (born in New Zealand) receives an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film she also directed, The Piano.
1994
Industrial Relations Commission announces decision to have Family Care Leave provisions apply to all workers who need to care for sick dependants.
Brothel prostitution legalised in Victoria
Deirdre O’Connor appointed the first woman President of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.
Irene Kwong Moss is the first woman of Asian background to be appointed a magistrate in New South Wales.
Dr Heather Munro becomes the first woman president of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
ALP National Conference passes Affirmative Action rule requiring women to be preselected to 35 per cent of all winnable seats by 2002
1995 Jennie George becomes the first woman President of the ACTU.
Wendy Craik becomes the first woman Director of the National Farmers’ Federation.
Prostitution in NSW decriminalised.
1996
Queensland becomes the last state to remove the blanket exemption from jury service for women.
Liberal Senator Margaret Reid becomes the first female president of the Senate.
Nova Peris-Kneebone becomes the first Aboriginal woman to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, in hockey.
1997
Penny Wensley is appointed Australian Ambassador to the UN, the first woman to head an Australian diplomatic mission.
Evelyn Scott is appointed Chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation.
1999
Simone Young appointed Opera Australia’s Music Director and Artistic Director, after being the first woman to conduct orchestras in several major European cities.
Property (Relationships) Legislation Amendment Act 1999 commences in New South Wales, the first state to include same sex couples within a range of laws including property, inheritance, incapacity and accident compensation.
Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act1999 legislation abolishes the Affirmative Action Agency, replacing it with the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) and considerably watering down the reporting requirements of companies.
Prostitution and brothels legalised in Queensland
2000
Sharan Burrow succeeds Jennie George as President of the ACTU.
Margaret Jackson appointed Chairman of Qantas, the first woman to head the board of a major listed company.
2001
Following the election in November, women occupy 26.5 per cent of seats in the federal parliament.
Marie Bashir appointed first woman governor of New South Wales.
Marjorie Jackson, Olympian, appointed governor of South Australia.
Carol Martin becomes the first Aboriginal woman elected to parliament, winning the Western Australian state seat of Kimberley.
Clare Martin becomes Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, after leading the Labor Party to victory.
Christine Nixon appointed Australia’s first woman Police Commissioner, in Victoria.
Kate Grenville wins the distinguished Orange Prize for women’s fiction, the first Australian to do so, for her novel The Idea of Perfection.
Jenny Macklin elected deputy leader of the Labor Party, the first woman to hold a leadership position in a major party.
Gail Kelly appointed Chief Executive Officer of St George Bank, the first woman to head a major listed corporation.
Helen Williams again appointed secretary of a federal government department, the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.
Jane Halton becomes the second woman secretary of a federal department, being appointed to run the Department of Health and Ageing.
2002
Nicole Kidman wins the Academy Award for best actress for The Hours.
Western Australia becomes the first state to enable same sex couples to adopt a child, pursuant to the Acts Amendment (Lesbian and Gay Law Reform) Act 2002.
2003
Marilyn Warren becomes the first woman Chief Justice of Victoria.
Linda Burney becomes the first Indigenous person elected to New South Wales Parliament.
Julie Hammer becomes the first woman to achieve the rank of Air Vice-Marshal in the Royal Australian Air Force.
2004
Carmen Lawrence becomes the first woman national president of the Labor Party, in the first popular ballot of party members.
2005
Susan Crennan is appointed to the High Court.
Robyn Walker becomes the first woman to achieve the rank of Commodore in the Royal Australian Navy.
Chris McDiven becomes the first woman national President of the Liberal Party.
2007
Julia Gillard becomes the first woman deputy prime minister.
Anna Bligh becomes the first woman premier of Queensland.
Susan Kiefel is appointed to the High Court.
Elizabeth Cosson becomes the first woman to achieve the rank of Major General in the Australian Army.
2008
Quentin Bryce becomes the first woman governor-general of Australia.
Kay Goldsworthy becomes the first woman to be ordained as a bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia, in Perth.
EOWA reports that women directors comprise just 8.3 per cent of board roles on ASX 200 companies, a decline from 8.7 per cent in 2006. The reversal of the previous upward trend prompts calls for action.
2009
Professor Elizabeth Blackburn becomes the first Australian woman to win a Nobel Prize, awarded jointly with two North American colleagues in the category of physiology or medicine.
Virginia Bell is appointed to the High Court, bringing the number of women justices to three (out of seven) for the first time.
Kristina Keneally becomes the first woman premier of New South Wales.
Megan Clark becomes the first woman chief executive officer of the CSIRO.
2010
Julia Gillard becomes the first woman prime minister of Australia.
Mary MacKillop becomes the first Australian canonised as a saint of the Catholic Church.
Gerardine (Ged) Kearney is appointed president of the ACTU, the third woman to hold the position.
Male Champions of Change is established by Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick.
ASX Corporate Governance Council amends ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations to require ASX-listed companies to disclose in their annual reports the proportion of women on their boards, in senior executive positions and as total employees.
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p; The Australian Institute of Company Directors launches the Chair’s Mentoring Program for women.
2011
Lara Giddings becomes the first woman premier of Tasmania.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, delivers the first in a series of six reports reviewing the treatment of women in the Australian Defence Force (the final audit report is delivered in 2014).
Penny Williams is appointed Australia’s first global Ambassador for Women and Girls.
Women directors comprise 12.76 per cent of board roles on ASX 200 companies.
2012
At the London Olympic Games, women win 57 per cent (20 of 35) of Australia’s medals and 70 per cent (7 of 10) of Australia’s swimming medals.
Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 enacted whose provisions include replacing EOWA with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) and more rigorous reporting requirements of organisations covered by the legislation.
2013
Nova Peris becomes the first Aboriginal woman elected to the federal parliament, in the Senate.
The Stella Prize for fiction and non-fiction books written by Australian women is first awarded to Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany.
All combat roles in the Australian Defence Force are opened to women.
Lieutenant General David Morrison, Chief of Army, spoke by video-link to the 40 000 people under his command, telling them if they could not conform to the values of the Army to ‘get out’. The speech was posted to YouTube where it was quickly viewed more than 1.5 million times.
Women directors comprise 15.7 per cent of board roles on ASX 200 companies.
Peggy O’Neal becomes the first woman president of an AFL club (Richmond).
The Australian women’s cricket team wins the world cup for the sixth time, more than any other nation, out of ten world cups held.
2014
Catherine Livingstone becomes the first woman president of the Business Council of Australia.
Kate Warner becomes the first woman governor of Tasmania.
Cate Blanchett wins the Academy Award for best actress for Blue Jasmine, the first Australian to win two Oscars for acting (she previously won best supporting actress in 2005 for The Aviator).
Catherine Martin wins two Academy Awards for costume design and production design for The Great Gatsby (adding to her previous wins for art direction and costume design in 2002 for Moulin Rouge).
Jane Halton is appointed the first woman secretary of the Department of Finance.
2015
Megan Davis is appointed Chair of the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Michelle Gordon is appointed to the High Court, again bringing the total number of women justices to three out of seven.
ALP National Conference commits to a 50 per cent affirmative action target for all party positions and winnable seats within ten years.
Gladys Berejiklian becomes the first woman treasurer of New South Wales.
Gabrielle Upton becomes the first woman attorney-general of New South Wales.
Linda Dessau becomes the first woman governor of Victoria.
Rowena Allen becomes the first Gender and Sexuality Commissioner of Victoria.
Catherine Holmes becomes the first woman Chief Justice of Queensland.
Women directors comprise 21 per cent of board roles on ASX 200 companies (at 30 September).
The Australian women’s netball team wins the world championship for the11th time, out of 14 world championships held.
Marise Payne becomes the first woman Minister for Defence.
Michelle Payne the first woman to ride the winner of the Melbourne Cup.
DOMESTIC AND FAMILY VIOLENCE
2014
Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence, chaired by former governor-general Quentin Bryce, is established in Queensland.
New South Wales policy change results in 80 out of 100 of the states women’s refuges no longer being women-managed, with many services handed over to large religious or charity organisations and a resultant loss of emergency beds for women and children escaping domestic violence.
Fiona Richardson, the first Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, is appointed in Victoria.
The Counting Dead Women project, which originated in the United Kingdom to record women killed in violence, is started in Australia on Destroy the Joint’s Facebook page.
2015
Royal Commission into Family Violence begins in Victoria.
Rosie Batty, who became a domestic violence campaigner after her son was killed by his father, is named Australian of the Year.
The report of the Queensland Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence, Not Now, Not Ever, is handed down and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announces all recommendations will be implemented.
COAG Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence Against Women is formed, chaired by former Victorian Police Commissioner, Ken Lay, and with Rosie Batty as a founding member.
Pru Goward is appointed Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault in New South Wales.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces a $100 million domestic violence package. It includes specialised domestic violence units to provide coordinated legal, cultural and other services in specific locations; expanded training for police, social workers and medical staff; and greater use of technology such as security equipment to keep women safer in their homes, a trial of GPS tracking of offenders, and issuing women with new prepaid mobile phones.
The Baird Government in New South Wales announces a $60 million package to tackle domestic violence by focusing on perpetrators, with measures including dedicated police teams to target high-risk offenders and ‘mandated behaviour change programs’.
December: 78 women so far this year killed violently, with 80 per cent of these at the hands of a partner or family member.
Every three hours a woman is hospitalised somewhere in Australia for injuries sustained by domestic violence attacks.
Still waiting for …
First Leader of the federal Opposition
First Archbishop of the Anglican and Catholic churches
First Chief of the Australian Defence Force
First Chief Justice of Australia
First Premier of South Australia
Equal pay for all employed women
Notes
Introduction to the 2016 edition
1 For instance, Judith Ireland, ‘I’m no feminist: Julie Bishop’ Sydney Morning Herald, 29 October 2014,
2 ‘Women in media,’ Address to the National Press Club, Canberra, 29 October 2014
3 See the ‘Timeline of achievements by and for Australian women 1788–2015’ for a comprehensive list of legal, economic and other changes and the ‘firsts’ by individual women.
4 AMP.NATSEM, Income and Wealth Report. Smart Australians: Education andInnovation in Australia, Issue 32, October 2012 p. 32.
5
6 Dan Harrison, ‘“Barren” Gillard blasts Heffernan’, The Age, 2 May 2007,
7 Emily Maguire, Princesses and Pornstars: Sex, power, identity, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2008 p. 4.
8 I documented the sexual vilification of Julia Gillard in a speech to the University of Newcastle that was widely read: Her Rights at Work. The political persecution of Australia’s first female prime minister, Human Rights and Social Justice Lecture, University of Newcastle, 31 August 2012,
9 Julia Gillard, My Story, Knopf, Sydney, 2014, pp. 106–7.
10 Prime Minister of Australia, Joint Press Conference, Canberra, 9 September 2015,
11 Frontispiece, Damned Whores and God’s Police, p. iii.
12 ‘Be bold, be bold, be bold: Dame Quentin Bryce’s advice for high school girls’, Women’s Agenda, 18 September 2015,
13 Glen Tomasetti, ‘Don’t be too polite, girls’,
14 Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action, The Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 4–15 September 1995,
15 Elizabeth Broderick, cited in Anne Summers, ‘From the head to the heart’, AnneSummers Reports, April 2015,
16 Elizabeth Broderick, ‘Anne Summers in Conversation with Elizabeth Broderick’, Sydney, 7 May 2015,
Introduction to the new edition [1994]
1 See Portia Robinson, The Hatch and Brood of Time: A study of the first generation of native-born white Australians 1788–1828, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, especially the chapter ‘I am not for marrying’.
2 See Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: A history of the transportation of convicts toAustralia 1788–1868, Collins, London, 1987.
3 For instance, Marian Aveling, ‘Bending the bars: Convict women and the state’, in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and negotiation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 1992.
4 For an appreciation of this uniquely Australian contribution to the practice (if not the theory) of the relationship between feminism and the state, see Sophie Watson, (ed.), Playing the State: Australian feminist interventions, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990, who casts a British eye over the phenomenon of the femocrat, and Hester Eisenstein, Gender Shock: Practising feminism on two continents, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991, for an American perspective. Eisenstein also has a chapter on femocrats in the Watson collection. Both Watson and Eisenstein, each of whom found themselves in Australia in the early 1980s, were simultaneously shocked and impressed to encounter femocrats. Watson describes coming from an impoverished university in Margaret Thatcher’s England to ‘a foreign and somewhat dazzling world’ – Canberra. ‘The feminists I met exchanged coded gossip about their ministers’ plans for the following day, about the policies they were trying to “get up”, about the million-dollar budget they had won for women’s research, about the interstate meeting they were flying to tomorrow. I was baffled. What relationship did these women have to the academic or community-based feminisms with which I was familiar? What kind of feminism did they espouse? Why did everyone wear designer frocks and smart Italian shoes to work?’ Watson, p. 4.