Leonora O’Reilly
A dynamic speaker and energetic union organizer, Leonora O’Reilly also made a significant contribution to the passage of women’s suffrage legislation at the state and federal levels in the US.
Category Archives: Activism > Social Reform
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Jessie Ackermann
Jessie Ackermann was an American advocate of temperance and women’s rights, who as an international missionary for the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) spent a number of years in Australia as an organiser and social reformer. She wrote the first book-length study of Australian women.
Dr Alice Hamilton
Alice Hamilton promoted “industrial medicine” and laws to protect employees from dangerous substances in the workplace.
Elizabeth Taylor
As one of the first women justices of the peace in Christchurch she was later made an associate magistrate to the Children’s Court. Within the Christchurch branch of the National Council of Women, Elizabeth Taylor promoted issues such as a motherhood endowment, women police, the right of married women to retain their own nationality, and women in politics.
Mabel Wilson
New Zealand domestic worker and community leader
Maria Rye
Social reformer and a promoter of emigration from England, especially of young women living in Liverpool workhouses, to the colonies of the British Empire, especially Canada.
Patricia Bartlett
Patricia Bartlett became a household name in 1970s New Zealand when she stood against the tide of social change which promoted more relaxed attitudes to sexuality.
Florence Keller
A few years before her retirement in her mid 90s, Florence Keller was acclaimed the oldest practising surgeon in the world.
Ellen Greenwood
Ellen Greenwood made an important contribution to organising charitable aid in a way which delivered effective help to women often ignored or rejected by society in New Zealand.
Elsie Dohrmann
New Zealand botanist, teacher and temperance campaigner