Among the Press staff ‘Miss E.’ was known for her professional thoroughness, enthusiasm, vitality, generosity and patience. She held firm convictions about the role women should play in society, and set a sterling example by being associated with nearly 250 social welfare and women’s organisations during her career.
Cherry Raymond was a broadcaster, journalist and opinion-leader, and a household name during the 1960s and 1970s when few women achieved such prominence in the media. Although she particularly campaigned on women’s issues, and often on topics which were controversial or taboo, her interests were broad, and she played an important role in raising the profile of mental illness in New Zealand.
A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia.
Elsie Robinson was a journalist, fiction writer and poet. She was best known for her nationally syndicated column, Listen, World! which was read by more than 20 million Americans between 1921-1956. Robinson used her voice to continuously examine and challenge the status quo, especially when it came to women’s perceived roles in society.
Deveson’s first job was with as a journalist with a small newspaper, the Kensington News, in London. She came to Australia in the 1950s and worked at the ABC on various ‘women’s programs’. She was also a presenter at radio station 2GB where she was one of the first people in Australia to use talkback. From 1985 to 1988, she was Executive Director of the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Labor activist Della Elliott was a strong supporter of causes outside the union movement. She was involved in the wartime Sheepskins for Russia campaign during the war, The League for Democracy in Greece and the Union of Australian Women. She helped historians of the union movement in Australia and, with a collective of women that included Quentin Bryce, worked to establish the Jessie Street National Women’s Library in Sydney. Towards the end of her life, she gifted a scholarship to the University of Sydney Women’s College to assist female Indigenous students.
Margaret Ogg was a journalist and a leader in the suffrage campaign in Queensland, where she also aligned herself with temperance reform.
Ita Buttrose is a leading journalist, businesswoman, author, community and welfare contributor and 2013 Australian of the Year.
It was ‘while working at Jurisprudence and Constitutional History’, she said, ‘that the idea first occurred to me of taking a law degree.…I did not know then that the profession was not open to women.’ In the 1890s Stella Henderson began to study law.
Responsible for many “firsts” – the first industrial photographer, LIFE’s first female photographer, the first American female war photojournalist, the first woman to take her camera into combat zones – she proved a role model for future generations of professional female photographers including the likes of Lynsey Addario, Diane Arbus, Mary Ellen Mark, and Susan Meiselas.