WHN Admin. Published in 1938 in the Westralian Worker May Holman’s commentary on women Members of Parliament makes interesting reading. May Holman was the first Labor woman to be elected to the Western Australian Parliament. She was a Member…
Tag: Second World War
DAD’S EULOGY: Adrian Leonard Aldrick – We all knew him as Len or Dad or Dar
All the family helped around the property on Terrigal Road, in the orchard which supplemented the family income and in the vegetable garden or milking cows. Some would often recall having to bring the cows in for milking and in the winter when the frost was crackling under their bare feet, they would stand in the fresh cowpats just to keep their feet warm.
Len worked in the bush with his Father for about three years then got a job at a local orchard. A few months after the war ended, and aged about 19, Len and his mate decided to look for work further afield and ended up at Wee Waa in the North West of the State working on a property during the wheat season. Len also sought work in the Riverina. Our family would return some years later to live at that property outside Wee Waa called “Brushy Park”. By now he had met Neryl and came to live at Carlingford and they were married in 1947. Len worked in a sawmill at Parramatta then at HMV Homebush and EMI, pressing records. The record collection began to grow. Then it was back to Terrigal Road where Len and Neryl built a small house and he began cutting and carting logs for a local sawmill. By then they had two very young daughters, Phyllis and Maureen, and Len would come home from work and they would both get stuck into finishing the house working well into the nights.
Making Changes by Making History: Women in Construction
… construction projects have seen women taking on more senior roles like that of architect Nicole Dosso, Technical Director of the construction project known as One World Trade Centre. Dosso was the single senior technical coordinator representing Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) on the day-to-day execution of the job. For all intents and purposes it could be said that a woman built the tallest tower in North America. For her contribution to the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre site, Nicole Dosso was honoured by the US National Association of Professional Women in Construction in 2006.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – A History of Equal Pay
Lilly Ledbetter’s eight year battle started with a little note she found in the women’s bathroom at work. The note ranked her salary alongside the much higher salaries of three male tire-room managers, and Ledbetter was shocked to see that her male peers were making $14,000 and more per year than she was. “I’d worried about being paid less than the men who were doing the same work I was,” Ledbetter records in her memoir, but she never had evidence to prove her suspicions (5). Armed with this alarming new information, Ledbetter took action and sued Goodyear for pay discrimination.
Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War & Conflict – Part 2
Poppies at the Tower – Remembering World War I Photography: Robin R. Joyce Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict Women’s History Network Annual Conference, 2014 Introduction ‘Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War & Conflict’ was the title and theme of…
Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict – Part 1
War created instant history from 1916 and ever since the history of women and the First World War has been a synonym for thinking about a distinctive female contribution, about the politics of gender and the cultural and social history of war. Looking again at the history is a way of thinking about sources and method, thinking again about how far historians ‘disturb the ground on which they stand’ or how far they build new memorials to the past.
Remembering Naomi Jacob (1884-1964)
Although she was brought up in the Church of England, Jacob converted to Roman Catholicism at around the age of eighteen. But she remained proud of her Jewish heritage. This is most clearly demonstrated in The Gollantz Saga, which she began writing just before the Nazis swept to power in Germany. Beginning in early nineteenth century Vienna, it follow several generations of a Jewish family, as the head of the house establishes a business and life in England, moving among the British upper classes. The series is an engaging and warm exploration of family ties and rivalries, and the principles of honour and loyalty.
Homelessness or Heartlessness? When Government Fails Women
As Australians for whom World War 2 and the seventies were emblematic, we are distraught at the destruction of our once wonderful women’s refuges. Dr Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda, instructed the world that ‘words are valuable’; they…
Women of True Grit – Scottish Women’s Hospitals
It was during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia that I was first made aware of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and the work they did during the First World War. What saddened me was that the women involved are known about…