The Australian Women's National League (AWNL) was an Australian political lobby group federation first established in 1904. It acted in many ways like a political party, with an extensive branch network and the capability to run its own candidates. It was a conservative organisation with four key declared objectives:
Dame Annie Florence Gillies Cardell-Oliver, DBE was a Western Australian politician and political activist, often known publicly as simply Florence Cardell-Oliver.
Dame Elizabeth May Ramsay Couchman DBE was an Australian political activist. She served as president of the Australian Women's National League from 1927 to 1945 and oversaw its merger into the new Liberal Party of Australia. She was also the first woman appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), serving from 1932 to 1943.
Jean Mary Daly was an Australian women's rights and social justice activist. Her work primarily focused on women's welfare and the importance of women in public life.
Elizabeth Webb Nicholls was a key suffragist in the campaign for votes for women in South Australia during the 1890s. She took on several high-profile roles in the capital of South Australia, Adelaide and was President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of South Australia, one of the most prominent organisations in the successful campaigns which made South Australia the first of the Australian colonies to grant women the right to vote in 1894.
Zelda Fay D'Aprano was an Australian feminist activist living in Melbourne, Victoria. In 2023, a statue of her was unveiled outside Trades Hall in Melbourne.
Diana Joan "Ding" Dyason (1919–1989) was a highly respected Australian lecturer and historian of medicine with major teaching and life-long research interests in public health and germ theory. She is most notable in the significant impact she had in her scholarly discipline. As a woman who firstly worked in the traditional roles of research assistant and demonstrator in the non-traditional discipline of science, Dyason progressed to become a leader at a major Australian university, overcoming barriers of gender and culture at a national and international level, receiving awards and honors in the process. She broke through the gender-based 'glass ceiling' in the academic workplace to establish and develop the new interdisciplinary field of study of the History and Philosophy of Science that brings together The Two Cultures of the sciences and the humanities.
Shurlee Lesley Swain, is an Australian social welfare historian, researcher and author. Since August 2017 she has been an Emeritus Professor at the Australian Catholic University (ACU).
Mary Booth (1869–1956) was an Australian physician, clubwoman and welfare worker.
Henrietta Jessie Shaw Daley was a Melbourne-based community worker, also known as Jessie. She was born on 17 May 1890.
Eliza Fraser Morrison, Lady Mitchell was a Melbourne based charity worker, Red Cross administrator, and an autobiographer. Morrison was well known for her voluntary work in Australia.
Gladys Dorothy O’Shane was an Australian Aboriginal activist, the sixth child of parents Caroline, née Brown, and Edgar Davis, a labourer, at Mossman, Queensland.
Jean Enid Skuse is an Australian Christian leader and ecumenist who served as the general secretary of the Australian Council of Churches and the Vice-Moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Cecilia Downing was an Australian temperance and women's rights activist and leader. She was one of Australia's first child-probation officers. A devout Baptist, she was an influential leader in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Australasia, the Housewives' Association of Victoria, the Federated Association of Australian Housewives, and the Traveller's Aid Society. She was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1950.
Freer Helen Latham (1907–1987) was an Australian schoolteacher and leader in the global Methodist women's movement. She served as vice-president for the Australasian Federation of Methodist Women and also as world president of the World Federation of Methodist Women. She helped to grow these women's organizations at the local, national and global level. She was an advocate for women's leadership in the Methodist church, and encouraged partnerships and collaborative efforts among women in diverse regions of the globe.
Isabella McCorkindale (1885–1971), known as Isabel McCorkindale, was a Scottish-born Australian temperance, women's suffrage and women's rights activist. She was a leader in both the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Australasia (WCTUA) and the World Women's Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU). As director of scientific temperance education for the WCTUA, she spent more than 40 years working to educate young people about the health and social consequences of alcohol abuse. She was international president of WWCTU from 1959 to 1962, after serving as vice-president from 1947 to 1959. She then served as national president for the Australian WCTU from 1963 to 1966. In 1961, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her work.
Elizabeth Laurie Rees was an English-born Australian temperance and women's rights activist. She was a key leader in the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Victoria, serving twenty years as the general secretary. She also served in a variety of leadership roles for the national Australian WCTU, including treasurer, corresponding secretary, and national president. She was the inaugural editor of the national WCTU magazine, White Ribbon Signal.
Amy Grace Wheaton, was a social worker educator, teacher and feminist who was the president of the Australian Federation of Women Voters, co-founder and vice president of the South Australian Council of Social Service, and the first director of the South Australian Board of Social Studies.
Magdalene: A Christian Newsletter for Women was an Australian Christian feminist magazine published by the Sydney group Christian Women Concerned.
Miriam (Mina) Fink was an Australian social activist and charity worker of Polish-Jewish origin. She was actively involved in the establishment of Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre and awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her service to Jewish women.
