Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Ryan, Edna Minna
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- nee Nelson
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1904 - 1997
History
Edna Ryan was born in Pyrmont, New South Wales on 15 December 1904. Edna was a feminist and labour activist credited with campaigns for equal pay for women, maternity leave and work-based childcare, and campaigned around the negative impacts of enterprise bargaining and compulsory superannuation on low paid women workers. Ryan served as a Labor Alderman on Fairfield Municipal Council from 1956-1965, becoming the first female Deputy Mayor in NSW in 1957. In the 1960s she became the first woman president of the Sydney branch of the Municipal Employees’ Union. She was a founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) in 1972 and in 1974 presented a breakthrough submission to the Arbitration Commission to grant women the same minimum wage as men. In 1984 she published Two Thirds of a Man: Women and Arbitration in New South Wales 1902-08. The following year she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sydney, and awarded again by Macquarie University in 1995. In the 1990s Ryan focussed on the implications of enterprise bargaining for women including writing articles, leading delegations to Ministers’ offices and briefing a barrister, Sylvia Winters, to represent WEL at the National Wage Case. Edna Ryan died in Canberra on 10 February 1997.
Places
New South Wales; Canberra
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
feminist; political activist; prade union official; writer
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Entered from deposit description on 17 April 2012
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
The Australian Women’s Register, http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0004b.htm (accessed on 17 April 2012)
Jane Cadzow. The Life of Ryan. Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald), March 12, 1994.
Hansard 19 February 1997, http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/1997/pdfs/19970219.pdf (accessed on 17 April 2012)