Ryan, Edna Minna

Identity area

Type of entity

Person

Authorized form of name

Ryan, Edna Minna

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      Other form(s) of name

      • nee Nelson

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      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

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      Status

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      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)

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