Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons entering the front door of the House of Representatives at Old Parliament House in 1943; courtesy of the Australian War Memorial.

Dame Dorothy Tangney and Dame Enid Lyons became Australia’s first women federal parliamentarians in 1943. They advocated throughout their terms for a variety of women’s rights issues and opened the door for future women parliamentarians.

Women’s suffrage was achieved in Australia after decades of determined campaigning by thousands of women. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 granted most Australian women the right to vote and to stand in federal elections.¹

It would take 41 years for the Franchise Act to be fully realised, when in 1943 Dame Dorothy Tangney was elected to the Senate, and Dame Enid Lyons was elected to the House of Representatives. Both women spoke of being aware of the cultural responsibility as ‘parliamentary firsts’. Their appointments and their successes within them, helped change cultural negative perceptions about women’s capabilities as leaders.

Dame Dorothy Tangney

Dorothy Tangney at her desk at Old Parliament House; courtesy of the Museum of Australian Democracy.

Dame Dorothy Tangney (1907—1985) was Australia’s first woman senator and the first Labor woman in federal Parliament. A champion of women’s rights, she was a tireless advocate for education, and health and welfare services for all Australians.

Tangney’s social and political activism drew her to politics. She campaigned unsuccessfully for election to the Western Australia State Parliament in 1936 and 1939, and to the Senate in 1940. Her opportunity finally came 21 August 1943 when Labor’s landslide electoral victory in 1943 saw her elected to fill a casual Senate vacancy following Edward Johnston’s death and the defeat of his initial replacement, Charles Latham. Tangney championed equal pay and opportunities, and financial support for disadvantaged women and war widows. From 1943 to 1946 she was a member of the Joint Committee on Social Security and advocated for increased old-age pensions, Indigenous welfare, a national health system and subsidised education. In 1948 Tangney was the first Australian woman to attend an Empire Parliamentary Association conference. She was re-elected to the Senate in 1946, 1951, 1955 and 1961, serving as a senator for nearly 25 years and for 14 years was the only woman represented in the Labor caucus.

Mr Speaker. It would be strange indeed were I not tonight deeply conscious of the fact, and not a little awed by the knowledge, that on my shoulders rests a great weight of responsibility. Because this is the first occasion upon which a woman has addressed this house. For that reason, it is an occasion which, for every woman in the Commonwealth, marks in some degree a turning point in history.
I also realise my great honour in being the first woman to be elected to the Senate. But it is not as a woman that I have been elected to this chamber. It is as a citizen of the Commonwealth, and I take my place here with the full privileges and rights of all honourable Senators, and what is still more important, with the full responsibilities that such a high office entails.

Maiden speech by Dame Dorothy Tangney,
24 September 1943²

Dame Enid Lyons