Anne Summers - Changemaker

Dr Anne Summers AO is a journalist, writer and lifelong women’s rights activist. To many she is the ‘godmother of Australian feminism’ and founder of the nation’s first refuge for women, Elsie.

Anne shot to fame back in 1975 with her first book – now a treasured Australian classic - Damned Whores and God’s Police, which tore open the deeply entrenched ideology of sexism in Australia. There have been many books since, including; The End of Equality (2003), The Misogyny Factor (2012), The Lost Mother (2009), Ducks on the Pond (1999), and her outstanding Autobiography Unfettered and Alive’(2018), which charts a fascinating pathway through second wave feminism.

Dr Summers worked as Bureau Chief for the Australian Financial Review, before becoming political advisor to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and later Paul Keating, where she became a key ‘femocrat’ driving major policy reform that helped expand Australian women’s lives and opportunities. She went on to Head the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Dr Summers gained international fame as Editor of Ms Magazine in the USA, after raising $20 million dollars on Wall Street to fund the project. Back in Australia she took on the role as Editor of Good Weekend, and later on the global stage she Chaired Greenpeace International.

In July 2022 Anne released a major report, The Choice - Violence or Poverty: Domestic violence and its consequences in Australia today.

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