Dr Dorothy Watts AM
(Delivered to RCOB on Monday 11 November 2024)
Thank you, President Angela for the invitation to address the members of the Rotary Club of Brisbane. I myself have never been a Rotarian, but I’m married to a man who’s been a Rotarian for a total of 61 years, and 59 out of the 63 years of our marriage. I guess that makes me a little bit qualified to “speak from experience”. And as an historian I’ve had the challenge to seek out and then to focus on some of the women and of the women’s causes that have been part of the fabric of the Club over the one hundred and one years since its charter in 1923.Pictured: Rotarian Bru Brunnier and his wife Ann
(We are more than privileged to have such a renowned academic conduct this research, please click Read More ... below on the right to enjoy the rest of Dr Watt's discoveries)
This talk is on Women and the Rotary Club of Brisbane, not in the Club, for the obvious reason that Rotary was an all-male organisation until 1987. That was a watershed year for Rotary, when the US Supreme Court ruled that Rotary clubs could not exclude women on the basis of gender. As a result, Rotary International issued a policy statement permitting the admission of qualified women to membership.
Up until then, support by the wives of Rotarians had to be indirect. Many wanted to be involved in the philanthropic and community work their menfolk were committed to; and in a very short time after the founding of Rotary in America, wives of Rotarians or “Rotaryanns” formed informal groups. The name Rotaryann – or Rotaryanne (with an “e”) especially in Australia and the UK – has a charming origin.
The year was 1914, only nine years after the founding of Rotary. A chartered train was carrying San Francisco Rotarians to a Convention in Houston, Texas. Only men were on board until the train stopped at Los Angeles, when a couple, Rotarian Bru Brunnier and his wife Ann boarded. She was introduced as Rotarian Bru’s Ann, and referred to by those on the trip as the “Rotarian’s Ann” which became the “Rotary Ann”. On arrival at Houston, the delegates were greeted by Rotarian Guy Gundaker of Philadelphia Club, whose wife was also named Ann. The two women were made much of, and the name Rotary Ann stuck as a term of affection. It came to be applied to all accompanying wives of Rotarians at conferences and at club occasions across the world.
Soon Rotaryann/es formed themselves into clubs, some more formal than others. They began meeting at each others’ homes or in specific premises - for fellowship, and the planning of activities and fundraising to support the Rotarians. It was usual that these groups were led by the wife of the current President of the Club, so the load was shared. My own experience of Rotaryannes was as a newly-married, when Keith was President of Gladstone Rotary. I remember the warmth and advice I received from older women in the group. From what I’ve read of other Rotaryanne ‘clubs’ this has always been a feature of such gatherings.
Records are sparse for the “Rotaryannes” of the RCOB. Indeed I can’t find any information about the actual formation of a specific group, but scattered throughout those records I accessed are mentions of Rotary wives raising funds and participating in various activities. There are “Ladies’ Days” when women attended the Club’s formal meetings/ lunches/ changeovers, and events such as when the State Governor at the time, Sir Leslie Wilson, and Lady Wilson attended the first ever Rotary Ball. A second ball the following year saw the proceeds go to the Queensland Society for Crippled Children – a cause supported at the time and for many years by Rotarians and their wives. The term “Rotaryannes” is found in 1959 in conjunction with fund-raising. This may indicate that a separate women’s group now operated, or it may have been just a synonym for a group of wives who contributed to the projects of the Club. Certainly in the seventies Rotaryannes featured as a distinct organisation within Brisbane Rotary. In this talk I use the terms ”Rotary wives” and “Rotaryannes” interchangeably.
Projects were matched to circumstances of the day. For instance, during World World II, when at least ten Rotarians from the Club had enlisted, Rotary wives supported the war effort by making camouflage nets. These women were also heavily involved in supporting our armed forces, and our allies in Britain as they suffered bombing, food shortages and hardship. Donations of food parcels overseas and other assistance continued well into the late forties.
Post-war Brisbane Rotary was particularly active in the welcoming of migrants. Functions, especially garden parties, at the migrant hostels at Yungaba and Wacol also involved Rotary wives. These events were intended to promote not only “food, fellowship and entertainment” but also provided advice and friendship. All fundraising efforts by Rotaryannes supported the major projects of the Rotarians; and a few of these were gender-specific causes such as Women’s Athletics, the District Nurses’ Association, Maternal and Child Health, and the YWCA.
With the admission of women to Rotary membership from 1987, the Rotaryanne cause diminished in many parts of the world although in my research I’ve found enthusiastic clubs even now in parts of the USA, South Africa, India and elsewhere. For the RCOB the latest I can find reference to activity by “Rotaryannes” is 1998/99, a decade after the Club had admitted women. By the end of the century it seems that such informal gatherings had morphed into “Rotary Partners”. Another factor in the decline was that women in large numbers were returning to full-time employment, and didn’t have the spare time to put into outside or charitable activities. This of course dovetailed nicely into the advent of women Rotarians – moving from running cake stalls and Devonshire teas, painting children’s swings and knitting beanies for the homeless, into succeeding as executives and community leaders, and policy and decision makers. It seems in the blink of an eye that the world changed, and Rotary and the role of women changed with it!
Although for most of its existence it was composed of men only, the Club did occasionally have women as visitors – not in their own right, but as partners or speakers. Obviously the most important visits over time were those of RI presidents, and they were often accompanied by their wives. In 1935/36 Rotary founder, Paul Harris and Mrs Harris visited the Club; in 1947/8 RI President Ken Guernsey and his wife Edyth; and I found it interesting that Bru Brunnier became RI President and he and his wife came to Brisbane in 1953/4. (You might remember that she was the original Rotary Ann of 1914). In the following decades such occasions became much more common as international air travel increased, so I won’t details further visits.
Occasionally, perhaps once or twice a year, the Club had female Guest Speakers. Women addressed topics such as (I’m paraphrasing here) the Bush Children’s Scheme, Florence Nightingale, the Situation in India after Independence, and Nutrition in the Outback. I rather liked that, as early as 1923, the Club had a ‘father-and-daughter” lunch meeting, with a Miss Bedford speaking on Crèche and Kindergarten – a cause taken up by the Club. Over the years, other notable women speakers included Senator Dame Annabelle Rankin, opera singers June Bronhill and Valda Bagnall, actor and author Cornelia Otis Skinner, and the eminent Salvation Army leader, General Eva Burrows who spoke on a couple of occasions. In the sixties (you may recall that was the decade of the mini-skirt, the Beatles and tectonic change for women) a significant speaker was activist Gaby Horan, who spoke (prophetically) on “Equality of the Sexes”. I thought that it was ironic that there was only one woman speaker for RCOB that year.
This lack of balance must have been worldwide, and drawn to the attention of RI, because the District Governor of 1968/69 recommended that clubs have a “lady speaker” every two or three months. The RCOB responded in what might be seen as a rather tokenistic way: there were five female speakers for the year, but with innocuous topics such as “Miss Australia/Miss Industry reports”, “Impressions from Mexico/Norway/Eastern Europe” and a report on RYLA. No Gaby Horan that year!!
So it isn’t surprising that as late as 1989/90 RCOB did not, it seems to me, enthusiastically embrace female membership. This was despite the Club’s having voted to accept the RI recommendation of 1987. In the Annual Report of 1988/89 the President notes:
Following the decision by the Council (i.e. the RI Council on Legislation) to submit to the Convention the proposal that women be admitted, we held a special meeting to consider our response. It was decided that we would not object (my emphasis.) Effectively, that meant that this club voted in favour of the change to the Constitution.
The Club secretary, on the other hand, recorded in the same Annual Report that the voting had been unanimous.
But it was still disappointing for me to read in the annual report of the following year the somewhat bland comment of the next President:
Perhaps the most significant event during the year, and probably in the life of this Club, was the decision on 25 September 1989 to amend the Club’s By-Laws to allow the admission of women to membership. We now have four such members and others are on the way. They, and those who follow them, will undoubtedly have a significant impact on this Club and on Rotary. If nothing else, this year will have been an historic one.
And so women had joined! Four of them in the 1989/90 Rotary year. These trailblazers deserve to be named: Starry Allen, Coleene Anger, Yvonne Levien, and Pat McCormack. Indeed it is a matter of considerable pride that Yvonne Levien became the first female President of the Rotary Club of Brisbane in 1996/97, 73 years after its formation. Yvonne was followed by Marjorie Carss AM in 2004/05. I’d like to spend a little time on the contribution to the Club by these women. (I’ll come back in a moment to the Club’s current live-wire president…)
May I start with some generalisations?
It can’t have been easy for those four women to break the Rotary Glass Ceiling; and it can’t at all times have been easy for them to fit in as members. Here’s where Rotary’s guidelines for new members were so important. A prospective member has to be a leader in his/her game, have standing in and the respect of the community, and to have joined the Club by invitation. That vetting process would have been doubly intense when the Club voted to admit women. But they became Rotarians as equals.
Moreover, it can’t have been easy for some members to accept the change, especially if they’d been in the Club for a long time. (I do know, from a Rotarian in a club in the Northern Rivers district, that one of his friends and a long-serving Rotarian was so upset at the prospect of including women that he resigned even before the vote was taken. Such a waste of talent, experience and a good Rotarian.)
But goodwill and acceptance prevailed and I believe that the women who joined Brisbane Rotary then, and those who came later, learnt much from the experience and made a considerable contribution in their own ways. And even if the number of women members in Brisbane Rotary doesn’t match the 20 per cent or so that is now claimed for American clubs, the groundwork has been laid, and the future is promising.
I’ve also had a chat to some Rotarians who were members in those early years of women membership, and their verdict was that the Club benefited enormously. There was no obvious reluctance, even from older “rusted-on” Rotarians, and the welcome was widespread, generous and genuine. This came to be reflected in the election of the first female President.
Yvonne Levien’s presidency in 1996/97 was a landmark for the Club. In 1990 she and the three other women who joined had not only changed the composition of the RCOB, but within a year Yvonne was elected a Director. In 1994/95 she was Vice President, President Elect in 1995/6, and then President in the following year. What a dizzying ride! And full credit to her fellow Rotarians, mostly men, who recognised what a difference for the good that she could make to the Club. Yvonne didn’t insist that all male members wore pink bows in their hair; and she didn’t push an aggressively feminist agenda, although she herself had a particular focus on projects concerning family violence and dysfunction. Gradually the culture of the Club began to change from within – and with it members’ acceptance of the new normal.
Now I won’t say that Marjorie Carss, president in 2004/05, necessarily had an easier run than Yvonne, because she had problems in her year which weren’t of her making, but which she overcame smoothly. But Marjorie had two advantages: one that she had Yvonne as a successful predecessor and possible mentor, and also that her husband, Brian (Dr Brian Carss OAM) had been President of the Club in 2000/01. She would at least have known the ropes.
As it was the centennial year of Rotary, there would have been extra pressure on Marjorie to mark this significant occasion. To this end, the major project of the previous year was to be run into 2004/05; but at a time when it was too late to take up another, the original project had to be abandoned because of the lack of government funding. The Club had to return the original grant, but was able to disburse some of the remaining funds raised. These were given to The Abused Child’s Trust and the Salvation Army’s Refuge for Women. Thus there was a nice symmetry in the terms of the first two women Presidents of Brisbane Rotary, and their particular interests. Under Marjorie’s stewardship the Club received a Presidential Citation for excellence and exceptional achievement, and also a Young Australia Achievement Award for its work with high school students.
So what, then, of your current President? To this outsider, Rotarian Angela has brought energy and ideas to the Club, and one might even say a generational shift! Her projects are outward looking, and her hopes for the Club itself are focused on fellowship and growth. But while she brings a fresh approach to many aspects of Brisbane Rotary, she is also very conscious of the traditions that a Club with a one-hundred-year history holds dear. I think it’s a very good mix and that you as members are in very good hands.
The inclusion of women members in Rotary worldwide has been inexorable, and the inevitable development has been their selection as District Governors, and the pinnacle – as the President of Rotary International. No longer is the occupancy of such positions seen as a ‘one-off’ for women, or a strike for the feminist cause, but merely as part of the general continuum of Rotary history.
To conclude: As the song goes, “From little things big things grow”, and as Rotary itself grew from a small group of businessmen in a Chicago office way back in 1905 to the world-wide organisation of over 1.2 million members it is today, so too has the involvement of women in Rotary grown from being accompanying persons, to local support groups, to world leaders. The Rotary Club of Brisbane has been part of this evolution, and is, I believe, all the richer for it.