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Anne Summers (born 12 March 1945) is an Australian writer and columnist, best known as a leading feminist, editor and publisher. She was formerly First Assistant Secretary of the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Her contributions are also noted in The Australian Media Hall of Fame biographical entry.
Leaving school at 17, Summers left home to take up a position in a bank in Melbourne. She then worked as a bookshop assistant until 1964 when she returned to Adelaide, enrolling at the University of Adelaide in 1965 in an arts degree in politics and history. After becoming pregnant during a brief relationship in 1965, and refused a referral for a termination by her Adelaide doctor, she arranged an expensive abortion in Melbourne but it was incomplete. She returned to her doctor in Adelaide and was referred to an Adelaide gynaecologist to complete the abortion safely. She credits this experience as a key influence on her later work on behalf of women.
In December 1969, Summers left her marriage and in 1969 became one of a group of five women to form a Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) group in Adelaide. Other Women's Liberation Movement groups were being established around Australia: an equal pay submission in the name of the movements was submitted to the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in Melbourne in 1969, and a WLM meeting was held in Sydney in January 1970. The group held their first national conference in May 1970, at the University of Melbourne, with 70 feminists attending.
In 1970, having received a postgraduate scholarship to do a PhD, Summers moved to Sydney and attended the University of Sydney, from which she earned a Doctorate in Political Science and Government, awarded in 1975. Active in the Sydney Women's Liberation Movement, in 1974 Summers and other WLM members squatted in two derelict houses owned by the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, turning them into the Elsie Refuge to provide shelter to women and children who were victims of domestic violence.Gilchrist, Catie, Forty years of the Elsie Refuge for Women and Children, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/forty_years_of_the_elsie_refuge_for_women_and_children , viewed 11 October 2018
Summers used her postgraduate scholarship to write the book Damned Whores and God's Police which looked at the history of women in Australia.McGrath, Ann. “Labour History.” Labour History, no. 73, 1997, pp. 236–238. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27516514.Shane Rowlands & Margaret Henderson (1996) Damned bores and slick sisters: The selling of blockbuster feminism in Australia, Australian Feminist Studies, 11:23, 9-16, DOI: 10.1080/08164649.1996.9994800 She was offered a position to work as a journalist on The National Times, where she wrote an investigation into NSW prisons which led to a royal commission and to Summers' being awarded a Walkley Award.
Summers was appointed a political adviser to Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, heading the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet from late 1983 to early 1986.
From 1986 to 1992, Summers lived in New York, becoming editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, and, following a management buyout, co-owned the magazine, which eventually succumbed to a Moral Majority campaign and went bankrupt. She then returned to Australia and was appointed editor of the "Good Weekend" magazine, in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was also an advisor on women’s issues to Labor prime minister Paul Keating prior to the 1993 federal election.ABC TV Q&A Panellist: Anne Summers. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2667166.htm Summers joined the board of Greenpeace Australia in 1999 and from 2000 to 2006 was chair of Greenpeace International. Since 2017, she once again lives in New York.
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