Zelda D'Aprano

Zelda D'Aprano was a prominent activist for women's rights and equal pay in Australia. She was born in 1928 in Carlton, Victoria, to a Jewish family of Russian origin. She left school before she was 14 to work in various factories, where she witnessed the discrimination and exploitation that women workers faced. She married Charlie D'Aprano at 16 and had a daughter at 17. She joined the Communist Party in 1950 and became involved in union activism. She worked as a dental nurse at Larundel Psychiatric Hospital and later as a clerk at the Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union (AMIEU). In 1969, she chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth Building in Melbourne during her lunch break, to protest the dismissal of an equal pay case by the Arbitration Court. She was cut free by the police after two hours. The event drew national attention to the issue of gender inequality and inspired other women to take action. She later co-founded the Women's Action Committee, which campaigned for various feminist causes, such as abortion rights, birth control, divorce reform, and child care. She also participated in other social movements, such as anti-war, anti-racism, and anti-apartheid protests. She wrote two autobiographical books, Zelda: The Becoming of a Woman (1977) and Zelda: A Second Look (1995), which chronicled her life and activism. She received several awards and honors for her work, including the Order of Australia in 2001 and a statue outside Trades Hall in Melbourne in 2023. She died in 2018 at the age of 90.