Edna Ryan (activist)

Edna Minna Ryan, née Nelson (15 December 1904 – 10 February 1997) was an Australian feminist activist and writer.

She was born in Pyrmont.^[1] She was involved in the first International Women's Day in 1928 and was involved early in the labour movement as an organiser of the wives of timber workers during the strike of 1929. In the 1920s she was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and the International Workers of the World, but by 1935 she had joined the Australian Labor Party. In 1956 she was elected to Fairfield Municipal Council, becoming New South Wales' first female deputy mayor in 1958. She was a member of Fairfield Council and its successor Prospect County Council until her retirement in 1972. She was a founding member of the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972 and published Gentle Invaders: Australian Women and the Workforce 1788–1974 with Anne Conlon in 1975. She published Two-thirds of a Man: Women and Arbitration in New South Wales 1902–08 in 1984, and in 1985 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sydney. She received another honorary doctorate in 1995 from Macquarie University. Ryan died in Canberra in 1997.^[2]

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