Zelda d'aprano, leadership and the politics of gender in the Australian labour movement, 1945-75

Abstract

Zelda D'Aprano was influential in different phases of her life as a factory worker, union official, member of the Communist Party of Australia and feminist activist. This paper engages with a theoretical perspective in which the key to understanding leadership is an assessment of an individual's capacity to influence others. Relying on D'Aprano's writing, recorded interviews and documents in her archives, it considers her emergence as "a woman of influence." The paper examines her engagements with employers and unions from 1950 to 1968 during her membership first of the Clothing Workers Union and subsequently the Hospital Employees Federation No. 2 Branch, where she gained the position of sh..