Born: 24 January 1928, Australia
Died: 21 February 2018
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Zelda Fay Orloff
The following is republished with permission from the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.
Zelda D’Aprano was a community activist for decades, in particular campaigning for equal pay for women.
Her autobiography, Zelda, documents the women’s movement of the 1970s. It is insightful criticism of the way our society is structured, and a reclamation of the exuberance of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a reminder that the personal is always political.
Zelda is renowned for her persistent activism for women’s rights from 1950-80. Her activism was as diverse as chaining herself to the Commonwealth Bank Building, and refusing to pay full price on Melbourne trams, to letter writing, conference planning and policy discussion as well as organising protest marches, some of which were attended by hundreds of people.
Born in 1928 in Carlton, Zelda spent her early years of childhood amongst the poverty and devastation of the Great Depression. Her parents were European Jews who, both orphaned at a young age, sought a better life by migrating to Australia. Although Zelda was a good student, she left school before she was fourteen, partly because it was ‘unthinkable’ that she would stay on.
Her first job was in a factory putting the jam onto shortbread biscuits; sales and clothing manufacturing followed this. Six weeks after her sixteenth birthday, Zelda was married. Soon after she had her daughter, Leanne, in 1945. Zelda then stayed home to look after and love her new family.
However, the delights of motherhood did not compensate for the isolation and boredom she experienced. During this period Zelda heard of increases in the prices of gas and electricity, and started door knocking the area where she lived, asking other housewives to start a discussion group. This was the beginning of Zelda’s political activism. She soon joined the Communist Party, and after returning to full-time work as a dental nurse, joined the union. She was almost immediately in confrontation with the all-male executive over matters of accountability, open process of elections, and fairness of wages.
A prolific public speaker and writer, Zelda was prominent in the militant trade union movement for several years, later working as a switchboard operator for the Meatworkers’ Union, and organising her activism around her work commitments. This all came to an abrupt end in 1970 when she clashed with a union leader and fellow communist who was also her employer. A dedicated communist up to this point, Zelda struggled with the contrast between ideology and practice, which saw workers revered in ideology, but disdained in action, a contradiction that was mirrored in the union movement.
After much difficulty, due to union interference and media hounding, Zelda was employed as a postal officer at the Melbourne Post Office. From this time, Zelda’s activism occurred without any union or communist support, and as always, was self-funded from her employment.
Zelda, along with five other women, founded the Women’s Action Committee in 1970, which led to the birth of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Melbourne, and captured popular attention after the visit of Germaine Greer. Representing Women’s Liberation, Zelda presented a submission to the Arbitration Court in support of the equal pay case in 1972, which was successful.
Zelda was regularly invited to speak at conferences across Australia about feminism, and in April 2000 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Macquarie University, Sydney. She wrote a second book, a biography of Melbourne activist and communist Kath Williams, published by Spinifex Press in 2001.
Zelda’s role in bringing media attention to the unequal pay of women cannot be understated. She campaigned constantly for nearly 30 years for equal pay, whilst also addressing other union issues such as health and safety and minimum wages. She experienced substantial personal cost and discomfort to bring these important matters to the public’s attention. Zelda and her supporters were working class, uneducated women over 40.
Zelda gave generously of her services to numerous women, and to those suffering injustice and poverty. She proved her courage many times over, often at considerable personal expense to herself.
This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Rosemary Francis, The University of Melbourne. See below for full attribution.
Zelda D’Aprano was born in 1928 in Melbourne, the daughter, and the second of three surviving children, of European migrants. Her father, who was born in the Ukraine, worked as a wheelwright and her mother, who was born in Belorussia, was a finisher in a clothing factory. Her mother was interested in left-wing politics and joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA).
D’Aprano attended the local primary school in Carlton but left before her fourteenth birthday, at the end of 1941. She worked in a variety of jobs in factories, as an usherette and a seamstress. Quick to identify unsatisfactory working conditions she made attempts to rectify them, often losing her job as a result of her actions. Married at age 16 she had a daughter a year later. She subsequently worked as a dental assistant, gaining qualifications as a dental nurse at Larundel Psychiatric hospital and joined the Hospital Employees Federation No.2 Branch. She was eventually elected shop steward, but received little support in a particularly inactive union. When she left the job in 1968 she took a position in the office of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees’ Union (AMIEU), commencing in January 1969. However, she was sacked when she criticized the attitude of the Union’s secretary, to his own staff and found employment as a mail sorter in the Mail Exchange in Melbourne.
In 1951 D’Aprano joined the Heidelberg branch of the CPA and was elected secretary in 1956. Both here and in the unions she experienced difficulties in exercising leadership; her attempts to improve members’ working conditions were thwarted, especially when she challenged the power blocks within the organisations and other female workers did not support her. Undeterred she became famous for chaining herself to the Commonwealth building in Melbourne on 21 October 1969 to draw attention to the disappointing result of the equal pay application to the Industrial Court in June of that year.
D’Aprano was central to the formation of the women’s liberation movement in Melbourne with the establishment of the Women’s Action Committee (WAC) in 1970. She eventually identified as a feminist, understanding that as long as men dominated the socialist movement, the new, fairer world would never be realized. Reluctant to call herself a leader, she accepted the notion of ‘giving leadership.’
In 1977, the publication of her autobiography, Zelda: The Becoming of a Woman, struck a chord with many of its readers as they felt she was describing their own lives. Patricia Grimshaw claimed that it ‘offered a rare insight into a woman who sustained a place as a leader when women had scant legitimate space in either the industrial or the political wings of the labour movement’. Her class perspective ‘brought a vital contribution to a movement based primarily on gender’ (Grimshaw, p. 116). D’Aprano’s leadership was exercised by ‘fighting inequality and injustice through confronting employers, fellow male unionists and CPA office holders by speaking out, naming problems and working hard’.
Work cited
Rosemary Francis, ‘D’Aprano, Zelda’, in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2014, https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0523b.htm, accessed 16 January 2022.