Born: 1920, Australia
Died: 2008
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Betty Bennett
The following is republished with permission from the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.
Betty Lawson helped to form the Technical Teachers Association of Victoria (TTAV) in 1967 and in 1968 was elected its first woman president.
She was the first woman principal of a co-educational technical school. Born in Melbourne in 1920, Betty started her teaching career in 1938 as a student teacher at the Ellinbank state school in Gippsland. She completed her Trained Primary Teachers’ Certificate in 1940 and later earned a Commerce degree from the University of Melbourne whilst teaching and also raising three children.
Betty joined the Victorian Teachers Union (VTU) in the late 1950s and joined the Council in 1961 as a representative of Metropolitan Technical Women. At the time she was a Class II Assistant at Sandringham Technical School. Prior to that she taught at Box Hill Girls’ Technical School.
In 1969 Betty was unsuccessful in her application for the position of principal at a co-educational technical school. She was refused the right to appeal on the grounds that the position was not advertised for women applicants. With the assistance of the TTAV, her right to appeal was upheld, a battle ensued and in the following year she finally won the position of principal of the Sunshine North Technical School. This opened up the system for other women.
In 1967, Betty was one of a group of technical teacher members who perceived a lack of representation in the VTU. They formed the Technical Teachers Association of Victoria. Betty served on the 1967 Interim Council as Vice President and the following year, she stood uncontested for the President’s office. She was the first woman President of the TTAV and only its second President. Betty chose not to renominate the following year, but served on the TTAV Council for the next four years.
Betty was also President of the national body, the Technical Teachers Association of Australia. In 1974, Betty was awarded life membership of the TTAV in recognition of her executive roles and contribution to the national organisation. She was the first woman member to be honoured life membership and was one of only seven people in ten years to receive the honour. Betty retired from teaching in 1975.
When Betty was awarded life membership of the TTAV, she was commended for her leadership in many matters, particularly concerning women technical teachers. She said her goal was to achieve equality and justice for women teachers and in the late 1960s she was involved with the campaign for equal pay for women in the workplace.
This biography is republished from The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia. Written by Deborah Towns, Swinburne University. See below for full attribution.
Betty Bennett was born in Melbourne in 1920. She first taught at Ellinbank State School before studying at the Teachers Training College, Melbourne where she gained a Trained Primary Teachers Certificate in 1940. While a student she began her political activism when she was elected as vice-president of the Student Representative Council. She married Jack Stevenson in 1942 and gained a BCom., from the University of Melbourne while teaching and raising a family.
Lawson taught at Bairnsdale Technical School but was ineligible for promotion as a married woman. However she was ambitious and independent and after leaving her husband was able to show that she was a single parent, and hence eligible to be employed as a permanent teacher and to seek promotion. In 1954 she was put on the Technical Teachers’ Female Roll and taught at Box Hill Girls’ Technical School. She had joined the technical teachers’ branch of the Victorian Teachers Union (VTU) in the 1950s and in 1960 she was promoted to Sandringham Technical School and elected to the VTU’s Executive as the Metropolitan Technical Women’s representative. In 1963, along with teachers’ union activists George Lawson and George Lees, she established the national Technical Teachers Association of Australia (TTAA). She was the first woman president of the TTAA in 1966 and 1967.
Lawson had worked with the Chair of the VTU’s Equal Pay Committee, Hilma Cranley, president of the VTU (1965-67) and others, advocating equal pay for women teachers. In 1967, she was one of the leading organizers for the ‘Talk Out Equality for Women Conference’. Bob Hawke and other community leaders spoke in favour of equal pay and approximately 700 attended. Late in 1967, and decades after the Victorian Lady Teachers Association had first demanded equal pay in 1901, the claim was finally accepted. Lawson joined with other technical teachers who left the VTU in 1967 and formed the TTAV. She was vice-president in 1967 and elected as the first woman president in 1968, serving on the TTAV’s Council for four years. In 1970 she was promoted to the position of principal of Sunshine North Technical School. This made her the first women principal of a co-educational technical school. However she had resorted to legal means and challenged the Teachers Tribunal to gain this pioneering role.
On her retirement in 1974 she was awarded Life Membership of the TTAV. She married George Lawson in the same year. Added to the Victorian Honour Role of Women in 2003, Betty Lawson died in 2008.
Work cited
Deborah Towns, ‘Lawson, Betty’, in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia, Australian Women’s Archives Project, 2014, https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0470b.htm, accessed 16 January 2022.