Eilean Giblin

Englishwoman Eilean Giblin arrived in Australia in 1919 with a shipload of war brides, almost certainly the only woman not wearing a wedding ring. During the next three decades in three Australian cities, she pursued roles relevant to her feminist and humanitarian ideals. An unconventional feminist, Giblin arrived with a commitment to women's rights and social justice, developed through the suffrage movement and the intellectual appeal of left-wing social and political ideas.

In Melbourne in the 1930s, she led a committee that achieved the long sought goal of a non-denominational university In the small, insular society of Hobart in the 1920s, Eilean Giblin campaigned for the important feminist goal of 'equal citizenship.' She represented Tasmanian women at the International Woman Suffrage Congress in Rome in 1923 and was the first woman appointed to a hospital board in Tasmania.