Heagney, Muriel Agnes (1885 - 1974)

Born in Brisbane and educated at a Richmond convent in Melbourne, Heagney was trained as a teacher, but abandoned this vocation in 1915 when she went to work as a clerk for the Department of Defence.

She was involved for several decades in the fight for equal pay for women, having served on the committee of the Workers' Educational Association, the Victorian central executive of the Labor Party (1926-1927) and as an investigator for the Federated Unions of Australia in their submission to the Commonwealth Royal commission on the basic wage.

In the 1940s, she worked as an organiser for the Amalgamated Engineering Union in Queensland, and upon her return to Melbourne in the 1950s, embarked upon a history of the trade union movement which was never completed. She died in St Kilda in 1974.

• Amalgamated Engineering Union (Australian Section) (1938 - 1969)

• 'Heagney, Muriel Agnes', Australia's Prime Minister, National Archives of Australia, http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/whoswho.asp?txtKeyword=Muriel+Heagney&searchType=keyw.... [ Details ]