Nydia Edes

Alderman Nydia Edes became the first woman elected to Broken Hill City Council in 1962. ‘It is a matter of common sense,’ she said, ‘to have a woman participating in civic affairs.’ In fact, the civic affairs of Broken Hill in the 1960’s impacted directly on domestic conditions and professional opportunities for women. Once married, women were banned from certain employment by the Barrier Industrial Council, the city’s then-militant trade union body.

Nydia Edes was six when her mining engineer father died leaving her mother, Mary Louisa, to raise eight children on her own. Maybe this was what made Nydia passionate about women’s rights and advocacy for equal pay and legal equality for women. Later in her career she became a Justice of the Peace and founded the first rural branch of the Women Justices’ Association.

Broken Hill was a union town and the unions were controlled by the Barrier Industrial Council which, in 1930, passed the infamous legislation banning married women from working. Exceptions were made for women with professional training and, by the time she married in 1931, Edes was the principal buyer for Goodhart’s department store. She joined the Labor Party at the same time as she joined the Shop Assistants Union.

Nydia Edes gave birth to her only daughter, Margot, in 1933 and from that moment on actively demonstrated that women can at the same time be mothers and professionals. She was instrumental in forming the Women’s Auxiliary of the ALP and remained an active participant for fifty years. She published letters and articles in the local press defending women in the workplace and in politics, was on the hospital Board of Directors, and was secretary of the Housing Association. She also volunteered for several charities during the Depression years and WWII.

Alderman Nydia Edes became a Labor Independent and retained her seat until 1974. She was awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977. The union ban on married women and work was in place until 1981, but by then Nydia Edes had broken the mould, inspiring other women, in Broken Hill and beyond, to do the same.

Audio transcript available.