The Life of Zelda D’Aprano
Australian Communist and trade unionist Zelda D’Aprano fought all her life for the rights of women. Her commitment to equal pay kick-started the women’s liberation movement in Melbourne and birthed a new form of militant resistance to a deeply patriarchal society. However, it was the endemic sexism from her own comrades and union brothers which marred her lifetime of workplace organising. On International Working Women’s Day, the life of one of Australia’s most tenacious activists is reexamined.
Zelda Fay Orloff was born in 1928, in the working class suburb of Carlton, Victoria. Born into an Orthodox Jewish household, she grew up in relative poverty. Her parents, both Ukrainian migrants, struggled to support the family, as her father was only able to get sporadic work as a coachbuilder during the Depression and her mother was illiterate. As D’Aprano entered her teenage years, her mother became a dogmatic communist after becoming disillusioned with Judaism, a transition that would heavily influence her politics at a young age.
Before the age of 14, self-aware of the economic burden she placed on her parents, D’Aprano left school to work in a factory supporting her family. She soon married Italian migrant Charlie D’Aprano at 16 and had given birth to their daughter, Leanne, by age 17. As a teenage mother and a factory worker and with the influence of her mother’s politics, she became more enamoured with communism, joining the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in 1950 and eventually becoming Secretary of her branch in 1956. Though her political education grew in her years with the Party, she found that the commonplace sexism of Australian society was mirrored in the attitudes of her male comrades, as she found the contributions of women comrades were overlooked.
As a young factory worker, D’Aprano quickly learned of the terrible conditions women workers faced and began to develop a staunch attitude towards her sexist superiors. Whilst working as a machinist in a clothing factory, she contacted the union about the lack of cleaning, toilet paper and sanitary receptacles on the factory floor, forcing her bosses to reform. She continued to push for better workplace conditions before eventually leaving the factory after a dispute over unequal wages between machinists. D’Aprano then started work as a dental nurse, quickly joining her workplace union where she became a shop steward. She campaigned against the wage differential between married and single women and fought back when unqualified male workers were given permanent contracts whilst qualified women workers were refused.
After qualifying in Chiropody and working in a psychiatric hospital, she struggled over a period of fifteen years, against both management and the apathetic leadership of the union to bring attention to the unequal categories of pay for women healthcare workers. It was here that she cut her teeth as an organiser and experienced the full brunt of the sexist attitudes of her colleagues in the workplace and the union. When raising workplace issues within the CPA, they showed little solidarity and instead, she found herself belittled and dismissed.
After the breakdown of her marriage and becoming disillusioned with hospital work, D’Aprano took a position in the offices of the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU) in 1969. However, the conditions at the AMIEU offices were so poor, they rivalled the unclean and dilapidated conditions of the factory floors she worked on as a girl. When attempting to raise these issues, she was met with contempt and derision. It seemed that even union offices, led by her comrades, routinely dismissed grievances brought by women workers and she found herself, once again, in battle with her superiors.
By 1969, D’Aprano was also heavily involved in the campaign for equal pay, both through her activism in the Communist Party and through her work with the AMIEU, as the meat industry was being used as a test case for equal pay. However, she had become frustrated at the lack of progress and the lack of tangible action for women activists to undertake. Having attended the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission hearing for the test case, she was stunned at the lack of female contribution and the limpness of the union input. D’Aprano was particularly infuriated by the demeaning setting; the women could only sit in silence in the court whilst listening to the male officials debate their worthiness as workers.
“I just couldn’t believe this, and I thought, here are all the women, here we are, all sitting here as if we haven’t got a brain in our bloody heads, as if we’re incapable of speaking for ourselves on how much we think we’re worth.”
After the court case yielded disappointing results, it was decided something needed to be done to bring attention to the equal pay campaign. Something, according to Zelda herself, “outlandish and very unladylike”.
On the 21st of October 1969, Zelda D’Aprano chained herself to the front doors of the Commonwealth building in Melbourne, whilst on her lunch break. Armed with a paper sign and a padlock, she remained there until eventually cut free by police, whilst being cheered on by other women. When a journalist pointed out that she was on her own and did not seem to have made an impact, she prophetically replied that today was simply the beginning and that tomorrow there would be more. She was quickly proved right as her protest received significant media attention and encouraged other activists to contact her. Ten days later, after recognising the power of publicity stunts, Zelda and fellow activists Alva Geikie and Thelma Solomon chained themselves to the Arbitration Court, once again gathering widespread publicity. These protests became the catalyst for a series of demonstrations, which would eventually grow to define the women’s liberation movement in Australia.
However, D’Aprano’s campaigning was received negatively by the union she worked for. After her protests began and after she sent a letter to her boss, criticising the way he treated his employees, she was dismissed from the AMIEU. She was particularly affected by her dismissal and the hypocrisy of the movement that surrounded her. The AMIEU had been using the meat industry as a test case for equal pay and yet, when undertaking activism for the very cause they were tasked with championing, she was dismissed from her post. She failed to gather support from her fellow communists following her dismissal and suffered as a result of her former employers discrediting her with rumours of adulterous behaviour.
Following her dismissal, she returned to factory work before eventually taking work as a mail sorter and began to channel her activism into women’s liberation. With little institutional support, D’Aprano, Geikie and Solomon went on to form the Women’s Action Committee (WAC), an activist group designed to bring militant action to the forefront of the liberation movement.
The WAC focused on challenging the conservative social attitudes towards women and pay inequality through a series of stunts. D’Aprano and other activists boarded Melbourne trams and refused to pay the full fee, stating that if women were paid only 75% of what men were paid, then they would only pay 75% of the fare. At the time, women were not permitted to drink in many public bars, so the WAC organised pub crawls in defiance of the ban. The WAC also lobbied banks who refused to grant housing loans to women, fought for the rights of pregnant women and demonstrated against beauty pageants in the area in high-profile confrontations.
D’Aprano was also an outspoken pro-choice activist, having experienced an unplanned pregnancy as a teenager and three illegal self-induced abortion attempts as a young woman, which left her with continuous health problems. She helped to arrange one of the first pro-choice rallies in Melbourne with an unprecedented 500 attendees, an event which was described as a “horde of angry barefoot women” in the media.
D’Aprano rightfully became the strongest figure in the Melbourne liberation movement and had a demonstrable effect on the campaign for equal pay. In 1972, a mere three years after her original demonstration and amidst the height of the Melbourne liberation movement, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission granted equal pay to work of equal value. Though it was some time before women were in receipt of full pay equality, this was the first step towards workplace equality for Victorian women. Despite the success of her feminist activism, D’Aprano struggled to find work in the movement after her dismissal from the AMIEU after being turned down from several unions. It became apparent throughout her search for a job, that she had been essentially blacklisted from most of the trade union movement, due to her work as an activist.
By 1971, Zelda had been fighting tooth and nail for equality and representation in the workplace, as well as raising widespread attention for the reproductive and social rights for women. However, her long-standing allegiance to the Communist Party of Australia began to clash increasingly with her aim of advancing the rights of women. Rampant and belligerent sexism from her comrades became commonplace. D’Aprano had also been raped by a member of her branch as a young woman and had suffered sexual violence at the hands of others, which continued to affect her throughout her life.
Despite her consistent campaigning, the refusal of members to meaningfully support the fight for equal pay and to investigate the grounds of her dismissal led her to leave the Party that same year. Though she maintained her left-wing views and credits the CPA for providing her with the education she was never afforded at school, she never returned. This was a frustrating and painful departure for D’Aprano. Her introduction to the equal pay campaign was through her membership of the Communist Party. However, it was the endemic nature of sexism within the labour movement that caused her to abandon these institutions.
In her later life, D’Aprano experienced ongoing health issues and eventually moved away from Melbourne, adopting a rural life on a commune with her partner Ron. She continued to provide support to the women’s liberation movement and in 1977, she published an account of her life entitled Zelda: The Becoming of a Woman. She went on to publish a second book Kath Williams: the Unions and the Fight for Equal Pay in 2001 and attended many public speaking engagements until her health no longer allowed her to. Her legacy continued to grow long after her association with the WAC and is frequently cited as an early trailblazer of women’s equality in Australia.
Zelda D’Aprano is often remembered simply as a feminist activist. What is less remembered, is her commitment to communism, workplace organising and the struggles she faced from within the labour movement itself. Her unwavering commitment to women’s liberation continued despite this and irrevocably shaped the progression of equality in a patriarchal and socially conservative society.
Zelda had stared discrimination in the face all her life and was often met with little success. However, towards the end of her life, she revealed her elation at realising how far women’s rights had come when recalling her presence at a union rally demanding equal pay in the social and community work sector:
“When I saw the crowds that had gathered, several thousand and mainly women, I was astonished. I was just so excited and thrilled because for years I had gone to trade union meetings where we were lucky if we had five women there and not one of them saying anything, and here were these thousands of women. And so enthusiastic, you could tell by their demeanour that they were so thrilled at being there and being able to participate in this big demonstration and I was just overcome, emotionally. Because it’s something I always wanted to see and here I was looking at it.
Oh sisters, you’ve done me proud.”
Zelda passed away on the 21st of February 2018, at the age of 90. Her legacy is preserved through the Zelda D’Aprano Award, presented by the Victorian Trades Hall every year to a woman trade unionist whose spirit and tenacity mimics that of Zelda.
