Anne Summers

Anne Summers PhD AO (born 12 March 1945) is a writer and columnist, is best known as a leading feminist, editor and publisher. She was formerly Australia's First Assistant Secretary of the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Born Ann Fairhurst Cooper in Deniliquin, New South Wales in 1945, the oldest of six children to AHF and EF Cooper. Summers grew up in a strict Catholic household in Adelaide, South Australia and was educated at Cabra Convent, a Catholic school in Adelaide. In her autobiography, she writes that her father (an aviation instructor) was an alcoholic and that she had a difficult relationship with her mother.

Leaving school at 17, Summers left home to take up a position in a bank in Melbourne then worked as a bookshop assistant until 1964, when she returned to Adelaide, enrolling in 1965 in an Arts degree in politics and history at the University of Adelaide. After becoming pregnant following a brief relationship in 1965, and refused a referral for a termination by her Adelaide doctor, she arranged an expensive abortion in Melbourne which was incomplete. She returned to her GP in Adelaide and was referred to an Adelaide gynaecologist to complete the abortion safely. She credits this experience as a key influence on her later work on behalf of women.

While at university, Summers became a member of the Labor Club, later becoming aligned with the radical student movement and in marching against the Vietnam War. On 24 April 1967 she married a fellow student, John Summers, and the couple moved to a remote Aboriginal reserve where he worked as a teacher. Following an incident at her wedding Summers became estranged from her father, and never returned to her maiden name despite the short life of her marriage.

In December 1969, Summers left her marriage and became one of a group of five women to form the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) in Australia. The group held their first national conference in May 1970, at the University of Melbourne, with 70 feminists attending.

Moving to Sydney in 1970, Summers and other WLM members squatted in two derelict houses owned by the Church of England, turning them into the Elsie Women's Refuge to provide shelter to women and children who were victims of domestic violence.

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