Freda Brown

Freda Yetta Brown
Freda Brown (second from left) in East Berlin in 1987
Born	Freda Yetta Lewis 9 June 1919 Sydney, Australia
Died	26 May 2009
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Women's rights activist, communist activist
Political party	Communist Party of Australia
Children	Lee Rhiannon

Freda Yetta Brown (9 June 1919 – 26 May 2009), born Freda Yetta Lewis in Sydney, was an Australian political activist who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia and later the Socialist Party. She married Bill Brown, a leading Australian Communist, in 1943. She is the only Australian woman to have been awarded a Lenin Peace Prize, which she received in 1977-78. Her daughter, Lee Rhiannon, is an Australian Greens member of the Australian Senate and previously a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Freda Brown joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1936, at a time when the CPA was firmly loyal to the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin. She worked in her father’s signwriting business, before becoming a journalist working for the Radio Times, and then later for various Communist-affiliated trade union papers.

After the Second World War, Freda Brown joined the New Housewives Association, later known as Union of Australian Women, a Communist front, and ultimately became its president. She was instrumental in the United Nations' celebration of International Women’s Year in 1975. She worked with the Women's International Democratic Federation, and was elected President at its Congress in East Berlin in 1975, a position she held until 1989, when the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe left her position of traditional old-school communism untenable.

Freda Brown was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Australia from 1968-72.