About our Centre
Foundations
Our centre has proudly assisted South Australian women who are in the workforce, or hoping to find work, since 1979.
The first steps to create the South Australian Working Women’s Centre were taken at a meeting held at Trades Hall in Adelaide on 1 December 1978. Representatives from the South Australian Premier’s Department, the Department of Labour and Industry, the trade union movement, and the Women’s Advisory Unit chose a location for the fledgling organisation and resolved to publish an advertisement for the centre’s first paid staff member. The Working Women’s Centre stands on the shoulders of the women’s movement and the hard-won recognition of the importance of a specialist focus on women’s needs.
We believe that equality at work and in looking for work is essential to allowing women to lead balanced, quality lives.
The opening of the Working Women's Centre, April 1979.
The first Working Women’s Centre SA Inc office was a 1976 HJ Holden & very shortly after it was a caravan. Pictured: Deborah McCulloch, Women’s Adviser to the Premier and Jack Wright, Minister of Labor and Industry at the opening of the Working Women’s Centre, April 1979. The Centre’s mobile caravan office was parked in parklands opposite the Centre’s first office in Trades Hall.
Pictured: a meeting inside the Working Women’s Centre’s Mobile caravan office, 1976.
Other Centres
The South Australian Working Women’s Centre is part of a network of Working Women’s Centres which include the Northern Territory Working Women’s Centre
Working Women Queensland.
Our model has also been implemented overseas, at Working Women’s Centre Timor-Leste.