WEL pays special tribute to Mary Gaudron (1943 – 2026), lawyer and judge, for ground-breaking decisions on pay equity and women’s right to consent and choose.

Just after the Whitlam Government’s November 1972 election, WEL staged a National Conference in Canberra. It was January 1973. Australia was on holiday but hundreds of WEL members were sitting in a hot tent listening to Mary Gaudron. 

After his election, Prime Minister Whitlam had recruited Gaudron, then practising as a barrister, to advocate for the equal pay case before the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. Two days after she spoke at the WEL Conference, the Commission handed down its decision – based on Gaudron’s successful advocacy, one and a half million working women would be eligible for full pay. 

In April 1974, Gaudron was appointed to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission as Deputy President, becoming the youngest ever federal judge. Gaudron's most notable case on the Arbitration Commission was an important test case for maternity leave in 1979, which laid down award standards allowing for a year's unpaid leave for all full-time and permanent part-time workers.

Mary Gaudron became the first woman in Australia to be appointed Justice to the High Court in 1987. She contributed to the Court’s decision on Mabo, drawing on her legal expertise and, as she later claimed, on her childhood experiences of racism against Aboriginal people in Moree.  

While on the High Court, she also participated in the landmark 1992 human rights High Court decision, Marion’s Case. This had momentous implications for removing the practice of sterilisation without consent of young women with disabilities or as determined by a court or tribunal for a child with a disability. 

It also set the framework for eventual legal recognition of the incompatibility between criminalising medical procedures (such as abortion) and women’s right to make decisions based on their bodily integrity. Over time, the judgment flowed through to support states and territories’ removal of abortion from their Criminal Codes. 

Even after her retirement as High Court judge at a relatively early age, Mary Gaudron continued to work in both national and international spheres to consistently oppose all forms of discrimination. 

WEL takes this opportunity to acknowledge her enormous contribution to the women of Australia.