Anne Summers AO is an Australian writer, columnist and feminist icon. A former Press Gallery Bureau Chief for the Financial Review, and later Editor of Ms Magazine in the US, Anne’s extraordinary and peripatetic career has seen her traverse media, the Australian Public Service, federal politics and international environmental activism.

As one of Australia’s foremost ‘femocrats’ Anne led the charge on women’s policy in the 1980’s during her years as Head of the Office of the Status of Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and later as advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating. Anne is the author of eight books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975, and most recently, Unfettered and Alive, published in 2018. 

Summers’ National Press Club address will explore the so-called ‘Year of the Woman’ in the United States – 2019 will see the restoration of Nancy Pelosi to the Speakership of the House of Representatives, and a surge of diverse women who were elected in the mid-terms taking their place in the United States Congress. In light of this, Summers will discuss the prospects for women in the 2019 Australian federal election, and the growing social and political consequences for conservative parties who fail to put forward women candidates. Dr Summer currently lives in New York.