Joan Redshaw AM

Joan Redshaw AM (1921–1994), medical practitioner, chose her career in opposition to her father, a judge, who thought the University of Sydney medical school was a hotbed of women's activists. After graduating with honours in 1944, Redshaw spent the rest of the war at Sydney Hospital. After the war she travelled to London to complete postgraduate studies in paediatrics at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Returning to Australia in 1948, she travelled on the Orontes as the first woman ship's surgeon to be employed by the Orient line, famously performing an appendectomy on the Red Sea. On board, she met Captain Arthur Strong, whom she married in 1949. For twenty years from 1951 Redshaw was a paediatrician and general practitioner in Nabiac, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. In 1966 she became the first Australian to serve on the board of Quota International, especially dedicated to advancing girls and the speech- and hearing-impaired. She spent twelve years on the council of the Australian Medical Association as representative of the Australian Federation of Medical Women; she was president of the Medical Women's Society of NSW; a member of the Women's Advisory Board to the NSW Premier in 1977–1978; a commissioner in the Planning and Environment Commission for six years; and a life member of the National Council of Women. As president of the International Medical Women's Association she campaigned against child marriage and female circumcision; her local community involvements included crisis accommodation for women affected by domestic violence, and alcoholism programs.