BOOK LAUNCH: Among the Chosen

17th March 2010

Former chair of the ACTU Women’s Committee, Helen Creed, will launch a new book about ALP senator and women’s activist Pat Giles on Tuesday 23 March.

Among the Chosen by Lekkie Hopkins and Lynn Roarty is the inside story of a woman determined to improve the life of the disadvantaged by working from within the established order to effect social change.

Giles was an ALP senator in the Hawke and Keating Governments, a trade unionist, a delegate to the United Nations general assembly and grassroots activist. She paved the way for women to achieve greater status and equality at work, in parliament and in international forums on peace and social justice.

Creed said the book was important for a number of reasons.

“It very much epitomises that feminist slogan – the personal is the political,” she said.

“It is a wonderful story of Pat the person and Pat the political activist, and is a wonderful chronicle of so many significant events of the women’s movement over the last 50 years,” she said.

Creed met Giles in 1977 and, like many other women, was mentored by Giles throughout her career.

Authors Lekkie Hopkins and Lynn Roarty said that Giles herself consistently pays tribute to her own mentor, the indefatigble feminist campaigner Irene Greenwood, who introduced her to “the arcane and complex world of international politics” and who took an intense interest in her career at local, national and international levels.

Pat Giles was awarded an Order of Australia for her services to the Australian community on 26 January 2010.

Among the Chosen will be launched at 6.30pm on Tuesday 23 March at Christ Church Grammar School. RSVP: admin@fremantlepress.com.au or 9430 6331.

For more information please contact Claire Miller, cmiller@fremantlepress.com.au