AustLit

'Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, was appointed as a Commissioner of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1951. Lyons had already proved to be an adept broadcaster, using radio as part of her campaigns for office, and she was a keen believer in radio’s utility for Australian women. Lyons maintained that radio meant that ‘a woman could do two things at once: cultivate her mind and do her housework’ (1). Women might be largely confined to the private sphere, but radio offered a window on the world beyond, and as Catherine Fisher’s polished, compact study demonstrates, many women broadcasters used radio to build an engaged form of citizenship amongst their listeners in the years between the introduction of radio in the early 1920s and the development of television in the mid-1950s.' (Publication abstract)