Women, she said, should be free – to choose their careers, to decide whether they wanted to have children or not and, ultimately, when they wanted to die. When the Women’s Electoral Lobby decided to honour her in 2002, it presented her with the Grand Stirrer award, for ”inciting others to challenge the status quo”. Such activism involved some unpleasant scenes, such as battles with pro-life campaigners, but she remained steadfast. On family planning, she said: ”If you can’t control your fertility, you can’t control your life.”

Dorothy Marie Hartog was born in Bergen op Zoom, a town in Holland, on July 23, 1913, one of two daughters of a lawyer, Maurits Hartog, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Haas), a musician.

Her father, mindful of the plight of dependent women, encouraged his daughters to go to university. Dorothy did an economics degree at the University of Amsterdam then, at 23, married for the first time, but on her wedding day she realised she should have married her husband’s very funny boss, Rudolf (Ru) Simons.

The marriage failed and in 1941 she married Ru. The family migrated to Australia in 1950.

Simons’s ideas were influenced by the feminist activist Madge Dawson and by a course she did at the Workers Education Association on women’s changing role in society. She also became involved in the Immigration Reform Association, which opposed the White Australia Policy.

In 1960, Simons joined the Humanist Society and campaigned with it for civil liberties, particularly contraception, while working as a research assistant in the department of economic history at the University of Sydney.

In 1969, through the Humanist Society, Simons attended a public meeting which resolved to form the NSW Homosexual Law Reform Society. She became a member of a working group which was quickly swept up by the Campaign Against Moral Persecution, formed shortly afterwards. In 1972 she joined WEL, which took over the Family Planning Association.

With a medical practitioner, Simons co-founded Preterm, which ran Sydney’s first legal abortion clinic, and she joined its board in 1974. In 1975, she was elected president of the FPA.

The issue had its lighter side. When she gave a tomcat a home, she wanted it desexed and had a battle with her husband to bring that about. He asked ”Where will it all end?” But she had to win that battle, she said, otherwise she would have been a laughing stock in the FPA.

The Right to Life Movement actively opposed many of her causes. Once, though, at a pro-abortion conference at Sydney Town Hall, she sat sedately knitting, as if for her grandchildren. The anti-abortionists thought she was one of them and confided in her.

Simons retired from the university in 1978, and the next year headed a team of volunteers in 1979 to produce WEL’s newsletter, WEL-Informed. She wrote witty satires for Sydney University’s Honi Soit and the Humanist Society’s Viewpoints and, presenting the feminist viewpoint, was an avid Herald letter-writer.

In the mid-1990s, Simons began campaigning for voluntary euthanasia. She co-founded the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, telling a journalist in 1994: ”Euthanasia has as much to do with murder as making love has to do with rape.” She became a board member of the society and was instrumental in ensuring a ban on the publication and distribution of Final Exit was overturned.

Simons said she wanted to stay alive until prime minister John Howard lost office.

She loved theatre, films, music, conversation and books and one of her accommodation requirements was for it to be near a library.

Dorothy Simons, who died last month of natural causes, is survived by her children Tony and Clarissa, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Ru Simons died in 1996.

This obituary first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Last year was the 100th Anniversary, so let’s look forward this year!

Meet some fabulous young women & hear their views.

Click here to download the poster

There will be fantastic feminists to chat to.

There will be lots of feminist organisations to find out about.

There will be feminists working for a world where there is creative stuff, fun & fairness for all.

There will be information for you to gather and spaces to talk & share ideas.

There will be fabulous female artists.

There will be you.

It’s your world. Start shaping it on IWD 2012.

The case was lodged by the Australian Services Union in collaboration with several other unions on March 11 2010 to deliver a better deal for community service workers who have long been undervalued.

FWA ruled that workers will receive a pay increase of between 19% and 40% over an 8-year period.

The decision shows that the introduction of the Fair Work Act can make a real difference for women, recognising for the first time, after many attempts and failed cases, that wage increases should be awarded to a highly feminised sector that is undervalued on the basis of gender.

While it is great to see workers finally granted these rises, it is disappointing that workers will have to wait this long to see the full increase. Many workers struggle to make ends meet and this is, for many, too long to wait.

Aside from this, the decision is the most significant regarding wages for women in 30 years and will make a real, positive difference.

WEL congratulates everyone who was involved in the long campaign and who worked so hard on this case to achieve this fantastic result.

Read the full decision here.

The submission covers the following policy areas:

1. Clean Energy
2. Children’s Services
3. Employment
4. Tax Reform and Superannuation
5. Affordable Housing

You can download the full submission here.

Dorothy’s contribution to WEL and the women’s movement was significant and her loss will be greatly felt.

Our best wishes and condolences go out to Dorothy’s loved ones.