A critical moment for the trade union movement arrived when Jennie George was elected president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1995 (Heywood, 'George', AWR). For the first time in its one hundred years of history, a woman had assumed leadership of the peak union body of the Australian labour movement. Sharan Burrow, who was to follow Jennie George into the leadership of the ACTU, spoke of the event as 'a day that is hugely symbolic'-because 'if it's possible to shift the male culture of the trade union movement [in this way], then it's possible to shift anything' (quoted in Creed, 103). the Working Women's Trade Union was formed in South Australia in 1890, and in New South Wales, the Female Employees' Union was established
