Notes
1. The Melbourne Trades Hall Committee was renamed the Melbourne Trades Hall Council in 1886, and then the Victorian Trades Hall Council in 1968.
2. Proceeds of the Eight Hour celebrations were donated to various hospitals and other institutions, which gave the Committee the right to nominate Life Governors to their boards (Brown Citation2003).
3. The formation of peak unions by trade unions dates back to the early nineteenth century in many trade union movements.
4. Only two women are included in the index: Barbara Murphy, a Congress delegate for the NSW Teachers Federation, and ACTU advocate Jan Marsh.
5. Sharan Burrow is currently the ACTU president. Jennie George, ACTU president from 1996 to 2000, was the first women to be elected to the ACTU executive (1983), vice president (1987), as a full-time official as assistant secretary (1991) and then president (Cooper Citation2000).
6. Union organising amongst domestic servants, the other dominant women's occupation, also suffered at this time. See Best (Citation1990, 53–55, 93); THC Council minutes, 11 July 1897.
7. A delegate for the Clothing Trades Union from 1907, Helen Robertson's last executive meeting was 26 January 1909 (THC Executive minutes 1909).
8. The Rubber Workers had one position for a woman on their delegation with representation also on their executive committee (Rubber Workers Committee Minutes, 1912). Initially the Female Branch of the Tobacco Workers ensured gender balance. In 1915, the union allocated one of its three THC positions to a woman member (Best Citation1989, 95).
9. The Tobacco Workers always had a woman on delegation in this period, with four different women credentialed.
10. It took until 1978 for a plaque acknowledging the original site of the Female Hall to be placed on the wall of the new building (Kellaway Citation1988, 7).
11. Recent research by Forbes-Mewett and Snell (Citation2006) on a regional peak union offers some insight into the ongoing challenges faced by women workers.