Lunch Hour Talks

Thursday 20 February 2025

Our first speaker in 2025 is Rose Cutts who comes to us following a generous donation of three volumes of Women of Colonial Australia series. The stories were produced by twenty women who participated in an educational program offered by the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) in 2022/2023. Acting as a consultant, Rose taught, guided and mentored the group and subsequently edited and arranged publication of the volumes in association with SAG. The books were donated by Wendy Pryor, a participant in the group.

Rose, who will tell us about how this project came about, its challenges and highlights, has worked across the print media, music and tertiary education sectors in a career spanning over 25 years. Her roles have included sub-editing, copywriting, and several years editing a quarterly fiction publication. For the last 17 years Rose has worked in a variety of roles in universities.

Through her studies, along with several creative writing programs, Rose developed a keen interest and focus on blending historical facts and creative story telling. She is also a passionate researcher of her own genealogy. In 2022, Rose conceived and delivered a writing program through the Society of Australian Genealogists, to share these skills and interests with others, and with a focus on the Women of Colonial Australia.

The Society of Australian Genealogists is an education charity that has been supporting family historians since 1932.

17 October Lunch Hour Talk

The focus of Kate’s talk will be her recently published book A hell of a lot of glass – achieving gender equality in the workplaces of Australia.

Kate will describe her reasons for taking on this huge project and how she went about it. In particular, she will draw on her own career experience, her research in the area and the experiences of other women she interviewed. As well, Kate will explore a range of topics including the ongoing gender pay gap in Australian organisations and why some women are still having to navigate not just glass ceilings but class cliffs and glass labyrinths at work.

Kate will also share her recommendations for what else is needed to achieve the goal of fully gender diverse workplaces in Australia.

Kate Ramsay is the managing director of AnD Leadership Consulting and has had over 35 years’ experience working as a consultant specialising in gender-based equal employment opportunity and in leadership coaching and mentoring. She is the author of Go with Love – a memoir about love, loss and learning, the co-author of Barriers to Women in Corporate Management and, most recently, A hell of a lot of glass – achieving gender equality in the workplaces of Australia.

Kate is also a mother, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a great aunt and the proud grandmother of 5 granddaughters to whom she dedicates this latter book.