International Women’s Day #IWD2025

Since 1911 International Women’s Day (#IWD2025) has belonged to all who care about women’s equality. Celebrated on March 8, this year’s theme is Accelerate Action (#AccelerateAction).

The customer owned banking sector can point to a history of being more inclusive regarding gender. Here are three profiles of women who accelerated action in Australian credit unions.

Rose Gallagher

Rose Gallagher is an exceptional case in credit union history, but her experience nevertheless demonstrates that due to the democratic structure of credit unions and their commitment to egalitarian and universalist principles (usually based in Catholic social teachings, trade union ethics or both) some credit unions were happy to promote women.

Rose and her brother Father Jack Gallagher were involved in the establishment of many credit unions and cooperative ventures including Lidcombe Credit Union (established 1952), the Australian Antigonish Credit Union Cooperative Development Limited, Housewives United Buyers, Yass Credit Union, Credit Union Bulletin, and the Telephone Officers’ Credit Union.

Rose Gallagher was born in 1917 at Darlington Point in the Riverina area of NSW a few years before Jack. The family moved to Five Dock, Sydney, in 1925. The deeply religious family sent Rose to Doremy College at Five Dock where she developed her interest in Catholic social teachings.

Rose learned about credit unions around the time of the Second World War through a pamphlet on the Canadian Antigonish movement, which pursued social change through innovations such as co-operatives and microfinance. Gallagher became involved in a group called the Australian Antigonish Co-operative Development Limited, which set up credit unions. She told historian Richard Raxworthy the postwar movement differed from what came later:

[…] because you see we don’t regard credit unions as just an end in itself. Not only is it occupied with money, but it is a basis, a platform for cooperation. That is how we differ very much from the credit unions that are here big today and the credit unions in America.

One of Rose’s Antigonish endeavours was the Housewives United Buyers or HUB, which started buying fruit and vegetables co-operatively ‘because there was a real need’, according to Rose. Because the profits went back to members, they were able to expand their group purchases to household items from baby’s nappies to furniture. Rose’s brother Jack got first-hand advice on spreading Antigonish philosophy after he met its founder Father Moses Coady in Canada just before forming Lidcombe Credit Union with his sister.

In time, many of the Gallaghers’ Antigonish affiliated organisations ran out of steam, but Lidcombe Credit Union continued with Rose as Manager until 1994 when it was absorbed by Punchbowl Credit Union amid a growing tide of mergers.

Rose Gallagher died in 2008 at the age of 91 leaving her estate to Catholic Care with instructions that her home was to be used as a halfway house for teenagers in extreme hardship.

Helen McIntyre

Our second case study, Helen McIntyre, is featured (as Helen O’Keefe) in the December 1970 edition of the Credit Union Quest under the headline “First Woman Director”. The magazine notes that “Mrs Helen O’Keefe is the Secretary Manager of Stateworks Staff Credit Union and has been active in the credit union movement for five years”. In 1985 she became the President of the Co-operative Federation of Australia. She said credit unions changed her life and gave it purpose.

McIntyre was born in 1931 and grew up in Goulburn, NSW. She married in Goulburn, had two children, and divorced. At that point she needed to “get out of the salt mines”, which is how she referred to her job as a secretary for a small business in the oral history interview she recorded with Richard Raxworthy for our archive in 1990.

She told Raxworthy she wanted to go to Sydney for a fresh start and to get a job that could support her children and her widowed mother.

I decided I would apply for a job in Sydney. If I got it, I would move them down and buy a house in Sydney. And I’d have some sort of a new life. I imagined … I’d buy a red sports car.… And of course, it didn’t happen like that at all.

After Raxworthy probed her, McIntyre replied:

I got the job in the credit union and my whole life changed. And it’s been completely changed ever since. And then it wasn’t just a job, an office job, which is what I thought it was. It became a career. And of course, it changed, and my social life changed. I had a mission in life, as well as an opportunity to apply what business skills I did have.

She realised that as a secretary in her former job, she was really running the business on a low wage. By contrast, in the credit union, her skills were acknowledged.

As a nominee for Businesswoman of the year in 1983 she told the Bulletin magazine that before the gains of the women’s movement: “I had to win every round on my own. I was divorced but I wanted to give my two children the same as if we had a man’s income. I knew I had to make a living for life. It wasn’t just a job but a career”.

The article observes that “Helen McIntyre has watched the State Government Employees Credit Union in NSW grow from an organisation with assets of $409,000 to one with more than $4O million”.

I have been unable to determine when Helen McIntyre retired but a feature article on SGE Credit Union (that’s Stateworks Credit Union with a new name) in the June 1998 edition of the credit union magazine Directions names her as Chief Executive Officer. That would give her 30 years in the role. Today SGE Credit Union is known as G&C Mutual Bank, a mid-size mutual.

Barbara Wellington

The third case study is of Barbara Wellington. Barbara’s story has elements in common with both of our other case studies. As in the case of Rose Gallagher, she was motivated partly by religious conviction and like Helen McIntyre she came to credit unions from another career although for different reasons. 

Wellington was interviewed for the Australian Mutuals Archives in 1993, and she told the interviewer that she traveled around South Australia, mainly rural South Australia as a youth due to her father being a Methodist minister and being frequently posted to various parishes.

Her involvement with credit unions came after beginning work with the ABC in Adelaide in the 1960s. She joined the ABC Staff Association which began a credit union for members in 1960. She impressed all involved and was asked if she would accept a nomination for directorship in 1967 and was duly elected.

In fact, she did such a good job that when the growth of the credit union required a full-time paid manager to cope with all the new business, she was asked by her board colleagues if she would consider taking up the position. The ABC were good enough to give her 12 months to decide if she would devote herself full-time to the credit union or if she would return to her day job in television and radio. In 1970, she took up the paid position of Manager of ABC Staff Association Credit Union (SA). She held the position of Manager until 1980.

Her acumen and passion for work with credit unions saw her become involved in with the Credit Union League of South Australia (CULSA) in 1968 and become the first woman delegate to the Australian Federation of Credit Union Leagues (AFCUL) soon after. Arguably, Ms Wellington’s most significant work in credit unions was her part in setting up Adelaide Central Mission Credit Union. Adelaide Central Mission was concerned about the number of people contacting Lifeline because of financial difficulties and they thought a credit union might be able to help. They approached Barbara who told them that a credit union couldn’t be started by people who all had dire financial difficulties, you needed people to pool money so you can make loans.

The compromise that followed was that Adelaide Central Mission Credit Union was formed as a credit union for employees of Adelaide Central Mission. It was a workplace credit union that was dubbed “a credit union with a heart” as it took extra care in helping people who used the mission who were in financial hardship.

Barbara moved to the United Kingdom in 1980 and continued her association with the credit union movement. In 1983, she was made a director of the board of the Association of British Credit Unions Limited (ABCUL) and was elected President in 1986. She was also employed as Administrator of Southwark Council Employees Credit Union in London.