Forty years ago today, the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 enshrined equality between men and women in the workplace and “changed Australian society forever”, in the words of its mover, the late Susan Ryan AO (1942–2020).

To mark the occasion, a sculpture of Ryan was unveiled in the Senate Gardens at Old Parliament House, in the presence of her family and of Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, former and the first woman Governor-General.

“What a splendidly appropriate accolade for a truly great Australian,” Dame Quentin said. Ryan’s legacy “signifies the finest human values of courage and kindness and the solidarity of sisterhood”.

Ryan was the ACT’s first woman senator (1975–88) and the first woman in a federal Labor cabinet. She was Minister for Education and Youth Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women in Bob Hawke’s government.

The Sex Discrimination Act prevented discrimination based on sex, marital status, or pregnancy, made sexual harassment illegal, and dismantled barriers to women in the workplace. It made Australia the first jurisdiction in the world, Dame Quentin noted, to pass a law requiring “that women wouldn’t be sacked, refused education, loans or leases because they were female, pregnant, married or unmarried, that they would be protected from sexual harassment”. Or, as The Canberra Times reported then: “People at work can now hit back at crude comments, bottom-slapping, and other forms of sexual harassment, which can undermine their ability and make their life a misery.”

The bronze effigy, entitled Senator Ryan Addresses the Rally, is based on a 1977 photograph of the politician at a rally for women’s rights. It was made by Lis Johnson, a Victorian sculptress.

“I can feel the vitality, the energy, the spirit, those qualities, that temperament, impatient, passionate, pragmatic, which made her our heroine,” Dame Quentin said.

The sculpture is the first commission in the ACT Government’s Recognising Significant Women Through Public Art program. It seeks to redress the fact that only one-tenth of public statues in Canberra are of women.

“Susan Ryan was the obvious choice,” Tara Cheyne, ACT Minister for the Arts, Culture and Creative Economy and for Human Rights, said.

“This place is fitting not just as the site of so many firsts for the feminist movement and for women’s rights, and so many moments in her pivotal career and her decision-making, and being right near her office window. But it’s also an area that plenty of school students from across the country gather in when they’re visiting Canberra, and I love that they will get to know this former education minister.”

Justine Butler, Ryan’s daughter, remembered playing in the rose gardens as a child. “I really hope that the rose garden will be filled again with children who will walk past this beautiful statue, and ask: Who was that woman? What did she achieve? And what was her life like as a pretty young woman in parliament? I really hope that this statue will provoke many questions about Susan Ryan, and, more generally, about the place of women in Australian politics.”

The ACT Heritage Library will this week display Ryan’s autobiography, photographs, and how-to-vote cards for the 1975 and 1980 federal elections.