Dame Dorothy Margaret Tangney DBE (13 March 19073 June 1985) was an Australian politician. She was a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and served as a Senator for Western Australia from 1943 to 1968. She was the first woman elected to the Senate and one of the first two women elected to federal parliament, along with Enid Lyons.

Tangney was born in Perth to a working-class family of Irish descent. She spent her early years in country Western Australia and later in Fremantle. She trained as a schoolteacher and attended the University of Western Australia, where she was president of the University Labor Club. She was active in the Teachers' Union and community organisations. Tangney was elected to the Senate at the 1943 federal election, after several previous candidacies at state and federal level. She was re-elected on four further occasions before her defeat in 1967, serving nearly 25 years in the Senate. In the Senate, Tangney served on numerous committees and was particularly interested in education and social policy. She was her party's only female parliamentarian throughout her service.

Early life

thumb|upright|Tangney as a schoolgirl

Tangney was born on 13 March 1907 in North Perth, Western Australia. As an adult she claimed to have been born in 1911. She was the third of nine children born to Ellen (née Shanahan) and Eugene Tangney; her father was born in Ireland and her mother was of Irish descent. Her paternal grandfather Owen Shanahan assisted in Irish republican John Boyle O'Reilly's escape from Western Australia. with her term beginning immediately upon her election; Enid Lyons simultaneously became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives.

Tangney was re-elected at the 1946, 1951, 1955 and 1961 federal elections, on each occasion being placed first on the ALP's ticket in Western Australia. She was defeated at the 1967 election after being relegated to third place on the ticket. Her final term ended on 30 June 1968, after just under 25 years in the Senate. Tangney's period of service was a record for parliamentary service by a woman until surpassed by Kathy Sullivan in 1999 and a record for female senators until surpassed by Marise Payne in 2022. She was also the first woman to preside over the Senate, serving as a temporary chairman of committees in the early 1960s. Her award was for her services to the Australian Parliament. In retirement Tangney remained active in community causes and lived at her home in Claremont until 1978, when she moved to a nursing home.

  • In 2013 the Norfolk Hotel in Fremantle, Western Australia was decorated with a wall sculpture of Tangney. It was carved by the Portuguese artist VHILS (aka Alexander Farto) and his assistants.
  • In 2019, a street in the newly constructed Kambri precinct on the campus of the Australian National University in Canberra was named Tangney Road.
  • In March 2023, a dual bronze sculpture of Tangney and Dame Enid Lyons was placed in the gardens of Old Parliament House, Canberra. The statues, sculpted by Lis Johnson, were inspired by an iconic photograph of the pair entering the building on their first day of parliament in September 1943.

See also

  • List of the first women holders of political offices in Oceania

References

Sources

  • Senate Brief No 3, Women in the Senate, Parliament of Australia, Department of the Senate. 1999
  • Listen to a recorded version of Dorothy Tangney's maiden speech in Parliament and read more about it on australianscreen online. This recording was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2011.
  • Tangney, Dame Dorothy Margaret (1907 - 1985) in the Australian Dictionary Biography
  • Women in The Australian Senate