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The remarkable lives and careers of the Greig sisters, including Australia’s first woman lawyer, Flos Greig, have been brought to life by their great-niece.
When Grata Flos Matilda Greig enrolled in arts and law at the University of Melbourne in 1897, the student magazine lamented that it would mean the “substitution of emotion for pure reason as the groundwork of all legal argument”.
Despite her critics, Flos went on to graduate in 1903 to “great applause” and received glowing praise from the university’s chancellor and Victorian Chief Justice, Sir John Madden, who called her “an angel knocking at the gate of that paradise”.
Another of her greatest supporters, law lecturer John McKay, introduced the Women Disabilities Removal Bill – later renamed the Legal Profession Practice Act 1903 – that allowed Flos to be admitted as a barrister and solicitor in August 1905.
Flos’ staunch determination to practise law was described in detail by her great-niece, Iola Mathews, in her book, The Remarkable Greig Sisters. Mathews also wrote about Flos’ older sisters, Jane and Janet, who were among the first Australian women to study medicine and become doctors.
Speaking to Lawyers Weekly, Mathews said Flos’ story “invites us to look beyond access to the profession itself, and ask critical questions about whose voices are valued within it”.
“Gendered barriers continued to shape who progresses to positions of power and whose experiences and contributions are recognised,” Mathews added.
“Ensuring their legacy endures requires us to think about how we continue to challenge the structural and cultural barriers that shape who can participate and exercise power and how.”
In the years before the Greig sisters started their higher education, the idea that women could vote or enter a male-dominated profession was met with fierce opposition.
One of the greatest critics was Queen Victoria, who wrote that it would be an “awful idea” to allow young women and men “to enter the dissecting room together”. She referred to the feminist movement as a “mad, wicked folly of women’s rights”.
The Greig sisters “challenged the acceptable views of the day”.
Mathews explained that Jane, Janet, and Flos were motivated by their father, Robert Greig, whose strong influence inspired a pact that they would avoid marriage and children “so that they could pursue an education and have a career”.
With Melbourne a small place in the late-19th and into the early-20th century, Mathews said women graduates realised early on “they could achieve more in a group”.
“They worked together on various projects, and set up umbrella groups like the National Council of Women. The early doctors founded the Queen Victoria Hospital for women, but then reached out to women all over Victoria to raise money through the ‘Shilling Fund’,” Mathews said.
“This collective approach is still relevant today.”
Asked what surprised her most in uncovering her family’s legacies, Mathews referred to their confidence at such young ages and in difficult circumstances.
“Janet Greig was only 16, and so was Flos Greig, the first and only woman in the law faculty, opposed by the male students. But she calmly went ahead and they soon accepted her.
“She went on to be the first president of the Women’s Law Society of Victoria and later, a founder of the Legal Women’s Association of Victoria. It is important today to support the work of Victorian Women Lawyers (VWL) and the Women’s Legal Service of Victoria,” Mathews said.
Mathews is also the author of My Mother, My Writing and Me: A Memoir; Chequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack and the Early Days of South Australia; Winning for Women: A Personal Story; and Race Mathews: A Life in Politics.
