HALL OF FAME

Mrs Ellen Violet Jordan (nee Perrett) AM (1913 - 1982)

2017 Inductee

Student 1927 - 1929

Ellen Violet (Vi) Jordan (1913 – 1982), politician, was born on 29 June 1913 at Ipswich. She was educated at Brassall State School before enrolling at Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School in 1927. Mrs Jordan won, but did not take up, a scholarship to attend the Teachers’ Training College in Brisbane in 1929. She was also an accomplished musician, and was an associate of the London College of Music and of the Trinity College of Music, London.

During World War II, Mrs Jordan became secretary of the First Aid and Air Raid Precautions Committee and president of the Ipswich Civilian Welfare Committee for Service Women at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Amberley. She also devoted time to a servicewomen’s hostel in Ipswich.

A member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from the late 1940s, in 1960 Mrs Jordan became the first female representative, other than a union delegate, on the ALP’s Queensland Central Executive. In 1961, Mrs Jordan became the first woman elected to the Ipswich City Council, a position she held until 1967.

Mrs Jordan was ALP member for Ipswich West from May 1966 to December 1974. She was the second woman to be elected to the Queensland Parliament after Irene Longman in 1929. Like Longman, Mrs Jordan was the only woman member of the HOuse for the whole of her parliamentary career. There were no women in the Queensland Parliament from 1932 to 1966. Serving for three terms, during with the ALP was in opposition, Mrs Jordan engaged in the struggle for the rights of the working class and for political, economic and social equality for women. She was a strong advocate for equal pay for women.

Mrs Jordan was president of the Federal Women’s Executive of the ALP from 1974 to 1976. In 1975, she was made a member of the Council of Queensland Women, set up to advise the State government on the status of women. She was appointed a Member of Order of Australian in 1976 and awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 1977. She was praised for her ‘ability to always keep Ipswich on the map’ and will be remembered as the first women from the ALP, and only the second of any political persuasion, to become a member of the Queensland Parliament.

Mrs Jordan has been recognised by having the new seat of Jordan named after her in the 2016 Queensland Redistribution Commission’s proposal for the redistribution of the State’s electoral districts. Jordan, one of four electorates in the Ipswich area, is located between Bundamba and Logan and includes Springfield.