Edna Minna Ryan, née Nelson (15 December 1904 – 10 February 1997) was an Australian feminist and labour movement activist and writer, and a role model and mentor to a whole generation of women.
[2] She became politically active early in life, participating in the marches through the streets of Sydney associated with General Strike of 1917 when she was still a High School student.
Her intervention on WEL's behalf in the national Minimum Wage case at the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in Melbourne in 1974, supplied data on the number of solo female breadwinners in Australia.
This information had never before presented to an industrial tribunal, and was instrumental in the decision by Judge Terry Winter to equalise the female Minimum Wage with the male award, which was another essential step in establishing the principal of 'equal pay for work of equal value' in the Australian wage system.
[5] Together with Anne Conlon she researched and wrote the first history of the long agitation for Equal Pay in Australia, published in 1975 as Gentle Invaders: Australian Women and the Workforce 1788–1974.