Clare Stevenson

Clare Grant Stevenson, AM, MBE (18 July 1903 – 22 October 1988) was the inaugural Director of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF), from May 1941 to March 1946. She was described in 2001 as "the most significant woman in the history of the Air Force". Formed as a branch of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in March 1941, the WAAAF was the first and largest uniformed women's service in Australia during World War II, numbering more than 18,000 members by late 1944 and making up over thirty per cent of RAAF ground staff.

Born and educated in Victoria, Stevenson was an executive with the Berlei company when she was appointed Director WAAAF. Initially ranked squadron officer, she rose to become group officer by April 1942. Stevenson resumed her civilian career following her discharge from the Air Force in 1946. Long active in adult education and social welfare, she helped form aid organisations including the Carers Association of New South Wales (now Carers NSW) after retiring from Berlei in 1960. Stevenson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire and a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to the community and to female veterans.

Education and early career

Born on 18 July 1903 in Wangaratta, Victoria, Clare Grant Stevenson was the fifth of six children of Robert Logan Grant Stevenson and his wife Ada Pollie (née Griffiths). When Clare was four her family moved to Essendon, where she attended Winstow Girls' Grammar School and Essendon High School, completing her intermediate and leaving certificates. In 1922, she entered the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne, but switched to education after failing chemistry in her final year. Stevenson was a hockey blue and was active in several campus groups, including the Students' Representative Council and the Science Club. She became president of the Committee of Melbourne University Women, and graduated in 1925 with a Diploma of Education.

Stevenson began her working career with the YWCA in 1926. A strong advocate for continuing education, during her first two years with the association she organised night classes for workers in Sydney. In 1932, she took up a position as a training and research officer at Berlei, and from 1935 to 1939 represented the company in London as a senior executive. The Air Member for Personnel, Air Vice Marshal Henry Wrigley, had selected Stevenson on the basis of her management background, academic qualifications and knowledge of women's organisations, and because she was not a "socialite". Despite her misgivings, Stevenson felt she had no choice but to accept the appointment, which took effect on 9 June. this number would grow to around a thousand by the end of the year. Philosophically committed to equal opportunity regardless of gender and social background, from the outset she had to deal with discrimination by government authorities, many of whom had been against the creation of such a service. The Minister for Defence, Harold Thorby, declared that "aviation takes women out of their natural environment, the home and the training of the family", Women were at first enrolled for renewable twelve-month periods rather than enlisted as permanent staff; only in 1943 did the WAAAF become part of the Permanent Air Force. She drew on her retail experience to organise the WAAAF and to design its uniform. She took an active interest in recruitment, her liberal social outlook evinced by her determination that single women with children should not be barred from entry to the WAAAF. To establish high standards, Stevenson personally interviewed all WAAAF officer trainees and briefed as many of them as possible before they were posted to a new job. She was quoted in the Adelaide Advertiser as saying, "When interviewing applicants, I always point out the hardships of the service, so that no one will come in on a rush of enthusiasm and regret it later." Stevenson also worked to maintain the morale of personnel, encouraging officers to attend group leadership courses and organise leisure and sporting activities for their staff. Colonel Sybil Irving, the head of the Australian Women's Army Service (AWAS), who observed first hand the WAAAF's training methods before large-scale AWAS recruitment commenced, later declared that Stevenson "did the most pertinent pioneering work" in gaining acceptance for women in the armed forces. For her part, Stevenson considered the role of Director "a difficult job and often a lonely one".

Later service

Early in 1943, a policy change was mooted to remove female officers from the technical musterings they had so far filled in the WAAAF, and substitute male officers in these roles. In opposing this, Stevenson went around the new Air Member for Personnel, Air Commodore Frank Lukis, and wrote directly to the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Commodore John McCauley. She told McCauley, "I contend that it is a waste of money and training to take women cipher officers, women from Signals (S4) and casualty ... when they have learnt their work and substitute these women by men who have to learn the job", and recommended that he direct the Air Member for Personnel to ensure that female officers continued to be employed in technical positions, and not simply for administration and welfare. McCauley agreed with Stevenson but Lukis appealed to Air Vice Marshal George Jones, the Chief of the Air Staff. Jones backed Lukis' authority, and the latter sent what Joyce Thomson described as a "stinging rebuke" to Stevenson, who was forced to apologise. In any event, women officers continued to be employed in technical positions as the WAAAF expanded over the next two years, peaking in strength at 18,667 members in October 1944. As of July that year, women comprised thirty-one per cent of Air Force ground staff and filled sixty-one trades, all previously occupied by men. By the end of the war around 27,000 women had served in the WAAAF. She continued to lead the WAAAF following the cessation of hostilities, retiring on medical grounds on 22 March 1946.

To The Sydney Morning Herald, she contended:

Presented with a jewelled brooch as a farewell gift by her fellow officers, Stevenson asked that its value instead be put towards a scholarship for an ex-WAAAF member to study social work at the University of Sydney. The WAAAF itself, the first and largest of Australia's wartime women's services, was disbanded on 30 September 1946. It was succeeded in 1950 by a new organisation with a separate charter to the RAAF, the Women's Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAF). WRAAF members achieved a pay scale equal to the male service in 1972, and five years later were integrated with the RAAF.

Post-war work and legacy

After her discharge from the WAAAF, Stevenson resumed her career as a senior executive with Berlei, and remained with the company until her retirement in 1960. Parallel to her work at Berlei, she was a trustee of the Services Canteens Trust Fund in Melbourne, maintaining her links with the organisation for the next forty years. The fund administered surplus money from wartime service canteens for the families of former soldiers. Stevenson obtained a Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Melbourne in 1948. She helped set up the Scholarship Trust Fund for Civilian Widows' Children in 1963, and was a research officer with the New South Wales Council on the Ageing (COTA) from 1969 to 1978. She is commemorated at the Carers Association (now Carers NSW) by the Clare Stevenson Memorial Lectures.

In 1981, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the formation of women's services in World War II, Stevenson was asked to lead the female contingent in the Anzac Day parade in Sydney. She published The WAAAF Book, a collection of reminiscences by former members of the service, with Honor Darling in 1984. Her hobbies included reading, classical music and, in her younger days, surfing. Stevenson never married. She died aged 85 in Mona Vale, New South Wales, on 22 October 1988, leaving her body to the University of Sydney.