Eva Seery

Eva Mary Seery (; 27 February 1874 – 22 May 1937) was an Australian political organiser in New South Wales and one of the first women to stand for the Australian Parliament with major party endorsement.

Personal history Eva Seery was born on 27 February 1874 at Tangmangaroo near Yass, New South Wales to farmer and goldminer Edwin Joseph Dempsey and Mary, née Kelly. Eva and her family moved to Temora and then West Wyalong, where she and her sister Sophia Beatrice "Sophy" (1872–1946) became dressmakers. On 26 November 1898 Sophy married miner John Seery at Wyalong, and on 23 May 1900 Eva married John's brother, East Maitland gaol warder Joseph Michael Seery.

Political activities By 1889, Eva Dempsey and her sister Sophy had joined the Australian Labor Party (then called the Labour League in New South Wales) in the Grenfell electorate in 1889, the only female members.

Eva and Joseph moved to Sydney in 1903 and Eva joined the Labour League at Waverley before helping to form the Surry Hills league in 1906. A founding member of the Labor Women's Central Organising Committee (LWCOC) (1904), she succeeded Edith Bethel as secretary in 1909 and served until 1922. A campaigner for increased pay for women, she became president of the Domestic Workers Union in 1913. A frequent delegate to Labor conferences from Waverley, she called for child endowment, equal pay and political and social rights for women at the rowdy pre-World War I conferences. Seery's coffin being carried from St. Andrew's Church, Malabar following her funeral Seery later supported Bob Heffron's Industrial Labor Party.

Death She died of diabetes in 1937 at Long Bay gaol, where her husband was superintendent. She was buried in Botany cemetery and was survived by her husband (who later remarried) and three daughters.