Kathleen Clare O'Keeffe

Kathleen Clare O'Keefe (9 January 1883 – 9 September 1949) was an Australian public servant and campaigner for equal pay for women. She was the first woman elected to the executive of the Public Service Association of New South Wales in 1929.

Life O'Keefe was born in Maitland. Her parents were Susan (born Normoy) and Maurice O'Keeffe. Her father was a solicitor. She was their second child and her parents were both born in Australia.

Two years later she campaigned for amendments to the 1902 Public Service Act to include equal pay for women. She took several other courses and she became a child welfare inspector and school attendance officer. She and another PSA stalwart Dorothy Beveridge were among those who lobbied to have women who were qualified public servants to be given permanent and not temporary contracts.

In 1938 she resigned from the Child Welfare Department. She had never told her employers that she had married two years before. She had ignored the marriage bar in the public service and she had never said that she had a new name of Kathleen Graham. She had been married on Boxing Day in 1934 to a mining engineer at Sydney's St Mary's Catholic Cathedral.

O'Keefe lived in the Sydney suburb of Mosman and she died there in 1949.