Lainie Anderson

Author

When I think of the word ‘power’ I think of white men, and the need for strong alternative voices and perspectives to counter that. I’ve written about South Australia’s Kate Cocks, who in 1915 became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary and with the same powers of arrest as men.

I connect powerfully with Kate’s story because history has traditionally been written by white men, about white men, and so many women, like Kate Cocks, have been obscured from history as a result. When I started researching her story, I also discovered other women of WWI Adelaide whose volunteer organisations were run with the same dedication and military precision as their husbands in the army.