At a time in history when women were fighting for the right to study, vote, work and participate fully in public life, one of Ascham’s original nine students—Inez Bensusan—stood at the vanguard of early feminist activism.
Inez was born in 1871, one of 10 children in a large Jewish family living in Paddington. Her parents employed Ascham’s founder Miss Marie Wallis as a governess in the early 1880s, and Inez would attend Ascham with just eight peers when Miss Wallis opened her school in 1886.
From early on, Inez carried a fierce belief in women’s equality and the transformative power of women’s voices on the stage and in society. She established a career as a singer and actress in Sydney before setting sail for London in about 1893, where she became instrumental in the movement for women’s suffrage, as well as appearing in over 50 West End plays and two silent films.
Australian and New Zealander women were the first in the world to become enfranchised, and as a result our theatre practitioners played a significant role in the development of early feminist theatre abroad.
In London, Inez became a member of well-known British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst’s organisation, the Women’s Social and Political Union. In 1908 she co-founded the Actresses’ Franchise League, where she collected, wrote, acted in and championed plays that placed women’s experiences and arguments for equality at the centre of public discourse. Two of the plays she wrote about gender inequality were produced in London, The Apple in 1909 and Nobody’s Sweetheart in 1911.
She was on the executive committee of the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage and established the Women’s Theatre Company in 1913. Inez worked to give women both artistic agency and a platform for pushing back against social and institutional barriers.
She was on the executive committee of the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage and established the Women’s Theatre Company in 1913. Inez worked to give women both artistic agency and a platform for pushing back against social and institutional barriers.
Throughout the rest of her long life, Inez continued to advocate for the rights of women and children. Her determined advocacy for women’s advancement around the world endures today.
Although she lived most of her life in London and died there, aged 96 in 1967, Inez bequeathed her portrait, painted by Cecil Rea in 1924, to the Art Gallery of NSW.
That Inez Bensusan, a pioneer of women’s rights, was one of Ascham’s original nine students is a powerful reminder that from the very beginning our School has been educating young women destined to lead and transform the world.
Read more about Inez Bensusan here:
