Don't Be Too Polite, Girls

Educator, activist, agent of change - the life and career of one of Australia's most influential women.

Australia prior to feminism was a very different place. Wendy McCarthy was born in 1941, the beginning of the decade historian Geoffrey Blainey called the 'Decade of the Century'. The Australia her family lived in in the forties was a place where a university degree was as uncommon as a refrigerator and a family holiday spent more than a hundred kilometres away was exotic and required elaborate and lengthy preparation.

Wendy's story is one of a determined country girl who was first in family to university. A girl who was raised to be polite rather than bold. Polite girls did not challenge the status quo or answer back, and they waited to be asked to dance.

It is the story of how her generation of women changed Australia. They fought to have their voices heard and imagined a different Australia. An Australia where girls had the opportunity to complete secondary education. Where women who had missed out on education had a second chance. Where there was a rate for the job or equal pay. Where there was universal access to safe contraception and abortion. Where child care and early learning was accessible and affordable. Where a mantra of political action for women was "A woman's place is in the House and in the Senate".

Don't Be Too Polite, Girls is a personal, political memoir about life, love, family and politics - as experienced by educator and activist Wendy McCarthy over the course of nearly eighty years.

Wendy McCarthy is an experienced manager and company director who began her career as a secondary school teacher. She moved out of the classroom into public life in 1968 and since then has worked for change across the public, private and community sectors, in education, family planning, human rights, public health, overseas aid and development, conservation, heritage, media and the Arts. She has a long track record of advocating, campaigning and fundraising for women's issues in public life.


Wendy has held many significant leadership roles in key national and international bodies. She has established several businesses, including the national consulting practice McCarthy Mentoring which is now owned by her daughter Sophie McCarthy. Wendy McCarthy is an experienced speaker and facilitator and is regularly asked for comment on social and political issues.