Sara Dowse

Sara Dowse was inaugural head of the Prime Minister’s department’s women’s unit from 1974 to 1977, which under her leadership became the office of women’s affairs. The unit helped develop a range of policies for advancing the status of women, with the primary focus on child care and women’s refuges, and commented on every government cabinet submission for its impact on women. Her first novel, West Block, the first edition of which was published in 1983, draws on her public service experience. Five other novels have followed. The most recent, As the Lonely Fly, was published in 2017, and is based on the life of her great aunt, an early Zionist who migrated to Palestine after the first world war and came to see the inherent injustice of establishing a Jewish-privileged state there. Sara lives in Manly.    

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