Dorothy Pavy (Proud) , first Catherine Helen Spence scholarship winner 1912, pursues women's issues in law

Dorothy Pavy (nee Proud), second from left, with her mother Emily and Proud sisters Annie, Millicent and Katherine. 
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia

Dorothy Pavy, a dedicated and meticulous member of Adelaide’s early 20th Century legal profession, pursued women's issues, drawing on her family heritage. Born Emily Dorothea Proud in 1885 at North Adelaide, she was raised in a liberal household where her mother Emily was a suffragist and her Baptist father, a Yorkshireman, delivered the South Australian women's suffrage petition to parliament in 1894.

From public school in North Adelaide, she went to the Advanced School for Girls and, after experience as a pupil-teacher, entered Adelaide University, completing a bachelor of arts in 1906. For five years she taught at Kyre College, Adelaide. Her involvement in the Progressive Club for factory girls reflected future interests.

In 1912, Dorothy Proud won the first Catherine Helen Spence scholarship for sociology. She left next year for the London School of Economics where she investigated industrial conditions of female factory workers.

Her thesis was Welfare Work (London, 1916), describing employers’ initiatives to achieve harmonious relations with workers with conditions and amenities to humanise the industrial environment and increase productivity. Her book examined the “betterment” of such conditions and welfare policies for women in many British factories and observations in Australasia. She believed welfare could enhance “recognition of individuality” and the standard of living, without being demeaning charity or mechanistic efficiency.

Dorothy proud married Lieutenant Gordon Augustus Pavy from Adelaide and began legal studies at Adelaide University. She was articled to her husband, a lawyer, from 1924, and admitted to the Bar in 1928. They shared a partnership in general legal practice.

Dorothy Pavy pursued women's issues through the law, community service and research. A member of the Catherine Helen Spence scholarship selection committee until 1962, she also convened the law committee of the state branch of the National Council of Women. She lectured to social science students at the university and, in 1946, supported by a grant, embarked on a study of divorcees’ children since 1918.