BOWER, HELEN ROSALIE (1923-1980), community arts director, was born on 28
January 1923 at Coonabarabran, New South Wales, second daughter of English-born
parents Edward Lionel Stephenson, farmer, and his wife Minnie, née Tidswell.
Educated at home on her family's property, Eulin, and at Ravenswood Methodist
Ladies' College, Gordon, Sydney, Ros attended the University of Sydney (B.A.,
1947) where she won the Henry Lawson prize for poetry. She worked concurrently as
a cadet reporter on the Sun newspaper. On 28 December 1946 she married a Melbourne
barrister Wallace Frederick Warne at St Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Sydney;
they were to be divorced in 1956.
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Australian Dictionary of Biography Online
Freelance journalist Ros Bower wrote for the Sun, the Argus, and Woman's Day. She worked in television production and was employed as a consultant by the Australian Council for the Arts.
Ros Bower worked as a cadet reporter for the Sun newspaper before moving to Melbourne to take up a position as journalist for the Australian Red Cross Society, and from 1948, the Argus. She worked as a freelance journalist in London in 1955 before returning to Melbourne, where she wrote for Woman’s Day. She produced HSV-7’s television panel show, Tell the Truth, in the decade from 1957.
From 1969, Bower was employed by the Australian Council for the Arts, where she drafted papers on education and the arts. In 1970 she published a paper in her own right, entitled Women in Australian Society, which contributed to debates around equal pay and equal opportunity for women. In the early 1970s, Bower assisted with the establishment of the community arts and regional development committee of the Australia Council. The committee became the community arts board in 1978, with Bower as its first director.
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c. 1945 - c. 1970
Career in journalism active
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Australian Women's Register