Dale Spender was one of the three children of Harry and Ivy Spender. She grew up at Windsor, New South Wales, in a rural setting. She was an avid reader and enjoyed participating in drama as a child. In 1957 the family moved to Sydney and her last two years of schooling were completed at Burwood Girls High School. She completed an Arts degree at the University of Sydney on a Teacher's College scholarship. Her first job in 1964 was at Meadowbank Boys High School where male teachers were hostile to female teachers.
Spender said that the publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in 1970 had a huge influence on her: 'It became my Bible'. In that year she was the youngest head of a Department - English at Dapto High School - New South Wales had ever had. In 1973 Spender commenced lecturing at James Cook University then went to London in 1974 to do a PhD on language and sex. It was published as Man Made Language 1 (1980). She taped people's conversations and found men did most of the talking with women in a supportive role.
In 1986, Spender returned to Australia only to find it hard to gain acceptance in Australian universities. In 1989, on the election of the Goss Labor Government, she moved to Queensland. Spender was a founding member of the 'second chance' programme Raising Group (Inc.) for homeless women and worked as an adjunct professor at The University of Queensland, focused on the shift from print to a digital culture. She has also been concerned that Australia develop a national intellectual property policy.
Spender founded publishing imprints, series and journals. She was the founding editor of the Athene Series and Pandora Press, the commissioning editor of the Penguin Australian Women's Library and the associate editor of the Great Women Series (UK). With global expertise in the fields of language, communication, writing, editing, publishing and equity, Spender became the Australian representative on a number of international academic journals and a member of a variety of advisory boards.
Sources: Sara Conde, 'Dale Spender Writer', Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1997.
