If you have ever looked closely at an Australian fifty-dollar note, you have seen the face of Edith Cowan. Her portrait has appeared on the note since 1995, but the achievement it honours came more than seventy years earlier, in a parliament that had never before heard a woman speak from its floor.

Edith Dircksey Brown was born in 1861 near Geraldton, Western Australia. Her childhood was marked by loss. Her mother died when Edith was only seven, and she was sent to boarding school in Perth. At eighteen she married James Cowan, who later became a magistrate. Through his work in the courts, Edith saw at first hand the hardships faced by women and children who had little protection under the law and few people willing to speak for them. She decided to become one of those people.

Over the following decades, Cowan threw herself into public life at a time when most people believed a woman's place was strictly in the home. In 1894 she helped to found the Karrakatta Club, the first women's club in Australia, where members could discuss ideas and campaign for change. She worked to improve conditions for children, supported the building of a women's hospital in Perth, and was involved in a long list of welfare organisations. In 1920 she became one of the first women in Western Australia to be appointed a Justice of the Peace.

Women in Western Australia had won the right to vote in 1899, but they were still barred from standing for parliament. That changed with a new law in 1920. At the state election of 1921, Cowan stood as a candidate for the seat of West Perth. Her opponent was the sitting member, who was also the state's Attorney-General. Few people gave her a chance. She was sixty years old, she was a woman, and she was running against a senior member of the government. Yet when the votes were counted, Cowan had won by a narrow margin, becoming the first woman elected to any parliament in Australia.

Her time in parliament was short but busy. Her best-known achievement was the Women's Legal Status Act of 1923, which opened the legal profession and other careers to women. She also spoke on children's welfare, migrant support and education, and argued that mothers should have the same rights as fathers over their children. Not everyone welcomed her. Some newspapers mocked the idea of a woman in parliament, and she lost her seat at the 1924 election. She stood again, unsuccessfully, in 1927.

Edith Cowan died in 1932. Two years later, a memorial clock tower was built in her honour at the entrance to Kings Park in Perth. In 1991, Edith Cowan University became the first Australian university to be named after a woman. And every day, millions of Australians carry her face in their wallets, most of them without knowing the story of the quiet, determined woman who refused to be told that parliament was no place for her.