Jill Ker Conway grew up in a world that treated women and men very differently. After spending her childhood working on her family's remote sheep farm, though, she knew she could do anything she set her mind to. Ker Conway earned a Ph.D. in history and went on to become the first woman president of Smith College. She paved the way for more women to get a higher education and helped create a curriculum about women's history. She accomplished all this while writing on feminist topics and publishing well-known memoirs. Keep reading for a biography of Jill Ker Conway, her books, and more.
Jill Ker Conway: Biography
Jill Ker Conway was born Jill Ker on October 9, 1934, in New South Wales, Australia. She grew up in the Australian Outback with her family—her parents and two brothers. The family owned a large expanse of land they called Coorain.
Coorain is an Aboriginal (Native Australian) word that means "windy place." Ker Conway used this name in the title of the book The Road from Coorain (1989).
Because of their remote location, the Ker family was isolated from other families. Jill Ker Conway was educated at home using educational materials sent to them by mail. In her childhood, Ker helped tend sheep in Coorain.
Fig. 1 - Ker's childhood on an isolated family farm in New South Wales is the subject of her book The Road from Coorain
Sadly, the farm was hit hard by drought. In an attempt to improve the farm's water system, Ker's father tragically drowned. Though her mother initially wanted to stay on the farm, she eventually took the children to Sydney. There, Jill Ker Conway attended public school for the first time. She had difficulty fitting in and was bullied by her peers. Thankfully, she soon switched to a private school called Abbotsleigh, where she flourished.
After graduating from Abbotsleigh, Ker Conway attended the University of Sydney. She studied both English and History, receiving her bachelor's in 1958.
Jill Ker Conway: Family and Career
After receiving her bachelor's degree, Ker Conway spent two years traveling. In 1960, she moved to the US, where she attended Harvard University. While studying history there, Ker Conway met professor John Conway; they fell in love and then married in 1962. In 1969 Jill Ker Conway earned her Ph.D. from Harvard.
Fig. 2 - Ker Conway received her bachelor's degree at Harvard and also met her husband there.
Before even finishing her Ph.D., Jill Ker Conway had taken a teaching position at the University of Toronto. She worked there in the history department from 1964-1975. During this time, she helped develop a course of study focused on women's history, which would spread across North America.
From 1975-1985, Jill Ker Conway served as the president of the all-women's Smith College—the first woman ever to hold that position. During her time as the college's president, Ker Conway wrote nonfiction books and articles about feminism and women's history. Modern Feminism: An Intellectual History (1977) was the first of these works. She also started programs to support non-traditional students and those on welfare- and expanded the college's curriculum to include engineering, women's studies, and comparative literature.
In 1975, the first year that Ker Conway served as the president of Smith College, Time magazine named her woman of the year. This honored her work to further the accessibility of higher education to more women and the effort she put in to help develop a curriculum for Women's Studies.
After leaving her position at Smith College, Jill Ker Conway held a variety of other jobs, including serving on several corporate boards as well as teaching as visiting professor at MIT. It was during her time at MIT that Jill Ker Conway wrote and published her first memoir, The Road from Coorain (1989). It covers her life from her time living on her family's Australian sheep farm all the way through her studies at Harvard, and it remains her most famous book. Ker Conway later continued her memoirs with True North (1995) and A Woman's Education (2001).
The National Women's History Project made Jill Ker Conway a Women's History Month Honoree in 2004.
Jill Ker Conway: Cause of Death
Nearing the end of her life, Jill Ker Conway was the board chair of a nonprofit organization. The nonprofit was based in New York City and worked to address homelessness. On June 1, 2018, Jill Ker Conway died at home in Boston, Massachusetts. She was 83 years old. Ker Conway is remembered as a beloved feminist writer and Smith College president.
Fig. 3 - In her later years, Jill Ker Conway was the board chair of Community Solutions in New York City.
Jill Ker Conway: Books
Jill Ker Conway's most well-known books are her memoirs, The Road from Coorain (1989), True North (1995), and A Woman's Education (2001). In addition to these books, though, Ker Conway has written many other works of nonfiction—mostly focused on feminist issues—as well as a children's book and scholarly articles.
Nonfiction Books
Jill Ker Conway's most well-known works are her nonfiction books. These include memoirs as well as women's history books.
Modern Feminism: An Intellectual History (1977)
Modern Feminism: An Intellectual History was author Jill Ker Conway's first published book. It addresses feminist topics through history—a common theme in many of her works.
The Road from Coorain
The Road from Coorain is Jill Ker Conway's first and most famous memoir. It begins during her childhood working on her family's sheep farm in a remote part of Australia. The book follows her through her early education and bachelor's degree at the University of Sydney, discussing the bias against women that she faced along the way.
True North: A Memoir
Ker Conway's second memoir, True North, picks up where The Road from Coorain left off. It covers her move to North America and her relationship with John Conway. As with The Road from Coorain, it incorporates feminist themes that were important throughout Ker Conway's life.
Other nonfiction books by Jill Ker Conway include Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare?: Nineteenth-Century Feminist Ideas about Equality (1987), Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women (1992), Written by Herself: Women's Memoirs From Britain, Africa, Asia and the United States, Volume 2 (1992), When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (1998), In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States (1999), and A Woman's Education.
Other Works
In addition to her nonfiction books, Jill Ker Conway wrote a children's book called Felipe the Flamingo. She has also written a few scholarly journal articles. These include "Merchants and Merinos" (1960), which was published in the 1960 issue of Royal Australian Historical Society Journal in 1960, and "Women Reformers and American Culture, 1870-1930," which was published in the winter 1971-1972 issue of Journal of Social History.
Jill Ker Conway: Quotes
Men and women were treated very differently as Jill Ker Conway was growing up. This quote from The Road from Coorain describes an important moment of reflection in her childhood when she began to really think about women's issues.
Above all I needed to be made to think about what it meant that I was a woman, instead of acting unreflectingly as though I were a man, bound to live out the script of a man's life." (The Road from Coorain, ch 8)
The following quote from True North relays Ker Conway's thoughts on the different kinds of friendships that she had throughout her life. While some friendships exist only while certain circumstances are maintained, she found others that lasted longer because they were based on more than circumstance. Ker Conway made a few big moves in her life which informed her observations of friendship.
Some friendships in life sustain themselves only at a particular life stage, products of some mutual developmental problem to be resolved together, or of some external circumstance, like being housed in the same dormitory in boarding school. Others grow out of a deeper spiritual and philosophical affinity, which continues throughout life." (True North, ch 8)
The quote below from The Road from Coorain is about Ker Conway's mother. Jill Ker Conway explains that because of limitations on and expectations of women at the time, her mother was changed from a strong and rebellious person into a settled, sedated version of herself. This observation would further fuel Ker Conway's focus on feminism.
I would place beside her in my mind's eye the young competent woman, proud, courageous, and generous, I'd known as a child. I was living with a tragic deterioration brought about because there was now no creative expression for this woman's talents. [...] No one had directly willed her decline. It was the outcome of many impersonal forces, which had combined to emphasize her vulnerabilities. The medical fashion of the day decreed that troubled middle-aged women be given tranquilizers and sedatives. She, once a rebel, had acquiesced in settling down to live the life of an affluent woman." (The Road from Coorain, ch 8)
Jill Ker Conway - Key takeaways
- Jill Ker Conway was born on October 9, 1934, in New South Wales, Australia.
- Ker Conway is most famous for her memoirs The Road from Coorain (1989), True North (1995), and A Woman's Education (2001).
- In addition to her memoirs, Ker Conway has written several nonfiction works focused on feminism and women's history.
- Jill Ker Conway also worked as a professor, the first woman president of Smith College, and on the board of various corporations.
- Ker Conway died at her home in 2018 at the age of 83.
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