“I DIDN’T ever really think I had to burn my bra,” says Lady Joan Hardy, who remembers a time when air hostesses were forced to resign when they got married.

“I don’t particularly like the word feminist. I never felt that I was not worthy of making my own decisions or having an opinion.

“I always felt that I wanted to contribute to some conversation. I felt that I could make my own way in the world.”

The successful model, television presenter and sportswoman was in Canberra recently in her capacity as a senior partner with CMLpartners Executive Search. She spoke to a group of senior public servants and business people about issues relating to women in the workforce.

The wife of famed yachtsman and winemaker Sir James Hardy, Lady Hardy has an impressive list of accomplishments.
Formerly Joan McInnes, she represented SA in netball, modelled for David Jones and in 1976 travelled to Japan as an ambassador for the Australian Wool Corporation.

She lists her career highlights as a singer and television presenter including working with Don Lane, Mike Walsh and Ray Martin and as support act for Bob Hope, Harry Secombe, Barry Crocker and Kamahl, and entertaining Australian troops in Vietnam.

“I worked always, but the women of my generation didn’t think about it. None of us ever thought, ‘Oh, we’re working women’, we just did it,” she says.

“I never thought about defining myself as anything. I think I always had a sense that I’d do alright.

“I always thought I didn’t want to be modelling when I was 35. I thought that might be a bit sad.”

“I’m not sure what having it all really means. I think everyone should be entitled to have a life,” she says.

“It’s a natural instinct for a woman to be a mother and a nurturer and want to stay at home with a child. It’s also a natural instinct, I think these days, to want to get out and be part of the workforce and be stimulated and enjoy the company of the workforce.

“I, sadly, didn’t have children, so I didn’t have that extra workload.”

Her first marriage broke up when she was 33.

She didn’t meet Jim, who has two children, until she was 43.

“I have a number of friends who didn’t have kids and I think [it’s] because we were of that era – that was the pill generation,” she says.

“I married in 1967 when I was 22 and we could decide. We were the first generation that was sort of given choices as women and I think it created a fairly strong generation of women.

“People ask me if I regret not having children and I actually don’t.”