Margaret Guilfoyle broke a glass ceiling of Australian politics when she became the first woman member of a federal cabinet with full departmental responsibilities in 1975.
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The Victorian Liberal senator remained in cabinet throughout the Fraser years and earned unusual respect from her Labor opponents.
Across that period, and later, she was a quiet advocate for women in politics, without ever embracing conventional feminism.
Her career, she believed, owed more to the luck of timing and hard work than the wave of feminism that coincided with her rise.
Dame Margaret Georgina Constance Guilfoyle AC, died on November 11 aged 94. News of her death was made public on Thursday.
She was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on May 15, 1926 and the family came to Australia two years later.
Her father died when she was 10, leaving her mother, a teacher, to raise three children.
This gave her, she's said, a background in women's rights and responsibilities, familiarity with the needs of sole parents and a belief that women should be independent.
She qualified as an accountant just as World War II servicemen were returning to the workforce.
As she has acknowledged, her professional qualifications meant it was the men, whose studies had been interrupted by war, who were catching up - a reversal of the later situation when women, whose careers were interrupted by family, had to catch up.
"I cannot claim that I had overcome great adversity, the timing and the circumstances suited my aspirations," Dame Margaret said.
In 1952 she married Stanley Guilfoyle, also an accountant who was to become a company director and leading figure in many influential Melbourne organisations, including the Liberal Party and the Victorian Athletics Association. They had two daughters and a son.
Meanwhile she rose through the Liberal organisation, becoming state chair of its women's section and a member of the state executive and federal council.
When a Senate vacancy occurred in 1970, Dame Margaret beat 17 men and two other women in the preselection battle. That year she also completed a law degree.
She entered the Senate determined not to be a token woman.
Dame Margaret also believed: "The responsibility of women who are elected is to understand that, if the woman succeeds, her success belongs to her as an individual but, if she fails, her failure related to all women everywhere".
She made her mark on committees where her expertise was most useful - public accounts, finance and government operations, and a select committee on foreign investment.
In 1974, with the Whitlam government in power, she went to the frontbench as media spokesperson. When Malcolm Fraser took over as Liberal leader the following year, he moved her to education.
Upon Whitlam's dismissal, Dame Margaret overnight became education minister in the caretaker Fraser government.
That made her the first woman cabinet minister with full departmental responsibility.
Enid Lyons had joined Robert Menzies' cabinet in 1949, but as vice-president of the Executive Council. Annabelle Rankin was the first woman to administer a department, housing, in 1966, but without cabinet rank.
After Mr Fraser's victory, Dame Margaret became social security minister, a position she held until 1980.
She generally kept out of trouble and fought, sometimes successfully, against cuts to her programs.
She also made it easier for people to bring complaints to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal.
In 1980 Dame Margaret became finance minister, not a traditional woman's job. She stayed there until Bob Hawke defeated Mr Fraser in 1983.
Going to finance was like a poacher turning gamekeeper as she'd moved from a big spending department to the one trying to curb ministerial spending.
She once admitted that she wasn't as successful as she might have been at keeping spending in check, although sometimes this was because Mr Fraser himself wouldn't agree to cuts.
Her direct opponent, Labor's finance spokesman Peter Walsh, said Dame Margaret was always cool and controlled and habitually brushed aside or ignored the most premeditated provocation.
Another prominent Labor opponent, John Button, paid her a quirkier compliment. In 1978 he won third prize in a Warrnambool art competition with a picture called Still Life in the Senate: The view from the opposition benches.
It comprised a photo of a smiling Dame Margaret surrounded by pigs. Mr Button explained that she was always pleasant and answered questions better than most ministers.
Susan Ryan, who became Labor's first woman cabinet minister, said: "If anyone's performance should have established that a woman's place was in cabinet, it was Margaret Guilfoyle's".
Back in opposition, Dame Margaret supported the new government's landmark Sex Discrimination Act during its difficult Senate passage.
Dame Margaret retired from the Senate in 1987, but remained active in political and community organisations and received high imperial and Australian honours.
Her posts included chair of the Judicial Remuneration Tribunal, president of the Royal Melbourne Hospital Board of Management, deputy chair of the Infertility Treatment Authority and member of the National Health and Medical Research Council.
She also worked, largely behind the scenes, to have the Liberal Party give women's issues a higher priority.
When John Hewson set up the Liberal Women's Forum in 1993, she became its chair. She said it was one of Mr Hewson's greatest contributions to modernising the party.
Dame Margaret came to believe that getting more women into parliament was only half the battle. More were needed in cabinet, where the decisions were made.
And the route to cabinet and real power was hard work rather than a big profile.
"Being public favourite is all very well, but it is how you work through positions of responsibility over time that makes the difference between backbencher and parliamentary leader," she said.
"It's better to know how to keep yourself out of trouble rather than talk your way into it."
Australian Associated Press
