Iola Mathews’s work in the union movement brought about enormous benefits for women in the workplace.

Ms Mathews’s account of her extraordinary career begins with her discovering feminism while working in New York for a Czech spy gathering information on his country’s Soviet-aligned government.

While working for a spy taking on the Eastern Bloc might be a career highlight for many of us, the remarkable Ms Mathews went on, first with a career in the media, before driving the transformation of Australia’s male-dominated labour movement into a fighting force for women at work.

The update of her book talks of the tough path to success and the frustrations of talking to male-dominated rooms of trade union officials uninterested in anything to do with women in the workplace.

A great source of trade union history, Winning for Women goes behind the scenes and recounts the nuts and bolts of devising policy on issues such as parental leave and superannuation.