Jane Caro Bio

Jane Caro was born in London in 1957 and emigrated to Australia with her parents in 1963 as a five year old. After graduating high school she attended Macquarie University, and graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts and a major in English Literature. 

Caro started her career in marketing, but quickly moved to advertising, and spent the next 25 years working in various advertising agencies. In 2006 she left agency life behind, and went into business for herself. Over the following years, she published eleven books, including two novels and a memoir, and contributed to a further two books. She has also created, co-produced and presented a six part radio documentary series called “For Better, For Worse”, and three TV documentary series – “For Better, For Worse”, “Mum’s Boy, Dad’s Girl” and “The Staffroom”. 

Wading into politics 

In 2019, there was some talk of Jane Caro running against then Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the 2019 Australian Federal Election in the electorate of Warringah. Instead, she publicly advocated for voting for the Australian Greens, and Senator Sarah Hanson–Young. 

In 2022, Caro stood as a candidate for the Reason Party for a New South Wales Australian Senate Seat. She campaigned for action on climate change, better funding for public health and education, and stronger gender equity 

Social commentator and other professional roles

Jane Caro has sat on the boards of the NSW Public Education Foundation (2012) and Bell Shakespeare (2020). She was a speaker at the 2014 Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, and as of 2021, has been an ambassador for the National Secular Lobby. 

Caro regularly appears in the media commenting on feminism, education and atheism, as well as the world in general. 

Jane Caro regularly appears on television, with a regular segment on Channel 7’s Sunrise, as well as a regular segment on ABC Western Plains. She has also appeared on ABS’s Q & A, and as a regular panellist on The Gruen Transfer. 

She also worked as a lecturer in advertising at the University of Western Sydney’s School of Humanities and Communication Arts. 

Jane Caro as an author 

Jane Caro has worked as both an author and a journalist, publishing eleven books and writing for a variety of publications including The Saturday Paper, The Conversation, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC, and Online Opinion. 

Jane Caro books in order

2007 – The Stupid Country: How Australia is Dismantling Public Education (written with Chris Bonner)

2008 – The F Word: How We Learned to Swear by Feminism (with Catherine Fox)

2011 – Just a Girl

2012 – What Makes a Good School? (with Chris Bonner)

2015 – Just a Queen 

2015 – Plain-Speaking Jane 

2017 – Unbreakable: Women Share Stories of Resilience and Hope 

2018 – Just Flesh and Blood 

2019 – Accidental Feminists 

2022 – The Mother 

2025 – Lyrebird 

Jane Caro also edited Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World, and contributed to For God’s Sake: An Atheist, a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim. 

Awards and recognition

Jane Caro has won several awards and has been recognised for her work. 

2018 – Walkley Award – Women in Leadership

2019 – Queen’s Birthday Honours – Member of the Order for Australia for her significant service to the broadcast media as a journalist, social commentator and author. 

2023 – B & T Women in Media Awards – Lifetime Achievement Award

In her life as an advertising executive, she was an award winning copywriter, earning Caxton, Kinsale, Mobius, and One Show awards.