Eldershaw actively promoted the needs of writers and in 1938 helped persuade the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF) to include grants and pensions for writers, and funding for university lectures on Australian literature. She was a member of the CLF from 1939 to 1953. In much of this more political, advocacy work she was often the only woman present. She was known to Australian politicians like H. V. Evatt, Ben Chifley and Robert Menzies. Dever writes that Vance Palmer admired Eldershaw for "what he saw as her ability to neutralise conventional masculine expectation of the threat posed by women in 'public life, though she suggests that he failed to recognise that she often achieved this by playing on men's expectations.