Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead, DNZM (born 23 April 1941) is a New Zealand composer.
She studied at the University of Auckland from 1959–62, and Victoria University of Wellington in 1963, graduating BMus Hons in 1964. She then studied composition at the University of Sydney with Peter Sculthorpe from 1964–65, graduating MMus in 1966. That same year she attended a composition course given by Peter Maxwell Davies in Adelaide and in 1967 travelled to England to continue studying with him. She worked in London composing and copying music for two years and then with the assistance of a New Zealand Arts Council grant worked in Portugal and Italy from 1969–70. For the next seven years she continued freelance composing, principally based in the UK. Her first opera Tristan and Iseult was composed in 1975 and premiered in 1978. From 1978 to 1980 she held an English academic post, having been during that time Composer in Residence for Northern Arts attached to Newcastle University.
In 1981 she returned to New South Wales, to join the staff of the Composition School at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She was for four years Head of Composition there, before taking early retirement in 1996.