By Cara Waters
Professor Clare Wright is a woman on a mission.
She wants to address the under-representation of women in Melbourne’s statues where, out of 580 public statues, only nine are of real women.
Clare Wright with a statue ‘Sofia’ by Herman Hohaus at La Trobe University Bundoora Campus which typifies the allegorical depiction of women in statues. Credit: Paul Jeffers
“It’s not a very pretty picture,” the La Trobe University historian says. “It gives very culturally coded messaging to our current generation of Australians, not only Australian girls, as to what they might be capable of achieving.”
Professor Wright heads a lobby group A Monument of One’s Own, which surveyed Melbourne’s statues and found only 36 are of women and of those only nine are historical, named women rather than allegorical or symbolic figures.
Betty Cuthbert is one of the female athletes immortalised in bronze.Credit: Michael Rayner
The nine statues of real women include four saints, two athletes, a queen, the founder of the children’s literature collection at the State Library and an Indigenous rights campaigner who, in the statue, is presented as a wife.
The remaining symbolic and fictional women are largely semi dressed, often reclining and depict a maternal, saintly or sexualised image of women rather than of achievements, including an audience member at a musical performance, sick children and a statue representing chastity, fertility, the moon and hunting.
Professor Wright says the dearth of statues of women in Melbourne adds to the “respect gap” in Australian civic and political life.
“When all of the people that we appear to consider significant and important and valuable enough to commemorate are male, that sends very strong messages, both to women and to men about who is worthy of respect,” she says.
A Monument of One’s Own is part of a global movement with campaigns in Britain and the US to address similar gender disparity in public monuments and statues. A survey of sculptures in London found there are more of animals than of women.
While there have been calls to remove some statues, with a statue of controversial colonist John Batman sitting in storage wrapped in plastic as its fate is determined, the lobby group is not seeking to tear statues down, rather to put them up.
Melbourne’s nine permanent statues of real women
- Betty Cuthbert, Brunton Ave MCG, 2003 (Athlete)
- Joan of Arc, State Library forecourt, 1906 (Saint)
- Joyce Oldmeadow, State Library forecourt, 2003 (She and husband Courtney donated a collection of children’s literature)
- Queen Victoria, Queen Victoria Gardens, 1925 (Queen)
- Shirley Strickland, Brunton Ave MCG, 2004 (Athlete)
- Saint Brigid, St Patrick’s cathedral
- Saint Catherine of Siena, St Patrick’s cathedral
- Saint Mary McKillop, St Patrick’s cathedral
- Lady Gladys Nicholls, Parliament Reserve, Spring Street, Melbourne, 2017 (Indigenous Rights campaigner, depicted looking at her husband)
Source: A Monument of One’s Own
Professor Wright has lobbied both the City of Melbourne and the state government for more statues of women.
Melbourne deputy lord mayor Nicholas Reece says it’s simply not acceptable that only a small number of Melbourne’s many statues, monuments and memorials commemorate people who are not “dead white men”.
“The obvious solution is to create more statues of Melbourne heroes who were women or from culturally diverse backgrounds,” he says.
“But there are complications with this. Globally, art practice is moving away from figurative bronze statues of individual historical figures.
“If Melbourne follows this trend, then we will end up as a city that is permanently stuck with a massive over-representation of men in bronze.”
The Victorian government this week announced a $1 million fund to improve the public recognition of women leaders through statues and other public art.
Minister for Women Gabrielle Williams says equal recognition for great women in public spaces was well overdue.
“You need to see it to be it and for far too long we’ve failed to publicly recognise our great women at the same rate that we recognise our great men – it’s not good enough, it sends a damaging message and it has to change,” she says.
Equal pay activist Zelda D’Aprano chained to the front doors of the Commonwealth Centre in 1970.Credit: The Age
Professor Wright believes a great start would be a statue commemorating equal pay campaigner Zelda D’Aprano who chained herself to Melbourne’s Commonwealth building in a protest demanding equal pay.
“We’re never going to get anywhere near parity,” she says. “But we can certainly start to make an absolute difference to the way that our civic landscapes look and who is remembered and who is commemorated.”
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.