Women under-represented amog public statues

There is a growing movement around Australia for more statues that celebrate the life and work of women.

Transcript

00:00 Australia's statues, dogs, cats and lots and lots of men.

00:06 When you look around Sydney's public domain, it's quite a sausage fest.

00:10 There are 135 statues in the centre of our capital cities, just 23 of those, or 17%,

00:17 are women.

00:18 But there's a growing movement smashing through the bronze ceiling.

00:23 People are responding to the fact that this is an issue of justice and it ties in with

00:29 so many other ways in which women are made to feel and be invisible in our public spaces,

00:36 to not belong to our national culture.

00:41 Advocacy group A Monument of One's Own campaigned for this statue of feminist campaigner Zelda

00:47 Di Prano in Melbourne, unveiled in May.

00:50 Zelda takes Melbourne's tally of women to 5, or 20%, with three new publicly nominated

00:56 statues of women planned.

00:58 Brisbane has three women in bronze and a statue of the Matildas has been promised at Lang

01:02 Park, while Edith Cowan is set to join the two other women in Perth.

01:08 In Sydney, cricket legend Belinda Clark was added to the SCG's Wall of Honour in January,

01:14 with more to come.

01:15 I was determined to see the city of Sydney contribute at least three new statues of women

01:20 to our public domain.

01:22 Canberra started the year with several Prime Ministers passed, and the Queen.

01:27 Since then, Army nurse Vivian Bullwinkle and Australia's first female MPs Dame Enid Lyons

01:32 and Dame Dorothy Tangney have been raised.

01:35 The capital's next statue could be this woman of note, Catherine Helen Spence, campaigned

01:41 for by A Monument of One's Own.

01:43 Women are starting to take up space.

01:46 Their voices are being heard, but also their activities are being remembered.

01:50 A monumental change.

01:52 [no dialogue]