THE ADJUDICATORS

Daryl Karp is Director of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House Canberra, a former CEO of Film Australia and a director of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation

Associate Professor Tony Taylor teaches in the  Faculty of Arts and Education at Federation University Australia and was Director of the Commonwealth’s National Centre for History Education 2001-2007, national curriculum consultant to the Commonwealth government 2008-2012 and is a frequent columnist on history education matters

Professor Kim Rubenstein is Director of the ANU Centre for International and Public Law and was founding convenor of the ANU Gender Institute

THE DEBATERS

GOVERNMENT:
Professor Angela Woollacott is Manning Clark Professor of History at the Australian National University, the editor of the Cambridge University Press History for the Australian Curriculum series and the author of many works on women and history

Dr Dawn Casey is Chair of the Indigenous Land Corporation and was founding director of the National Museum of Australia; she is a major contributor to Indigenous policies and to the conservation and interpretation of Australia’s cultural heritage

Professor Marilyn Lake is a University of Melbourne historian and the current president of the Australian Historical Association. Her publications reflect her  special interest in the political history of Australian women include Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (1999) Faith: Faith Bandler, Gentle Activist (2002) and with Pat Grimshaw, Marian Quartly and Ann McGrath Creating a Nation (1994)

OPPOSITION:
Ms Alix Biggs, ANU student, national and international debater and a former Australian Young Historian of the Year
Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the Australian National University, historiographer and author of several books including Revisionist Histories (2013) and a winner of the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year
Dr Anne Summers AO, journalist, author, editor, publisher, head of Australia’s Office of the Status of Women (1983-86) and the author of landmark books from Damned Whores and God’s Police (1975) to The Misogyny Factor (2013)

The last Women’s History Month?

Ideas for renewing Women’s History Month Australia? Or for funding the website after 2014? Share them here – post on the blog star at top right!

Women’s History Month Finale: The Great Debate 2014
Held  in the Albert Hall, Canberra on 26 March on the proposition that ‘Australia doesn’t need Women’s History Month’ – collect your souvenir program  and watch the debate now on Canberra Live.

THE DEBATERS
Angela Woollacott, Dawn Casey  & Marilyn Lake
versus
Alix Biggs, Marnie Hughes-Warrington & Anne Summers

THE ADJUDICATORS
Daryl Karp, Tony Taylor & Kim Rubenstein at work

 Media Alert   *  Media Release

The Debate is now available on Canberra Live and YouTube.

Some background:

Initiated in 1999 with the first celebration in 2000, Women’s History Month Australia was celebrated annually until 2014. Despite the launch of WHM 2002  at Parliament House in Canberra by Senators Margaret Reid and Amanda Vanstone and MHR Carmen Lawrence in 2002, WHM Australia was always a small and voluntary effort.

Compare for instance the one hundred YouTube videos celebrating WHM USA 2014, with WHM Australia’s single offering to mark the finale of 14 years!

The success of Women’s History Month in the USA, a national event since a 1987 resolution of Congress, and in Canada where it was proclaimed in 1992, originally inspired this initiative in Australia.

But here, the celebration of Women’s History Month remained a series of voluntary endeavours, in recent years encouraged and overseen by a small Canberra-based team.

The debate marked the end of Women’s History Month Australia, coordinated online since 2003, a grand finale in which prominent thinkers gathered in the national capital to debate why – or whether – Australia is different.

Check Canberra Live and YouTube

Women’s History Month 2013
The theme for Women’s History Month Australia 2013 was Finding Founding Mothers, identifying women involved in shaping Federation and the new nation of Australia from 1901.

This theme contributed to other commemorations in Australia this year, including Constitution Day on 9 July and the Centenary of the founding of Canberra, the national capital.

Finding Founding Mothers reviewed how we built on women’s achievements in the last hundred years – and of our progress towards our own legacy for the dawn of the 22nd Century. More ..

Visit the Finding Founding Mothers Gallery to share in the federation of ideas!

And check out our network for events and resources overseas, for instance in the USA where Womens’ History Month is a national observance.

The pioneering legacy of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers is revealed not only in our museums and history books, but also in the fierce determination and limitless potential of our daughters and granddaughters.  US President Barack Obama March 2012

Women’s History Month 2012
Browse the WHM 2012 Women with a Plan Gallery, the feature article about how these women architects, town planners and landscape architects contributed to Australian history, and download the Women with a Plan poster.

How to blog
New to blogs? Find out how they work.

President Obama Celebrates Women’s History Month in the White House…

 President Obama highlighted the changes seen in the past century:

When I look around this room, it is hard to believe that 100 years ago this month, thousands of women were marching right outside this house demanding one of our most fundamental right: the right to vote, to have a say in our democracy. And today, a century later, its rooms are full of accomplished women who have overcome discrimination, shattered glass ceilings, and become outstanding role models for all of our sons and daughters. And that means we’ve come a long way, and …..

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/18/president-obama-hosts-celebration-womens-history-month-white-house

What would the Founding Mothers think?

We wonder  what our nation’s Founding Mothers  would think of our first female Prime Minister’s most famous speech to the Parliament?

National Women’s History Month

The 2013 theme for the USA National Women’s History Month is:  Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Women’s History Month 2012 theme

Women with a Plan: Architects, Planners and Landscape Architects 

The Australia’s Women’s History Month 2012 theme aimed to turn the extraordinary into the ordinary with the theme Women with a Plan. The women urban planners, architects, and landscape architects who shaped our surroundings, and our history in the past century deserve attention both for the notable work of some and for the extraordinary determination they all showed in following professions dominated by men.

Some of these women helped lay the foundations of these professions in Australia. Others, from early 19th century First Lady Elizabeth Macquarie to fighting feminist Bessie Guthrie 150 years later, had a more singular impact on the planning and design of their surroundings.

How to use our blog

AWHF has moved our website from a ‘normal’ site to a more interactive blog format. If you’re not familiar with blogs, this post explains how they work.

March is women’s history month

Women in the Business of Food
2011 WHM Theme

The theme for WHM 2011 brings a focus to Australian women who made significant contributions to the history of food, whether in cooking or in education, science, or technology. In taking their skills and expertise into the public sphere, these women changed history by challenging perceptions about women’s unpaid domestic skills.

Women’s History Month 2010

Demeter’s Daughters
Women’s harvest history – a resource for students and teachers

The history of food farming in Australia is much more than the record of agricultural production. When the focus is on women, the story starts with Indigenous food harvesting and includes the pioneering cultivation of familiar crops in unfamiliar soil by colonial women.

About Australian Women’s History Month

The History of Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month (WHM) is held annually in many parts of the world to acknowledge and document the role women play in making and shaping history.

Ellen Cahill (Killarney Kate)

Who’s Who

(c. 1863 – 3 JAnuary 1934)

Street singer, Melbourne identity, petty criminal

Link:

Australian Dictionary of Biography