Setting the record straight

Volume 10 Number 7 July 14 - August 10 2014

A posed team of unidentified netballers and trophies from the William John Howship collection housed in the Baillieu Library. From glass half plate negative, courtesy University of Melbourne Archives.
A posed team of unidentified netballers and trophies from the William John Howship collection housed in the Baillieu Library. From glass half plate negative, courtesy University of Melbourne Archives.

 

With its launch last month at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, a new online resource has shed light on how some of our female forebears assumed leadership, asserted influence and created change in a pre-Google era. By Gabrielle Murphy.

Shortly after the national launch of the new online Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth Century Australia, television audiences watched as the Melbourne Vixens took to the court to contest the 2014 grand final against the Queensland Firebirds in the trans-Tasman ANZ championship.

But it’s only relatively recently that this elite level of the most popular team sport played by women in Australia and New Zealand has been telecast live, or its star players widely known or recognised.

“Even at the most elite levels, stellar contributions by sportswomen have been little known and largely unrecognised,” says Patricia Grimshaw, professor of history and honorary fellow in the University of Melbourne’s School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

“And that’s a situation replicated in most aspects and levels of society. Be it in the public areas of politics, business or sport, or in the private realm, women have been severely underrepresented in the historical and contemporary record.”

Professor Grimshaw is chief investigator, with historian and colleague Joy Damousi, on an Australian Research Council Linkage grant of which the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership is one of the significant publishing achievements. It includes over 600 individual and thematic entries focusing on women leaders of the 20th century, many of whom are not documented in existing online resources.

“The Encyclopedia seeks to fill the gap in our understanding of forgotten women from the public record and emphasises the range of areas in which women have made an impact,” Professor Damousi says.

“In this way, the Encyclopedia makes a distinctive contribution in identifying women whose achievements have not always been given a high profile elsewhere.”

According to the contributors, a key emphasis of this new online resource is the way in which women can exercise leadership that is different from that of men, but is no less effective, important or significant.

“Existing theories, drawn largely from the areas of business and management, take a narrow view of leadership,” says Shurlee Swain, leader of the Australian Catholic University’s Historical Research Concentration and co-editor (with Judith Smart) of the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership. 

“They position women within or in opposition to models developed by and for men. The Encyclopedia embraces a broader definition of leadership that eschews traditional hierarchical assumptions of what leadership entails, and highlights the significant contribution women have made at every aspect of society,” she says.

“Regrettably though, these different styles of leadership are often not recognised as such.”

Interestingly, retired Australian Rules footballer and self-proclaimed feminist, Luke Ablett recently joined former high profile coach David Parkin in publicly advocating for the appointment of qualified women into elite coaching roles. In so doing, Mr Ablett effectively endorsed the Encylopedia’s wider definition of leadership and the qualities women bring to it.

“Apart from the basic principle of gender equality,” wrote Mr Ablett in The Age news- paper, “one of the great things about including women in any male-dominated workplace, including sport, is the diversity of skills, knowledge and experience they bring.”

Professor Damousi agrees that such public endorsements contribute to the wider understanding, acceptance and recognition of women’s skills and leadership qualities that a publication like the Encyclopedia aims to promote.

“If sportsmen come out in support of women’s sport, then all the better,” Professor Damousi says. “What a publication like the Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership does is provide research-based material which supports and enhances women’s key roles and ongoing participation.”

Professor Grimshaw’s linkage grant brings together researchers from the Australian Catholic University, the Australian National University, Griffith University and the University of Melbourne and Linkage partners from the Australian Nursing Federation, the Museum of Australian Democracy, the National Archives of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Foundation for Australian Women and the National Library of Australia.

www.shaps.unimelb.edu.au

 

www.womenaustralia.info/leaders