“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,whichsurveyed 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.
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.