In this episode of the Invisible Woman podcast we are featuring questions and answers from the live panel discussion Put Her Name on It Q&A: Public Commemoration Here, Now and Future, which was held at Melbourne Town Hall in March. This is part 3 of the discussion. We will be releasing more parts of this discussion over the next few weeks.
The invisible woman project funded by our social enterprise's impact program promotes awareness and actions for women and gender-diverse people. To age with dignity, security, and safety. Find out more on justgoldwomen.net or on our socials @justgoldwomen.
Hosted by Kyriakos Gold
Edited and produced by Carley Bishop
This is a Just Gold podcast.
[00:00:00] Carley Bishop: This is a just gold podcast.
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[00:00:02] Carley Bishop: Captured on the lands of the peoples of the east Eastern Kulin nation. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
[00:00:25] In this episode of The Invisible Woman Podcast, we are featuring questions and answers from the live panel discussion. Put her name on it, q and a public commemoration here now and future, which is held at Melbourne Town Hall in March. We will be releasing more parts of this discussion over the next few weeks.
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[00:00:49] Kyriakos Gold: A lot of people in this room know that Deka has sponsored the project do you wanna tell us a little bit about that and also about all the work that
[00:00:57] Rafe Benley: you are doing in this space? Yeah. So as you would've heard, finding her was launched this morning with great fanfare at the Her Place museum. It all went off without a hitch, so we are very happy. Essentially that was a collaboration between Gender Equity Victoria put her name on it and Geographic names Victoria, which is part of the department of transport planning.
[00:01:17] So it was a great collaborative opportunity to come together and deliver that in with the support of just Gold. Thank you. So yeah, currently on the site we have 60 stories with a number 40 inbound across a number of sites across Victoria. So that's really telling the stories of the women and whether or not it's art exhibition or a monument or a street name, or a place name.
[00:01:42] You can use QR codes down on the site to scan them and then get the stories behind them. They might be a short video or some photos, but in all cases there will be a story to be told. So encourage you over Easter school holidays, if you've got. Young children and you're wondering what to do to get out and about and use that website.
[00:02:01] Yeah, so that's, we are super stoked that it's been released and we look forward to further collaboration into the future. We touched on the fact in Victoria we have diverse communities. And we wanted to acknowledge our diversity. And as part of the work that we've been doing in geographic names Victoria we've re reviewed our naming rules for places in Victoria, which we have to do once every five years.
[00:02:25] They're beautifully crafted. 120 page document. I encourage you to pick them up and promote naming to your council reading. Oh, it's some heavy light reading. Yeah. But light bedtime reading. But yeah, so some of the changes that we've made within that document we'd have a new policy around gender equality.
[00:02:41] So that's as much as we support and promote naming places aft in aboriginal languages, it would. The support traditional owners we've asked naming for it is to give due consideration to general equality when they are naming. In addition, we've amended the commemorate of naming principle and reduced the connection down to place from, say, 50 years to 25 years.
[00:03:02] So again, that will ensure more diversity in our place. Names. Now, if you are all thinking, how can I get some place named after me is strongly preferred that you are deceased. So I'm terribly sorry about that. You aren't gonna get your name in light straight away. But yeah, if you're an upstanding member of the community and you've done something worthy of commemoration and this scope, and so I guess bringing it down from 50 to 25 years, we're acknowledging that there are communities that have come through migration that people may then want to seek commemoration for.
[00:03:32] So we are hoping to get more diversity in naming that way. And in addition we've gone from saying with road names. You can only have a last name to saying that you can actually have a first name. So it's pref preference that you only have a first name or a last name for a road. But theoretically you could have first name, last name.
[00:03:51] And the work that we are doing is all about protecting communities through triple zero calls and preserving our cultural history. So that's something that we are, very keen on. So again, you know that connection to, the Davidson Place named after Ruby May Davidson. Ruby or the family of Ruby may have felt, actually we would preferred her first name to be used, but likewise the family may have felt no Ruby might have felt at the time, it's my last name as well, and it's still telling the story, so we don't wanna belittle that fact, for someone's last name.
[00:04:21] It's in, up to the family. And the naming for it about how that commemoration happened.
[00:04:27] Ella Gauchi Seddon: So in, at the city of Melbourne we've got lots of exciting things going on.
[00:04:31] You might have heard about the announcement that we're going to be creating three new statues within the city of Melbourne. So our deputy Lord Mayor has championed that piece of work. And consultation is currently underway, so you can jump online and put forward your suggestions and encourage you to do that.
[00:04:50] We have a lane way naming an art project, which has resulted in the warrior Women's Lane, Madam Brussels Lane, Lisa Aire, and Chrissy Alet. They've all been commemorated. We also have a commitment to a new place and road naming policy. So that's exciting. And there's a document that was produced called Women in the Life of the City that talks about 27 women who, whose stories should be commemorated.
[00:05:17] A good place to draw from. And I think sort of building on what Sandra was saying, we've started to roll out gender impact assessments within the city of Melbourne. And that applies to all areas of city of Melbourne. Not just design, but I think it, within city design, we've really started to think about how that's gonna help shape the way that we approach design.
[00:05:40] And to what you were saying, Sandra it's not about an outcome. It's not a toolkit that you can just apply to a space. It's really about understanding the community, bringing lots of voices into the room, co-design where possible. And Making sure that the spaces and places that we are creating are representative and inclusive of the people that they're being designed for.
[00:06:00] And not just one person or a small group of people's. Lived experience represented in the public space. I think at City of Melbourne and City Design, we really recognize that we have a responsibility to our community and what's being enabled through gender impact assessments is that process being embedded into how we practice.
[00:06:22] Rafe Benley: Some of the other things like we've nicknames the Registry of Geographic names, so that's where we store all of our roads and places. There's 250,000 road names and place names. So we're going through a process of trying to use machine learning to tease out obvious male and female names.
[00:06:39] Part of the work that we've touched on. With gender equity Victoria, besides defining her tour, was doing a first of its kind LGA gender survey. So that was engaging with councils and saying, Hey, fill in this survey to let us know what you're thinking about gender equality in naming. So we had a fantastic response.
[00:06:57] We just had just over 60 councils out of the 79 respond. And of them between, I think around eight, eight, maybe nine now have just provided data and more are working towards it, which is great to hear. And we're following up with those councils that haven't provided the data and then we can classify, so then we can get a baseline of where we are sitting in terms of roads and places across the state.
[00:07:21] So that's exciting. And I guess, we've started to see changes in, on the policy level at councils where they've said, okay, if we are considering commemorative names, the first thing we're gonna do is think about female names, then we're gonna think about aboriginal language. And then we're gonna think about other com commitment of names.
[00:07:38] So it is happening, and it may seem like some of the things that we've discussed, they sound pretty small changes, but I think this, these small incremental changes that over time bring the community along on the journey and that will mitigate this minority of groups giving, being given oxygen and a backlash.
[00:07:59] Are we
[00:08:00] Kyriakos Gold: leading in the world? Because Mel Bunions are very competitive?
[00:08:03] Rafe Benley: I haven't seen the work that we are doing done before and people keep telling me we've not done this before. This is Australian first. And so I would definitely say, yeah, we are leading.
[00:08:12] I'll
[00:08:13] Kyriakos Gold: make sure I tell Sydney
[00:08:15] Rafe Benley: definitely Tell Sydney. Tell Sydney. Yeah. I will work with counterparts across Australia and New Zealand to promote this work and who knows, finding her could become a nationally, International website,
[00:08:25] Kyriakos Gold: inter or international. Why not? The map is international.
[00:08:31] Carley Bishop: The invisible woman project funded by our social enterprises impact program promotes awareness and actions for women and gender diverse people. To age with dignity, security, and safety. Find out more on justgoldwomen.net or on our socials justgoldwomen