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 4 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] Carley Bishop: 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: As we're talking about these big dreams and big visions and all our hopes what if everything happens the way we want it to in 2030 and we're living in this ideal city? What does that look like?
[00:01:01] Sally H: I love that you say 2030 as if it's a long way away,
[00:01:04] Ella Gauchi Seddon: like seven
[00:01:05] Kyriakos Gold: years away.
[00:01:06] Kyriakos Gold: It's been in so many reports,
[00:01:08] Sally H: I think, this is about the whole of the community showing leadership. This for me, in terms of where it would be incredible to be not just the city of Melbourne and not just the state government, but community organizations
[00:01:19] Ella Gauchi Seddon: local.
[00:01:21] Sally H: Private entities, NGOs, everyone's saying we are gonna name building. We're gonna name a street, we're gonna build something. We're gonna think about an equitable way to do that. And if we had every one of the 79 local councils in Victoria building one artwork or naming one street, then that's an incredible number.
[00:01:37] Sally H: And if you replicate that, it also means that 79 stories are told and all of the audiences that hear all of those stories. And so I think it's that whole of community movement that I'd love to see. And then the engagement around it, because we can build a statue, we can change a name, but what is more important is how do we bring people on the journey, especially young people.
[00:01:55] Sally H: We talk a lot about 80% of everyone's development happens before they turn six. And, how do we make sure that we start to really bring young people and pre-primary education on the journey so that we are shaping those norms and stereotypes early? And the app, finding her, for example, is a great way to build community engagement in a really interactive.
[00:02:17] Sally H: Way that everyone can enjoy.
[00:02:18] Kyriakos Gold: And like based on the comment that, 80% of the development happens between zero to six, can we change people as they come to uni as well?
[00:02:28] Sandra G: Big question, fundamentally I think for me what would be ideal is we wouldn't need to have this q and a session.
[00:02:36] Sandra G: Do you know what I mean? Because a lot of these conversations are because there is a deficit. And if we were in a place where we didn't have to have that activism, it would mean that society as a whole understands the value of women and gender diverse people. And we wouldn't have to have that would be, that's a bit idealistic and utopian, but ideally that would be a scenario.
[00:02:53] Sandra G: But then when you think about, commemoration, if we were to commemorate every group socially, we wouldn't have enough land mass to do that. Do you know what I mean? Especially through statutes and things like that. So I think the kind of ideal scenario would be. That I guess through the work that we are doing, particularly like what Sally was saying through education, because the reason why we do this is because it hasn't been foregrounded.
[00:03:17] Sandra G: Like when I think about myself growing up in those formative years there's gaps in that. And I think pedagogy is the way to solve a lot of this is through an educational perspective. Like speaking about myself, I didn't know about these facts and figures until very recently.
[00:03:31] Sandra G: And when I walk through the city, there's statues that I don't even think about their background. They're in the background as people live their life. It's a contemporary sense of society. Not a lot of us are familiar with them or interrogate them. Like I'm sure there's three statues at the state of, like the library.
[00:03:46] Sandra G: Do any of us know about their history? Unless you're on council and you know that's your work, or you're a historian, many of us just gladly look, live our lives and never really recognize the statues, which I think. Finding her is such a brilliant way of incorporating it. So it's just not an art object or iconography.
[00:04:02] Sandra G: It's a lived experience. But long-winded to say that I think education is where we can shift that and have a full story history. The telling of the full history is what's important. In the past few years, we've seen a lot of discourse around statues and their relevance to society.
[00:04:18] Sandra G: For example, we have the Rhodes Must fall movement that arise in South Africa. And they essentially campaigning for specific colonial statues to be taken down. And that's created a whole discourse around that. I guess my perspective is not about taking things down, it's about telling a full spectrum of history because that's also part of the history.
[00:04:36] Sandra G: It's just that there's an erased abortion. If we can come full circle, I think that would be ideal.
[00:04:42] Ella Gauchi Seddon: Ella. I agree with Sally that it takes all of the councils. It's gonna take all of us to work together. It's A collaborative effort and we, I guess in, at a council level, we have so much, we're often responsible for naming places and parks and things like that.
[00:05:02] Ella Gauchi Seddon: We have a big responsibility in this space. And so if we are in 2030, I think we've all worked together. I think we've also applied an intersectional lens. Cuz if we're talking about commemorative justice, that's not just about gender, that's about all different types of identity. So making sure that lots of different people are at the table and being commemorated.
[00:05:23] Ella Gauchi Seddon: I think another thing, Carrie and I were having a chat this morning and we have lots of big Flinder Street station Fitzroy Gardens, these big places, and they're all named after men. Swanson Street, all actually, if you think about the huddle grid and all of the streets in Hagrid, we've got Wanson Street, we've got Latrobe Street.
[00:05:42] Ella Gauchi Seddon: We've got Queen and Elizabeth. We've also got King and Williams, so of our huddle grid, which is also named after a man. So much of our major street network is named after men. And then our big places. So if we were to achieve Commemorative Justice, we'd also name our new arts precinct after a woman.
[00:06:02] Ella Gauchi Seddon: Our new airport after Deborah Laurie, who was a pilot, the first pilot who did everything. We have so many incredible women that we could name these big places after. And if Joss, who Can't, who was meant to be here today told me a story about her little boy the other day that he, when he walks down the street and he sees a statue, he says, man, just every time he sees a statue, he says man.
[00:06:27] Ella Gauchi Seddon: And if all of our statues, or the majority are men, and every time one, you say, man, Then you'll have this idea that men are the people that we need with live for. Remember, you know this zero, just six. That's when they're formed. They're so much of who they are is formed. So she said, yeah, when she's, when he sees a statue, he says, man, but when he sees a statue of a woman, he says, mum.
[00:06:53] Ella Gauchi Seddon: And so I asked Jess if I could share that, and she said yes. And I think it's so powerful because like it just says men are important and women are mums. And that's not to undermine. Mums are also incredibly important. Mines here today. And but it just says, I just wonder what's going on in his brain at that age.
[00:07:12] Ella Gauchi Seddon: So if we can have big places that are named after women, we can have representation of actual women, which I know it's a hard conversation about, more statues, but yeah.
[00:07:23] Kyriakos Gold: Our moms inspire us. I can tell you as a boy ra how does that magic world happen? Yeah.
[00:07:29] Rafe Benley: I've, being from state government, I'd like to say with state government support, but, I'm not representative of the government, so I'm not gonna get into that.
[00:07:36] Rafe Benley: But yeah, know, there's obviously incredible stories of women that need to be told resonating with some of these points. It takes a village to raise a child. My wife, strong feminist, and we try to use gender neutral terms when we are talking about police officers.
[00:07:55] Rafe Benley: Not the crossing man. It's the crossing person, it's the police officer, it's the fire officer. We were very careful about all of that. And unfortunately, primary school didn't take too long to weed all that out because, there's, it's that education. Yeah, education. Education. You bring the community along.
[00:08:15] Rafe Benley: You make people think about it, these small incremental changes that we start seeing will hopefully start filtering through. So then when that generation gets older and then they're raising children and then that generation gets older and they raise children, it just becomes normalcy. Yeah. But I think we're talking about generational change rather than, click your fingers, we're gonna get it done.
[00:08:35] Rafe Benley: But it's certainly these, what we see is small incremental steps, which will get us there. Certainly we need community involvement. I call to you all here today if you've got, if you're living on a street, and then the minister gave great example, both ministers today that were, they're finding her, gave great examples of, I live on Charles Street and next door is James Street and next that is William Street.
[00:08:54] Rafe Benley: If you want a street or you've got a place name that is named after a woman and you want that to be given great recognition, jump onto finding her and fill in the contact us form. That's one way to do it. Go and hassle your counselors, you counsel go and have a conversation with them and say, Hey, let's get the.
[00:09:11] Rafe Benley: Up in lights. I think also the commentary around monuments, you're walking through the city, you don't even look at these things anymore. You've gotta be mindful that we've got young people coming through. Yeah. Maybe don't know that history. And we've obviously talked about augmented reality.
[00:09:25] Rafe Benley: There's new ways to do commemoration, it doesn't have to be this stone or metal or monument as much as, okay, we want to increase that, we want to get recognition, but maybe there's other innovative ways of doing commemoration which might further engage with the young population.
[00:09:43] Rafe Benley: And then it's got longevity even more. It's not gonna break down over years. Not gonna get
[00:09:49] Kyriakos Gold: s as long as it's balanced. Imagine if all the statues that bronze wants are men and the women are in augmented reality. So there's imbalance there too. Agree. We've gotta balance it
[00:09:59] Rafe Benley: out. Agree. Agreed.
[00:10:00] Rafe Benley: Agreed. And yeah, I think you know, funding as well. And obviously we're in a tight fiscal environment. We're keep being told. And so yeah, I guess it's, you need that funding to support these changes that need to happen.
[00:10:12] Kyriakos Gold: Based on what re said, you don't have to wait to go home. Once we finish this conversation, get on the website have a play, tell us if it's working well or not.
[00:10:21] Kyriakos Gold: And in the contact page you will get little prompts in terms of how you can participate. Because if those projects are not successful, we can get more funding to do more and more innovation in public commemoration, and then we won't get to that magic world. And I do what you said about intersectionality because one part is education, but your first school is your culture.
[00:10:44] Kyriakos Gold: And we are in a multicultural city. So not everybody has the same media at home or the same understanding of gender equity. So there's so much to be done. 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