Women's History Month in Australia - some background
Given that the public side of WHM in Australia is officially past and the committee has stood down from public events, it's probably not a bad idea to write about the early history. Most of the public sites contain errors. They have lost either two years or three years of the celebration. It worries me when the event that's celebrating women's history loses some of its own history.
One thing I did on Wednesday (and a few months ago, when I saw Lulu) was to check my knowledge against the other surviving members of the first committee. This, therefore is the closest to an authoritative account anyone can give, allowing for the fallible nature of all our memories. If someone ever wants to write a full history, I have the e-files (and the latest committee has copies), Lulu Respall-Turner has the paper files (and will get them to an archive when she's done with them), and the National Library's Pandora archive has copies of most (but not all) the online materials. I'm pretty sure it's the Jesse Street Archive that has all Helen's photos.
One set of photos (by me, though often unattributed) can be found in several places. These photos of that single event have been taken to be the early launch (before the first WHM) but, in fact, they were the IWD launch of a single WHM's activities, and that particular event was two years in. This accounts for the 2002 start date and, as I said, the 2003 start date is actually the date when the new committee came in.
That is the end of the boring-section-for-researchers.
Officially, WHM started in Australia in 2000. Our planning (and the decision to create WHM) started in 1999, outside, at a Canberra cafe. There weren't that many cafes in Canberra that had outside seating, so that was partly why it was Gus's, and it was also because Gus's had become Helen's and my default cafe for meeting, for it had better coffee than most at that point (Canberra coffee around that time was pretty bad) and if we sat outside then Helen could smoke.
I've talked in several places how Helen Leonard found us that table at Gus's and had coffee with a few of us and WHM was started. She and I were the first ones there, and Lulu Respall-Turner came about 20 minutes later. We are the three, therefore, who made the decision that "Yes, Australia would have a WHM." Veronica Wensing couldn't get to that meeting, but came on board the moment Helen got in touch with her, probably that very day. We four did the bulk of the work that first year.
Marilyn Lake (who I checked with on Wednesday, just as I checked with Veronica) agreed to be on the committee so that we would have an Australian historian involved (for I am a European historian) but didn't have any time. She was acknowledged as a committee member, though, for her name gave us gravitas. She appeared on the website that first year as a committee member and guest. Judy Harrison (Helen's partner) was unofficially involved, which included giving us advice on various things.
We were officially sponsored by the Women's Electoral Lobby, and Helen made me a member that year purely so that I could do WHM in their name.
It was a much tighter committee than this sounded: Helen recruited from her feminist friends and Lulu and Veronica and I all knew each other before we began. We still get on well. We don't see each other often, but when we see each other we just pick up where we left off. Lulu and Veronica are still very active in other work for women and disadvantaged groups. I, as most of you know, retired from that a while ago*.
That first year we didn't do much in the way of events that required bookings and rooms. Events were almost entirely online. I don't remember being involved in any live events that year, apart from meetings, but my memory is fallible. I was, however, almost wholly responsible for the online programme (my memory's not that fallible - it was challenging).
Helen and the others found us all our guests (except for the writing bods, who I persuaded) and I set up a site on Blackboard. That site was never fully archived the way the later sites were, but I suspect I have it all, in my WHM archive files. I got involved in running the Blackboard site because I was very worried about the lack of technical skills women in our various communities had, and it seemed a logical way of giving them some basic skills. It took a lot of work from my end: one guest didn't even know what a mouse was! I added it up, and that first WHM I did significantly over 30 hours a week, plus the lead-up. But it was worth it.
The second year (2001) we were more visible. This was when my publisher was our cavalry and gave us a proper web interface. Our sponsorship also shifted (either then or the year later) to the NFAW. We never had official government backing. Right from the beginning the senior parliamentary women were behind us all the way and the government pretended we didn't exist.
One thing I discovered on Wednesday is that none of the senior women (including Anne Summers and Marilyn Lake) remember the back-up women, the women like me who did the hard work, even when we talked them through their technical issues face-to-face. Dawn Casey gave me a "Haven't I see you before" look on Wednesday, but that was the closest I got to anyone remembering over 500 hours of work. This is another of the reasons I moved out of the women's movement. In our attempt to change things, we were actually reinforcing the problem of lack of recognition. Some of this is happening in SF circles right now, and I find it worrying. Public statements of what needs to happen is only the beginning of change and if those public statements dominate, then we never actually achieve the society we want.
I took a breather in order to think about this. If someone like me, who was doing some fairly intensive work in various places (during Beijing +5 I was the acting boss of CAPOW!, the umbrella body of 67 women's organisations, disestablished by a government that didn't actually want to talk to that many women's organisations at once) was not being seen, then we had a cultural problem. It meant that all the women who were even more behind the scenes were being seen even less and that we were nipping our own attempts in the bud - deep change wasn't going to happen using the then models the women's movement was working with. I still haven't resolved that problem except to look at narratives. I say 'except' when I know there is an answer in there. Stories are powerful.
it doesn't matter how much good will we have and how much we see the need to change, unless we address our own assumptions, we're going to make the same mistakes of other generations. Fiction is probably the most powerful tool for change there is. I reconfigured my fiction when I reconfigured my life and I no longer write quite the adventure fantasy I started out doing. In fact, almost no-one knows I started out writing pure genre. Except those who know me as a writer from the early 1980s, but I haven't found anyone who remembers my early work. Which is not relevant at all, and it means I'm wittering.
And my wittering (and the direction it's taking) suggests that I need to return to work. Anyhow, now you know why I celebrate WHM on this blog and what my involvement was and that it began in Australia in 1999 and ended (publicly) on Wednesday night. I was part of the beginning and I was there at the end.
PS There will be some catch-up posts later today for WHM, for my life did that 'interesting' thing again.
*My reasons from getting out were reinforced on Wednesday, when I was given a gentle chiding by someone because if I had written something for the programme there would have been something on the programme about all this. But I only know the early years, I am not on the current committee, I *did* brief the current committee, and I would have been writing that briefing up instead of doing my own work. I have only 1/3 of the deadlines today that I've had the last few weeks (today is 2 draft chapters, 2 higher ed modules, the back WHM posts, 2000 words new writing and catching up with some of my LonCon volunteer stuff - in case you're wondering what I regard as 'having more time') And all this tells you why I left: the work on WHM more and more pushed my own life (including my income needs and health needs) to one side. Very ironic, considering it was WHM. There were other reasons, but that was an important one.
One thing I did on Wednesday (and a few months ago, when I saw Lulu) was to check my knowledge against the other surviving members of the first committee. This, therefore is the closest to an authoritative account anyone can give, allowing for the fallible nature of all our memories. If someone ever wants to write a full history, I have the e-files (and the latest committee has copies), Lulu Respall-Turner has the paper files (and will get them to an archive when she's done with them), and the National Library's Pandora archive has copies of most (but not all) the online materials. I'm pretty sure it's the Jesse Street Archive that has all Helen's photos.
One set of photos (by me, though often unattributed) can be found in several places. These photos of that single event have been taken to be the early launch (before the first WHM) but, in fact, they were the IWD launch of a single WHM's activities, and that particular event was two years in. This accounts for the 2002 start date and, as I said, the 2003 start date is actually the date when the new committee came in.
That is the end of the boring-section-for-researchers.
Officially, WHM started in Australia in 2000. Our planning (and the decision to create WHM) started in 1999, outside, at a Canberra cafe. There weren't that many cafes in Canberra that had outside seating, so that was partly why it was Gus's, and it was also because Gus's had become Helen's and my default cafe for meeting, for it had better coffee than most at that point (Canberra coffee around that time was pretty bad) and if we sat outside then Helen could smoke.
I've talked in several places how Helen Leonard found us that table at Gus's and had coffee with a few of us and WHM was started. She and I were the first ones there, and Lulu Respall-Turner came about 20 minutes later. We are the three, therefore, who made the decision that "Yes, Australia would have a WHM." Veronica Wensing couldn't get to that meeting, but came on board the moment Helen got in touch with her, probably that very day. We four did the bulk of the work that first year.
Marilyn Lake (who I checked with on Wednesday, just as I checked with Veronica) agreed to be on the committee so that we would have an Australian historian involved (for I am a European historian) but didn't have any time. She was acknowledged as a committee member, though, for her name gave us gravitas. She appeared on the website that first year as a committee member and guest. Judy Harrison (Helen's partner) was unofficially involved, which included giving us advice on various things.
We were officially sponsored by the Women's Electoral Lobby, and Helen made me a member that year purely so that I could do WHM in their name.
It was a much tighter committee than this sounded: Helen recruited from her feminist friends and Lulu and Veronica and I all knew each other before we began. We still get on well. We don't see each other often, but when we see each other we just pick up where we left off. Lulu and Veronica are still very active in other work for women and disadvantaged groups. I, as most of you know, retired from that a while ago*.
That first year we didn't do much in the way of events that required bookings and rooms. Events were almost entirely online. I don't remember being involved in any live events that year, apart from meetings, but my memory is fallible. I was, however, almost wholly responsible for the online programme (my memory's not that fallible - it was challenging).
Helen and the others found us all our guests (except for the writing bods, who I persuaded) and I set up a site on Blackboard. That site was never fully archived the way the later sites were, but I suspect I have it all, in my WHM archive files. I got involved in running the Blackboard site because I was very worried about the lack of technical skills women in our various communities had, and it seemed a logical way of giving them some basic skills. It took a lot of work from my end: one guest didn't even know what a mouse was! I added it up, and that first WHM I did significantly over 30 hours a week, plus the lead-up. But it was worth it.
The second year (2001) we were more visible. This was when my publisher was our cavalry and gave us a proper web interface. Our sponsorship also shifted (either then or the year later) to the NFAW. We never had official government backing. Right from the beginning the senior parliamentary women were behind us all the way and the government pretended we didn't exist.
One thing I discovered on Wednesday is that none of the senior women (including Anne Summers and Marilyn Lake) remember the back-up women, the women like me who did the hard work, even when we talked them through their technical issues face-to-face. Dawn Casey gave me a "Haven't I see you before" look on Wednesday, but that was the closest I got to anyone remembering over 500 hours of work. This is another of the reasons I moved out of the women's movement. In our attempt to change things, we were actually reinforcing the problem of lack of recognition. Some of this is happening in SF circles right now, and I find it worrying. Public statements of what needs to happen is only the beginning of change and if those public statements dominate, then we never actually achieve the society we want.
I took a breather in order to think about this. If someone like me, who was doing some fairly intensive work in various places (during Beijing +5 I was the acting boss of CAPOW!, the umbrella body of 67 women's organisations, disestablished by a government that didn't actually want to talk to that many women's organisations at once) was not being seen, then we had a cultural problem. It meant that all the women who were even more behind the scenes were being seen even less and that we were nipping our own attempts in the bud - deep change wasn't going to happen using the then models the women's movement was working with. I still haven't resolved that problem except to look at narratives. I say 'except' when I know there is an answer in there. Stories are powerful.
it doesn't matter how much good will we have and how much we see the need to change, unless we address our own assumptions, we're going to make the same mistakes of other generations. Fiction is probably the most powerful tool for change there is. I reconfigured my fiction when I reconfigured my life and I no longer write quite the adventure fantasy I started out doing. In fact, almost no-one knows I started out writing pure genre. Except those who know me as a writer from the early 1980s, but I haven't found anyone who remembers my early work. Which is not relevant at all, and it means I'm wittering.
And my wittering (and the direction it's taking) suggests that I need to return to work. Anyhow, now you know why I celebrate WHM on this blog and what my involvement was and that it began in Australia in 1999 and ended (publicly) on Wednesday night. I was part of the beginning and I was there at the end.
PS There will be some catch-up posts later today for WHM, for my life did that 'interesting' thing again.
*My reasons from getting out were reinforced on Wednesday, when I was given a gentle chiding by someone because if I had written something for the programme there would have been something on the programme about all this. But I only know the early years, I am not on the current committee, I *did* brief the current committee, and I would have been writing that briefing up instead of doing my own work. I have only 1/3 of the deadlines today that I've had the last few weeks (today is 2 draft chapters, 2 higher ed modules, the back WHM posts, 2000 words new writing and catching up with some of my LonCon volunteer stuff - in case you're wondering what I regard as 'having more time') And all this tells you why I left: the work on WHM more and more pushed my own life (including my income needs and health needs) to one side. Very ironic, considering it was WHM. There were other reasons, but that was an important one.