The Problem
The Gender Gap
Walk through any Australian city and you'll quickly notice whose stories are being told in stone and bronze. In Victoria, fewer than 10% of public statues are of women and of those, only 0.86% represent First Nations women.
Where women do appear in Australian public statuary, the nature of their representation tells its own story. Across Melbourne, 58% of the statues featuring women use women’s bodies to represent values or ideals such as fortune, temperance, or innocence. Meanwhile, the men who populate Australia’s plinths are explorers, politicians, and soldiers. The message embedded in our civic landscape is clear: women are symbols, men are founders.
Women’s absence from Australia’s public spaces isn't an oversight. It's a pattern. It tells every person who walks through our cities and towns exactly who this country has decided matters.
A Monument of One’s Own is working to change that message.
Indigenous Erasure
Australia's public monuments tell a story that is overwhelmingly white. Across the country, countless statues commemorate prominent figures from the colonial period, while in the City of Melbourne only five statues depict or represent Indigenous women.
This isn't simply a gap in representation. It is an active erasure of First Nations people whose courage and resistance are worthy of commemoration, and whose stories belong in the permanent public record.
A Monument of One’s Own believes that commemorative justice is inseparable from the broader work of truth-telling and reconciliation. We're here to help ensure that the full breadth of Australia's history is finally cast in bronze.
The Narrative of the "Great Man"
Australia's commemorative landscape is shaped by the “Great Man” model of history: a tradition that celebrates history through the achievements of exceptional individuals, overwhelmingly men.
But this model obscures another history: the collaborative, community-driven and often unglamorous work that makes social change possible. The work that women have so often undertaken without recognition or commemoration.
The problem is not simply that women have been left out of the story of greatness. It is that “greatness” itself has been defined in ways that privilege individual, masculine achievement over collective action, care, community and contribution.
A Monument of One’s Own doesn't just want more statues; we want to close the respect gap and make room for the women whose contributions shaped this nation even when no one was watching.
The Regional Gap
Most data on women's representation in public monuments focuses on capital cities. Outside of the major urban centres, the picture of women’s contributions becomes harder to measure. The women who shaped country towns, farming communities, remote regions, and regional industries are among the least visible of all.
Since A Monument of One’s Own began advocating for statue equality in 2019 programs like the Victorian Women's Public Art Program have begun to fund projects recognising women in regional shires, including in the Northern Grampians, Golden Plains, Baw Baw, and Mildura. The success of these initiatives proves that the appetite for this work exists well beyond city limits. But these are early steps in a much longer journey.
A Monument of One’s Own believes that commemorative justice must extend to every community across Australia, not just those with the loudest voices or the biggest budgets.