The problem.
Of the 27 statues in the City of Melbourne:
15% are women.
85% are male.
93% are non-Indigenous.
7% are Indigenous.
The City of Sydney declined to take part in A Monument of One’s Own audit of major Australian cities, the only city to decline to take part.
90 % of statues on major Australian university campuses are of men, and 97 % are non-Indigenous.
A single statue of an indigenous woman.
There are only two statues of Indigenous people in the City of Melbourne. One of them, Lady Gladys Nicholls, is depicted looking at her husband.
Australian War Memorial.
There are 2 statues of women in the sculpture garden of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
They are “Patriotism” and “War”.
Of the 17 statues on the University of Adelaide campus, none are women.
100 % of statues in the City of Darwin are men, and there are no statues of Indigenous people.
In Australia, there are more statues of animals than there are of women.
In Australia, there are over 110 statues of Captain Cook.
New York.
Central Park installed it’s first statue of 3 women - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth - in August 2020.
London.
London’s first Mary Wollstonecraft statue was unveiled in 2020. She’s naked. 6kms away, 4 male philosophers - Francis Bacon, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, John Locke and Adam Smith - got to keep their clothes on.
Joining international campaigns.
A Monument of One’s Own joins Womanchester - UK, Monumental Women - USA and Breaking the Bronze Ceiling - USA, in the fight for equal representation for women.