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Who Shapes How We See Our History?

 
Politics and history, a question
 
Gillian Polack
Posted: 01 Mar - 08:22 am  


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I am going to start the ball rolling with a couple of simple questions (simple to type, anyhow - I am not at all sure that there are simple answers).

Firstly, do political processes shape the women's history we receive?

Secondly, what women's history do we receive from public places? The reason for the second question is that I did a little survey of men vs women in public monuments as part of the research for a novel I wrote last year, and the male statues well outnumbered the female statues (unless you included goddesess and muses - in which case the numbers were closer to even).

Gillian
 
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Sabrina
Posted: 01 Mar - 07:41 pm  


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Hi Gillian

Just to comment on a small portion of your post, I think it is worth noting that the predominance of politicians are male (few women senior MPs, and no women as PM yet!), and as politicians, especially senior politicians, they themselves become history in the making when they take office. As a result, when women are not equally represented in this arena, we are automatically under-represented in this part of history.

Sabrina
 
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MarySexton
Posted: 02 Mar - 02:23 am  


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Hi Gillian I would like to comment on your first question. One of the WHM events in 2004 is the Nancy Keesing Memorial Lecture which is being given by Caroline Jones at the State Libray of NSW. Caroline's topic is entitled 'Editing women out of Australian History'. I understand that she has found some original material that will be revealed in that lecture.

 
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ChristinaR
Posted: 02 Mar - 02:27 am  


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Politics is very relevant in shaping our historical record, Gillian. For example, in recent years in this country there has been a major defunding of organisations that provide advocacy for women. This has happened at the national level and also at the ACT level. We still have no women’s funding program in the ACT.

The impact of this defunding is to remove the capacity of women to speak in an organised way, and has removed the resources to coordinate our work and to record it with surety. There have been attempts to continue in a voluntary capacity but this has gradually lessened as women’s lives are stretched.

Most importantly, without the support of our organisations (the real result of defunding) we are unable to be heard publicly with any real strength. This is of course the intention of the defunding and over a period of several years it has succeeded. Without being heard publicly the voice of women becomes silent in this media focussed world.

I’m actually reading Anne Summers recent book about the end of equality and it tells the story of the defunding very well (and tallies with my recollections from being in there at the time) and explains the reasons behind it with equal relevance.

Depressing but true, alas.

Christina
 
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TrishA
Posted: 05 Mar - 02:45 pm  


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The 'editing out of women' has an historical and ongoing fact that naturally filters down from politics into all walks of life.

With little or no political voice a woman's story, whether it be routine, empowering or monumentally important simply does not get heard.


Media and the politics of media shape our society and all too often the unheard are forgotten, if they were ever known in the first place.

Trish
 
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thena
Posted: 09 Mar - 12:47 am  


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The media certainly shapes how we see our recent history. Quite often stories about women's achievements have to be presented in a way that appeals to the readership rather than allowing non stereotypical images to emerge. Perhaps they do that with men's stories as well, but it is not in the interests of women to be typecast. I have recently had a personal experience of a journalist wishing to write an article about a succesful woman member of my profession. I was asked to suggest names of suitable women. The criteria he was looking for were very interesting. She had to be single, in her early thirties, no children and succesful in business. She was to be contrasted with the mum who gave up her career to stay home for her kids. The message was clearly you have to choose. You can't have it all. If I was writing the story I would choose a profile who was trying to balance it all, as a lot of us have to do. That's my reality and the way I would like to record it.
Thena
 
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ChristinaR
Posted: 10 Mar - 02:15 am  


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We often have this dilemma in the disability sector too, Thena, strong leading women are not wanted. To get covered you need to be pathetic, preferably housebound, and definitely "suffering" from something ghastly. The notion that women with disabilities can be community leaders who lead independent lives and have a stake in other parts of the community than disability issues is anathema.

We are typecast something fierce and fight constantly to get away from this. So, in reality sometime down the track in history the only women with disabilities who are seen will be those ones. Oh dear.

There is actually a project happening now through a national disability organisation (not gender focussed) to have the members tell our stories which will be posted onto their website, so that there are positive stories of disability out there. This is one way to reclaim history I guess and one that WHM also uses to some extent.

I'm also aware that many of us will have personal papers that we must ensure get archived properly when we die. This way our activities are also remembered (embarassing though that might be) and we can continue the work into the future even when we aren't here to personally do it.

Christina
 
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Amy
Posted: 16 Mar - 06:06 pm  


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Women's history is also shaped by media interpretations of 'success' or 'achievement'. According to the media, a woman is a success if she has a high paying job, if people know her name, if she's relatively good looking, if she's doing something that usually only the boys get to do.
She's generally not a success or a high achiever is she excells in a feminised industry (teaching, childcare, nursing etc), if her kids are healthy and happy, if she actively contributes to her community, or if she sucessfully manages to balance any or all of the above with any kind of paid employment. She is certainly not a success if she actively articulates the struggles, discrimination and oppression that women continue to face, or the in equalities present in our own society or globally.
So automaticially, the media generated image of a successful women is of a woman excelling in traditional male roles, doing so without complaining, and with not one hair out of place. Mind you, if she should stumble the media will be all over her (female politicians spring to mind).
Not only do these images reinforce capitalist notions of success based on earning power - notions that have marginalised women since they arose - these images have two dangerous side effects.
The first is that this image perpetuates the myth that feminism has done its dash, and that if a women can't 'make it' in today's world, then it's clearly her fault.
And secondly, it denies the existance of working class and empoverished women whose behind the scenes toil makes this vision of Western Male success (superimposed on a few fortunate women) possible.
So I'd say that media plays a huge role in marginalising the actual realities of women and their history.
I mean look at the Canberra Times IWD supplement. For over a month this feature was advertised as a place for business to advertise to a capitive female audience. They clearly had no intention of actually engaging with any of the issues at the core of IWD, or giving us more than a superficially upbeat picture of a pretty limited class of women. Great, feminist liberation is just a purchase away sisters!!
 
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Gillian Polack
Posted: 27 Mar - 06:39 am  


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I was checking out something on the net and came across this: http://www.bet-debora.de/jewish-women/history.htm

Basically, it is case study of how the first known woman rabbi came to be forgotten. It is a sad conjunction of antisemitism (she died in Auschwitz) and the sort of political and social decisions that this topic is all about.

Depressing reading, but worth a look!

Gillian
 
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caroline
Posted: 27 Mar - 08:14 pm  


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I'd like to reply to the discussion on the shaping of history by the media. I gave a talk for WHM ('Editing Women out of Australian History') in Sydney about George Robertson of Angus & Robertson and his editing of the manuscripts of Henry Lawson and C.E.W. Bean. An article was written about my research and published in the media on the 8th. What happened afterwards gave me a fascinating window into media selection.

To be honest, because it was WHM I had already selected from my research material which focussed on women and their exclusion from history, whereas I could also have included intances where women were put back into history by the very same publisher. In other words, to provide a sound bite for the media and an angle for my talk I chose to focus on an aspect of my research which would be taken up by the media and that is exactly what happened. An article and six radio interviews followed on 8-9 March.

Before I went to air each time, I had to listen on the phone to the previous caller and my intro by the presenter. Now a funny thing happened as this took place. I was subtly introduced to the radio audience by these presenters and given an introduction into the kind of people I would be talking to. For example, my interviewer in Perth made sure that I was aware of my general audience by preceding me with a male caller interested in sport who waxed lyrically about a golfer who had won a championship and who told him something along the lines of 'good onyer mate'. I knew immediately not to make my interview too academic or literary or gendered. The Adelaide presenter had a similar caller about the bushfires but chose to cancel my talk and reintroduced me next day and embarked upon a literary discussion about Henry Lawson. My Canberra presenter was interested in the Anzac legend, my bush presenter spent ages introducing me to his audience making it crystal clear that I wasn't to go down the track of denigrating the soldiers of the Great War or be too feminist etc whilst the Sydney presenter typically focussed on the sexual nuances of the editing of Henry Lawson!!
What fascinated me was that each presenter had before them the very same article but by introducing me in a certain way and then backing up that introduction with a different set of questions, each interview turned out completely differently.

Cheers

Caroline.
 
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