Today's such a significant event because not only does it mean that there's one more statue of a woman on Victoria's streets, but also because it recognizes the work of this extraordinary equal pay campaign at this feminist, this unionist whose radical act in 1969 really was a turning point in the women's movement.
So having her statue not only allows us to gather and remember what she did, but also to remember the unfinished business of pay equity and the importance of women's economic security.
When Zelda trained herself up, I read it in the paper and I thought, oh, this is not right. You know? So I rang her up and I thought, oh, well I'll see if we could work together, you know?
So then we decided on the training. It was a little bit daunting, but I think we were so annoyed at the time about the result of the equal pay case in 1969 because only about 18% or 20% of women would've got equal pay.
It's quite a male dominated area of sculpting practice to put up statues. So this is the other side of this program is not only recognizing significant women in our culture and making sure that statues that surround us reflect women and men in our history and people that we want to honor. But it's also important to sculptors like me, who uh, really appreciate the opportunity to sculpt statues.
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