The Mary Bennett Prize for Women’s History is awarded every two years by the Australian Women’s History Network to an early career historian for the best article or chapter in any field of women’s history, in any published journal (including e-journals) or edited collection. The prize is named in honour of Mary Montgomerie Bennett (1881-1961), a talented and relentless campaigner for human rights on the national and international stage.

The prize includes a citation and cash award of $200, and is awarded provided a nomination of sufficient merit is received. Those eligible must have completed their doctorate no more than six years prior to the publication of the article or chapter, or be enrolled in a doctoral program. The nominees must normally be resident in Australia and should be members of the Australian Women’s History Network. Only one article or chapter can be submitted for consideration by an author.

The Mary Bennett prize will be awarded to the best article or chapter to demonstrate the hallmarks of advanced historical scholarship and contribution to the academic field of Women’s History. The entries will be judged on their originality and must display evidence of high calibre research and analysis as well as high quality writing.

The 2024 Mary Bennett Prize will be awarded for articles and chapters published in 2024 and 2025. The prize winner will be announced during the conference of the Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference in 2026. The submission deadline will be announced closer to the date. The nominated work must bear a publication date of 2024 or 2025. The publication date of the nominated work refers to the date it was first published, whether it was online or in print form.

Nominations (of your own work or that of a colleague) can be made by e-mailing a cover letter (in PDF or Word format) with full contact details of the author, details of when PhD was awarded (or current enrolment), along with a PDF of the nominated article, to auswhn@gmail.com.

2024 Recipients

The Mary Bennett Prize for 2022-2023 has been awarded to:

Jessica O’Leary, ‘The Uprooting of Indigenous Women’s Horticultural Practices in Brazil, 1500–1650’, Past & Present, Volume 262, Issue 1 (2024), 45-83. [First Published Online: 2023].

Dr Jessica O’Leary is a Research Fellow at the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Australian Catholic University. She is a gender and cultural historian of the early modern period, interested in global history and connections between people around the world. Her current research involves women and children in the Jesuit Missions and the Portuguese Empire, especially in Brazil and in Japan.

Citation: In this impressive ethnohistorical account of Indigenous women’s practices in 16th century Brazil, O’Leary shows how, following the arrival of Jesuit missionaries, women’s central role in Indigenous agricultural practices were expunged from public memory and the historical record.  Based largely on Spanish-language sources, this beautifully written and innovative article sets out to reinstate their story, in the process expanding our thinking about Indigenous women as resource holders and knowledge holders, and our understanding of Indigenous women as agents as well as the objects of colonisation.

Highly Commended

Ming Gao, ‘Gendering and Sexualising Opium Consumption in Manchukuo, 1932–1945’, Asian Studies Review, 1-18. [First Published Online: 2023].

Dr Ming Gao is a scholar of modern East Asia at the Australian Catholic University and Monash University. He researches the gendered dynamics of violence, emotions, women’s history, and the Japanese empire. He now resides in Melbourne, and has previously studied or worked in Korea, Japan, Singapore, the United States, and China.

Citation: In this innovative study of women and opium consumption in interwar and wartime Manchukuo, Gao tells the story of female attendants in illegal opium dens during Japanese occupation. Bringing into dialogue a range of remarkable English, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese visual and documentary sources, this thoughtfully crafted account reads innovatively across the more usually distinct histories of sex work and opium in this period. By adopting a sociocultural approach and using Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the contact zone, Gao sheds new light on the lives of women working in a highly gendered and sexualized subculture of consumption.

2024 Judging Panel
Emeritus Professor Fiona Paisley (Griffith University, chair), Professor Lisa Featherstone (The University of Queensland) and Dr Isobelle Barrett-Meyering (Macquarie University)

The 2024 Mary Bennett Prize for Women’s History was announced by Micaela Pattison and Michelle Staff at the Australian Historical Association Conference dinner in Adelaide on 4 July 2024.

Previous Winners

2022

The Mary Bennett Prize for 2020-2021 has been awarded to:

Emma Gleadhill and Ekaterina Heath for ‘Giving women history: a history of Ekaterina Dashkova through her gifts to Catherine the Great and others’, Women’s History Review, Volume 31, Issue 3 (2022), 361-386

and

Karen Twigg for ‘The Green Years: The Role of Abundant Water in Shaping Postwar Constructions of Rural Femininity’, Environment and History, Volume 27, Number 2 (2021), 277-301.

Dr Emma Gleadhill received their PhD from Monash University in 2017 and now works at Macquarie University as a Research Officer. In 2022 her first book, Taking travel home: the souvenir culture of British women tourists, 1750-1830, was published with Manchester University Press.

Dr Ekaterina Heath received their PhD from the University of Sydney in 2018. Ekaterina is an art and garden historian based in Sydney. Her work examines the ways in which elite Russian women used plants, garden design and art to promote their agendas within the Russian court in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Citation: This is a richly illustrated and deftly told story about a range of complex gendered relationships including friendly, courtly and intergenerational. It is impressive in scope, sophisticated in its interpretations and conceptual framing, and rigorously researched. Through innovatively applying anthropological theories of gift-giving to histories of powerful women, it illuminates the complex ways in which agency and influence operated in both political and intimate contexts. Interdisciplinary in approach, it makes new connections between art, science, politics and gender.

Karen Twigg received her PhD from La Trobe University in 2020. Karen’s thesis won the Nancy Millis Award (La Trobe University). In 2020, she also won the Jill Roe Prize (Australian History Association) and Mike Smith Prize (National Museum of Australia and the Australian Academy of Science) for two separate articles. Karen is currently a researcher on the ARC funded ‘Parched: cultures of drought in regional Victoria’ (2021-2023)

Citation: This fascinating article applies a microhistory approach to an innovative blend of environmental, technological, scientific, regional and gender history to offer unique insight into rural women’s experiences in postwar Australia. In compelling detail, and based on a sophisticated interpretation of oral histories, personal archives and press coverage, it argues that the plentiful rainfall of the 1950s produced a new discourse and atmosphere of vitality which enabled women to reimagine their place in regional society. Written with flair, it is evocative of optimistic times.

Highly Commended

Kate Laing and Lucy Davies, ‘Intersecting paths of the local and the international: Joyce Clague’s activist journeys’, Women’s History Review, Volume 30, Issue 4 (2021), 574-593.

Citation: This powerful article pushes the boundaries of transnational and Indigenous mobility historiographies by analysing the domestic and international activism of a pioneering Indigenous woman. It contributes important new historical knowledge about transnational friendships among Indigenous women and the role of religion in the making of Aboriginal leaders.

and

Paige Donaghy, ‘Miscarriage, False Conceptions, and Other Lumps: Women’s Pregnancy Loss in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History of Medicine, Volume 34, Issue 4 (2021), 1138–1160.

Citation: This excellent article showcases fascinating and sensitively interpreted research into pregnancy care and loss which enriches our historical understanding of how women made meanings of their bodies. Through rejecting the imposition of contemporary meaning on past bodies, it unsettles current moral and biological interpretations of the body, while also remaining attentive to the affective dimensions of loss.

2022 Judging Panel
Associate Professor Sharon Crozier-De Rosa (University of Wollongong, chair), Associate Professor Catherine Kevin (Flinders University) and Dr Samantha Owen (Curtin University)

The 2022 Mary Bennett Prize for Women’s History was announced by Catherine Kevin at the Australian Historical Association Conference dinner in Geelong on 30 June 2022.

2020

The Mary Bennett Prize for 2018-2019 has been awarded to Catriona Fisk for ‘Looking for Maternity: Dress Collections and Embodied Knowledge’ published in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, Volume 23, Issue 3 (2019), 401-439.

Catriona received her PhD ‘Confined by history: Dress and the Maternal Body 1750-1900′ from University of Technology Sydney earlier this year.

It was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship, the Pasold Research Fund and their joint fellowship with Museum of London and by the Australian Federation of Graduate Women New South Wales, Tempe Mann Travelling Scholarship.

This is a sophisticated, multilayered and beautifully written article reflecting a rich and impressive level of reading and research. It opens up multiple areas (beyond the material culture that is the author’s main concern) in a sophisticated and imaginative way. It makes a huge contribution to a hitherto under researched area.

Highly Commended

Alexandra Dellios, ‘“It was just you and your child”: single migrant mothers, generational storytelling and Australia’s migrant heritage’, Memory Studies, Volume 13, Issue 4, (2020), 586-600. [First Published Online: 2018].

An innovative article making good use of ideas and methodologically inventive.

Isobelle Barrett Meyering, ‘Feminism in Sydney’s Suburbs: “Speaking Out”: Listening and “Sisterhood” at the 1975 Women’s Commissions’, Australian Feminist Studies, Volume 33, Issue 95 (2018), 61-80.

An original piece of research highlighting the understudied topic of grass roots feminism. Uses documents impressively giving the reader a feeling of immediacy.

Award Committee Members

Professor Pam Sharpe FAHA (Chair) – University of Tasmania, Associate Professor Katie Barclay – University of Adelaide, Associate Professor Nell Musgrove – Australian Catholic University, Dr Nikki Henningham – University of Melbourne.

The 2020 Mary Bennett Prize for Women’s History was announced at the AWHN Annual General Meeting on 21 October 2020.

2018

The Mary Bennett Prize for 2016-2017 was awarded to Samia Khatun for her article titled ‘The Book of Marriage: Histories of Muslim Women in Twentieth-Century Australia’ which is published in Gender & History, Volume 29, Issue 1 (April 2017), pp. 8–30.

This article represents a unique and important challenge to the theory and practice of both feminist and women’s history. The author, Khatun, draws on stories of Muslim women and marriage that have been told before, but she does so in an original way that allows new readings of Muslim texts and Muslim relations. Through presenting new histories of Muslim women and marriage in Australia, the article poses a critical intervention into Orientalist discourses central to the operation of imperial power across the Indian Ocean arena. By shifting the focus from ‘brideprice’ narratives to those centring on ‘mahar’ – the payment named on marriage contracts signed at Australian camel camps – Khatun offers an alternative way for feminist historians to (re)imagine gender relations between Muslim men and women. This paper is an impressive, sophisticated weaving of theory and historical case studies that makes an original contribution to historical knowledge. It is highly worthy of the Mary Bennett prize.

Alana Jayne Piper, ‘”Woman’s Special Enemy”: Female enmity in criminal discourse during the Long Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Social History, Volume 49, Issue 3 (2016), pp. 671-692 is highly commended by the judges.

This is a fascinating and highly significant paper that investigates the different tropes of women’s enmity and explores how women were constructed as malignant influences on other women. It is impressive in scope, both in terms of region and source material. Beautifully written and conceptually impressive, it is an original contribution which highlights the particular ways these gendered tropes were played out in Australia. The judges highly commend Piper on her article.

2018 Judging Panel
Dr Shino Konishi (University of Western Australia), Professor Emerita Marian Quartly (Monash University) and Dr Sharon Crozier-De Rosa (University of Wollongong, chair).

The 2018 Mary Bennett Prize for Women’s History was announced at the Australian Historical Association Conference in Canberra on 5 July 2018.

2016

Catherine Bishop, ‘When Your Money Is Not Your Own: Coverture and Married Women In Business in Colonial New South Wales‘ Law and History Review, Volume 33, Issue 1 (2015), pp. 181-200.

This study of the legal, social, political and economic aspects of coverture in nineteenth-century NSW makes an original and valuable contribution to feminist history. Through a careful study of legal cases, the author charts the contested and complex nature of coverture in a society marked by its convict history. Women emerge as active participants in the colonial economy, simultaneously challenging male legal privileges, establishing their capacity for independence and demonstrating its necessity in the colonial context. Women’s actions are the harbingers of legal changes rather than mere responses to them. The author deftly weaves detailed and complex historical evidence with interesting and lively accounts of individual women making, and also manipulating, their own histories. A particular strength of this article lies in the author’s ability to lightly lead the reader through intricate and at times, contradictory, detail.

Alana Piper’s article titled ‘”A menace and an evil” Fortune-telling in Australia, 1900–1918‘ in History Australia, Volume 11, Issue 3 (2014), pp. 53-73 was highly commended by the judges.

2014

Karen Hughes, ‘Micro-Histories and Things that Matter: Opening Spaces of Possibility in Ngarrindjeri Country‘, Australian Feminist Studies, Volume 27, Issue 73 (September 2012).

This article draws on the testimonies of Indigenous and settler-descended women who grew up around Lake Alexandrina, South Australia, on the cusp of the twentieth century.  Individual narratives are framed by Federation in 1901 and the enactment of South Australia’s Aborigines Act of 1911. By placing the testimonies of Indigenous and settler-descended women in dialogue with one another, and with her own memories, she is able to construct a complex and nuanced narrative of the colonisation of Australia as it was experienced in one local area and as it is recalled in the present. This reflective and beautifully-written essay draws on the insights offered by critical race and whiteness studies and feminist theory to make an important contribution to Australian history, settler colonial history and feminist history.

2012

Penelope Edmonds, ‘The Intimate, Urbanising Frontier: Native Camps and Settler Colonialism’s Violent Array of Spaces Around Early Melbourne’, in Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity, eds Tracey Banivanua Mar and Penelope Edmonds (Palgrave: 2010).

A beautifully written, nuanced and sophisticated paper that seamlessly draws together racial and gendered histories of early Melbourne. It effectively argues that gendered violence was a key aspect of the settler colonial process, and indeed that it operated right from the very core of colonial aggression. Taking the urbanising frontier of Melbourne as its case study, Edmonds argues that the colonial city was an important site of Indigenous dispossession. While the focus is one colonial city, the article’s findings nonetheless have a broader application, and by bringing into question the dichotomy of the city/frontier, Edmonds makes an important contribution to broader postcolonial studies. Edmonds’ places women’s experiences and writings at the centre of the colonisation process, while at the same time, the paper explores wider issues of space, race and empire. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, carefully woven with a close reading of histories and theories of settler colonialism, this paper is a distinct contribution to historical knowledge, and highly worthy of the Mary Bennett prize.

2010 – Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, ‘Marie Corelli’s British new woman: A threat to empire?’ The History of the Family, Volume 14, Issue 4 (2009), pp. 416-429.

2008 – Rebecca Jennings, ‘The gateways and the emergence of a post-Second World War lesbian subculture,’ Social History Volume 31, Issue 2 (2006), pp. 206-225.

2006 – Lisa Featherstone, ‘Sexy mamas? The public and private sexualities of Australian women in the 1940s,’ Australian Historical Studies, Volume 36, Issue 126 (2005), pp. 234-252.

2004 – not awarded

2002 – Victoria Haskins, ‘On the Doorstep: Aboriginal Domestic Service as a “Contact Zone”,’ Australian Feminist Studies, Volume 16, Issue 34 (2001), pp. 13-25

2000 – Jane Long, ‘The colour of disorder:  the lead industry, women’s employment and “protective” intervention in Victorian England,’ Women’s History Review, Volume 7, Issue 4 (1998), pp. 521-546.