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Women of the Great Barrier Reef: Stories of gender and conservation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2022

Kerrie Foxwell-Norton ,
Deb Anderson  and
Anne M. Leitch
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Abstract

In the late 1970s, Carden Wallace was at the beginning of her lifelong exploration of the Great Barrier Reef — and indeed, reefs all over the world. For Wallace, who is now Emeritus Principal Scientist at Queensland Museum, the beginning of her Reef career coincided with the emergence of both feminist and environmental movements that meant her personal and professional lives would be entwined with a changing social, cultural and political milieu. In this article, we couple the story of Wallace’s personal life and her arrival in coral science to identify the Reef as a gendered space ripe to explore both feminist and conservation politics. The article is part of a broader Women of the Reef project that supports a history of women’s contribution to the care and conservation of the Reef since the 1960s. In amplifying the role of women in the story of the Reef, we find hope in the richness of detail offered by oral history to illuminate the ways discourse on the Reef and its women sits at the intersection of biography, culture, politics and place. In these stories, we recognise women’s participation and leadership as critical to past challenges, and to current and future climate change action. By retelling modern Reef history through the experiences and achievements of women, we can develop new understandings of the Reef that disrupt the existing dominance of patriarchal and Western systems of knowledge and power that have led us to the brink of ecological collapse.

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Articles
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Queensland Review , Volume 28 , Special Issue 2: Between pride and despair: Stories of Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics rainforests , December 2021 , pp. 150 - 165
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022

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References

Notes

1 Annie Dillard, ‘Seeing’, The abundance (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2016), p. 157.

2 Irus Braverman, Coral whisperers: Scientists on the brink (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018), p. 6.

3 Expedition cruise company Aurora Expeditions in March 2021 dedicated a ship to five of the world’s leading women conservationists. ‘Coral conservation champion’ Wallace was honoured with deck 6. In: Holly Payne, ‘Aurora Expeditions’ Sylvia Earle lauds female conservationists,’ Seatrade Cruise News, 22 April 2021, https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/shipbuilding-refurb-equipment/aurora-expeditions-sylvia-earle-lauds-female-conservationists.

4 Robert Endean, ‘Population explosions of Acanthaster planci and associated destruction of hermatypic corals in the Indo-West Pacific region’, in O. Jones and R. Endean (eds), Biology and geology of coral reefs, vol. 11, Biology I. (New York: Academic Press, 1973), pp. 389–438.

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6 Terry Hughes, James Kerry, Andrew Baird, et al., ‘Global warming impairs stock-recruitment dynamics of corals’, Nature 568 (2019), 387–90.

7 Terry Hughes and Morgan Pratchett, ‘We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy’, The Conversation, 7 April 2020, https://theconversation.com/we-just-spent-two-weeks-surveying-the-great-barrier-reef-what-we-saw-was-an-utter-tragedy-135197.

8 Michael Slezak, ‘Climate emergency declared by 11,000 scientists worldwide who warn of “catastrophic threat” to humanity’, ABC News, 6 November 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-06/climate-change-emergency-11000-scientists-sign-petition/11672776.

9 Braverman, Coral whisperers, p. 248.

10 Anne Summers, Damned whores and God’s police (Ringwood: Penguin, 1994).

11 This article presents oral histories gathered as part of a collaborative research project funded by a State Library of Queensland John Oxley Library Fellowship 2020, titled ‘The Women of the Great Barrier Reef: Discovering the Untold Stories of Environmental Conservation in Queensland’.

12 Val Plumwood, Feminism and the mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 196.

13 See, for example, Sherilyn MacGregor (ed.), Routledge handbook of gender and environment (London: Earthscan, 2017); Lara Stevens, Peta Tait and Denise Varney (eds), ‘Feminist ecologies: Changing environments in the Anthropocene’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

14 Stevens, Tait and Varney, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–22.

15 Carolyn Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the environment (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 186.

16 Emma Shortis, ‘“In the interest of all mankind”: Women and the environmental protection of Antarctica,’ in Stevens, Tait and Varney (eds), Feminist ecologies, pp. 247–61.

17 Shortis, ‘“In the interest of all mankind”’, p. 247.

18 Stevens, Tait and Varney (2018), ‘Introduction’, p. 8.

19 Trisha Fielding, ‘Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef 1928-1929 – Part 1,’ James Cook University Library News, 14 August 2018. Available at: https://jculibrarynews.blogspot.com/2018/08/expedition-to-great-barrier-reef-1928.html.

20 Zoe Richards, Maria Beger, Silvia Pinca and Carden Wallace, ‘Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing’, Marine Pollution Bulletin 56 (2008), 503–15.

21 Maria Beger, Russ Babcock, David Booth, … John Pandolfi, ‘Research challenges to improve the management and conservation of subtropical reefs to tackle climate change threats’, Ecological Management and Restoration 12 (2011), e7–e10.

22 See https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/poetics-of-place.

23 Philip Drew, ‘The coast dwellers: Australians living on the edge’ (Ringwood: Penguin, 1994); David Booth, ‘Australian beach cultures: The history of sun, sand and surf’ (New York: Routledge, 2001); Leone Huntsman, ‘Sand in our souls: The beach in Australian history’ (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2001); Jeremy Goldberg, Nadine Marshall, Alistair Birtles, … Bernard Visperas. ‘Climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and the response of Australians’, Palgrave Communications 2 (2016), 15046.

24 Deloitte Access Economics, At what price? The economic, social and icon value of the Great Barrier Reef (2017), https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/Economics/deloitte-au-economics-great-barrier-reef-230617.pdf.

25 Rosemary Auchmuty and Erika Rackley, ‘Feminist legal biography: A model for all legal life stories’, The Journal of Legal History 41 (2020), 186–211.

26 Rob Perks and Alistair Thomson, ‘Introduction to Second Edition’, in Joan Sangster (ed.), The oral history reader (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. ix–xiv.

27 Sangster, The oral history reader, pp. 87–100.

28 Joanne Scott and Ross Laurie, ‘Queensland in miniature: The Brisbane Exhibition’, Queensland Historical Atlas, https://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/queensland-miniature-brisbane-exhibition.

29 Unless otherwise stated, quotes by Wallace presented in this paper are from Carden Wallace (2020), interview by Kerrie Foxwell-Norton and Anne Leitch, transcript, ‘Women of the Great Barrier Reef: Oral History Collection 2020–21’, Griffith University.

30 Diane Jarvis, Rosemary Hill, Rachel Buissereth, … Wren, L. 2019, Monitoring the Indigenous heritage within the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program: Final Report of the Indigenous Heritage Expert Group. Townsville: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

31 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘Talkin’ up to the white women’: Indigenous women and feminism (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2000).

32 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian social trends: 50 years of labour force statistics, now and then, Canberra: ABS, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features30Dec+2011.

33 The school was in operation from 1957 to 1974. Brisbane City Council, ‘Local Heritage Places: St Ita’s School and Presbytery’, Brisbane City (2020), https://heritage.brisbane.qld.gov.au/heritage-places/2265.

34 Elaine Martin, ‘Social work, the family and women’s equality in post-war Australia’, Women’s History Review 12 (2003), 445–68.

35 Martin, ‘Social work, the family and women’s equality in post-war Australia’, 448.

36 For an international overview, see Mary Wyer, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Hatice Ozturk and Marta Wayne (eds), Women, science and technology: A reader in feminist science studies (New York: Routledge, 2014).

37 Australian Academy of Science, Women in STEM decadal plan (Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 2019).

38 Science in Australian Gender Equity, Gender Equity in STEMM (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage), https://www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/gender-equity-in-stem.

39 Australian Academy of Science (2018), Putting gender on your agenda: Evaluating the Introduction of Athena SWAN into Australia (Canberra: Australian Academy of Science, 2018), https://www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SAGE_Report_44pp_SCREEN.pdf.

40 Australian Academy of Science, Putting gender on your agenda.

41 Lynn Abrams, ‘Heroes of their own life stories: Narrating the female self in the feminist age’, Cultural and Social History, 16 (2019), 205–24.

42 Research shows that women leaders are predominantly viewed as either competent or likeable, but rarely both. See Catalyst, ‘The double-bind dilemma for women in leadership’, Catalyst Research, https://www.catalyst.org/research/infographic-the-double-bind-dilemma-for-women-in-leadership.

43 Iain McCalman (2017), ‘Linking the local and the global: What today’s environmental humanities movement can learn from their predecessor’s successful leadership of the 1965–75 war to save the Great Barrier Reef’, Humanities 6 (2017), 77.

44 Kerrie Foxwell-Norton and Libby Lester (2017), ‘Saving the Great Barrier Reef from disaster: Media then and now’, Media, Culture & Society 39 (2017), 568–81.

45 McCalman, ‘Linking the local and the global’, 77.

46 Maureen Baker, ‘Gendered families, academic work and the “motherhood penalty”’, Women’s Studies Journal 26 (2012), 11–24.

47 John E. N. Veron, A life underwater (Ringwood: Penguin, 2017), p. 169.

48 John E. N. Veron, Carden Wallace and Australian Institute of Marine Science, Scleractinia of eastern Australia. Part V (Canberra: Australian Institute of Marine Science and Australian National University Press, 1984).

49 Carden Wallace, Staghorn corals of the world: A revision of the genus Acropora (Australia: CSIRO Publishing, 1999).

50 Plumwood, Feminism and the mastery of nature.

51 Iain McCalman, The Reef: A passionate history from Cook to climate change (New York: Scientific American 2013); Celmara Pocock, Visitor encounters with the Great Barrier Reef: Aesthetics, heritage and the senses (New York: Routledge, 2020); Ann Elias, Coral empire: Underwater oceans, colonial tropics, visual modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019); Braverman, Coral whisperers: Scientists on the brink; James Bowen and Margarita Bowen, The Great Barrier Reef: History, science, heritage (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

52 Foxwell-Norton and Lester, ‘Saving the Great Barrier Reef from disaster, media then and now’, 568–81; Kerrie Foxwell-Norton and Claire Konkes, ‘The Great Barrier Reef: News media, policy and the politics of protection’, International Communication Gazette 81 (2019), 211–34; Ally Lankester, Erin Bohensky and Maxine Newlands, ‘Media representations of risk: The reporting of dredge spoil disposal in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park at Abbot Point’, Marine Policy 60 (2015), 149–61; Libby Lester, Global trade and mediatised environmental protest: The view from here (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019); Claire Konkes and Kerrie Foxwell-Norton, ‘Science communication and mediatised environmental conflict: A cautionary tale’, Public Understanding of Science 30 (2021), 470–83; Lynne Eagle, Rachel Hay and David R. Low, ‘Competing and conflicting messages via online news media: Potential impacts of claims that the Great Barrier Reef is dying’, Ocean and Coastal Management 158 (2018), 154–63.

53 See Nadine Marshall, William Neil Adger, Claudia Benham, … Lauric Thiault (2019), ‘Reef grief: Investigating the relationship between place meanings and place change on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia’, Sustainability Science 14 (2019), 579–87.