April 15th, 2024Pubs and women’s work in Australia’s history: guest talk in the ‘Rat

Professor Diane Kirkby is presenting a guest talk on the socio-political history of women running pubs in Australia at Ballarat’s Eureka Centre on Thursday May 2.

The featured discussion is scheduled to start at 5.30pm as part of the centre’s ongoing Talking History program and is free to attend.

There has always been a deep connection between pubs and Australian communities. Usually the first, and sometimes the only building in a country town, and on every street corner in cities, pubs were run largely by women.

Pubs provided communities with so much more than drinks and accommodation, being vital gathering places, hosting everything from weddings to wakes. Deeply entrenched in Australian cultural life, the pub is largely perceived as a masculine space.

But pubs were often owned by women, and the bulk of the labour was traditionally done by women, in dining rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and bars. Dianne will explore why and how pubs were a vital source of waged work for women, and the pub’s fascinating history of cultural and social change.

Professor Diane Kirkby is a respected historian of women, work and the labour movement. She has authored several books including the highly-acclaimed ‘Barmaids: A History of Women’s Work in Pubs’.

Professor Kirkby’s work has won the Australian Historical Association’s WK Hancock Prize, and most recently awarded the 2023 Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society Prize. She is a Professor of Law and Humanities at University of Technology Sydney. Diane is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the American Society for Legal History.