Presented by Nikki Henningham
In 2006, the Australian Women’s Archives Project (AWAP) was funded by the Commonwealth Office for Women to document the contribution that Australian women have made to Australian sporting life and culture, using web-based technology to communicate the results. `She’s Game: Women Making Australian Sporting History’
(http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/sg/sport-home.html) links stories about the achievement of women as athletes, journalists, volunteers, spectators, coaches and administrators with information about relevant archival resources and publications. The initial purpose of the project was to provide a resource that would support research to fill `gaps in the record’ of Australian women’s historical experience. We searched for the records of elite and community sportswomen for inclusion in the resource. Needless to say, some material useful for `plugging holes’ was found along the way. This paper will present some of this material, focusing on two case studies that demonstrate how Australian women have used organised sport as a tool for personal growth and liberation; one examining women’s involvement in sport in the interwar years, the other a study of their involvement in the 1960s and 1970s.