Life sentences - The ADB and Women living in the Colonial Period

The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) project was begun in the 1950s and now there is general agreement that its earliest volumes need to be revised. Not only has more information about many of the subjects become available, there is also a glaring gender imbalance in those volumes women account for only 1.8 per cent of entries in volumes 1 and 2. If you take the whole colonial period, women fare slightly better, with four per cent of entries. To improve the gender balance we have decided to add 1,500 new entries to the dictionary of women who flourished during the colonial period. As a first step, we are compiling a list of possible candidates for inclusion.