First In Their Field

The image of early women anthropologists in Australia has been one of Daisy Bates seated in the middle of nowhere, recording the habits and customs of ‘a dying race’. A harmless eccentric, or a serious pioneer of field anthropology?

When anthropology began as a serious academic discipline in Sydney in the 1920s, its lecturers and theoreticians were male. Yet much of the fieldwork and research was carried out by women whose contribution remains marginalised or omitted from the history of anthropology.

In First in their Field seven distinguished women writers look at the way those remarkable women worked, their difficulties and their hopes. This volume, documenting their courage and determination, is long overdue.