Daisy Bates: Dubious Leadership
Ann Standish
Abstract
This chapter uses the example of Daisy Bates to investigate some of the complexities of women’s leadership and the particular problems that arise when looking at the leadership achievements of white women in settler colonial societies. Daisy Bates has been both lauded and reviled for her contributions to early Australian ethnology and attempts to provide welfare to the Indigenous peoples of Western and South Australia. This chapter explores what strategies were involved for a white woman in the first half of the twentieth century to not just ‘seize the initiative’ but to actively seek out a position of authority. It looks, too, at whether these strategies could be successful and the implications of women’s leadership when it leads in dubious directions.
Keywords
Daisy Bates, Australian Aborigines, settler colonialism, feminist history
Full Text: PDF