Seven women in the Australian soccer uniform all cheering and hugging one another.

Join Fiona Crawford as she discusses her latest book The Matilda Effect with former Matildas soccer star Grace Gill.

Entry is free to this event but bookings are essential.

The talk will be available to view live online via the Library's Facebook and YouTube pages. You do not need to book a ticket to watch the event online.

This event is presented in association with the Grit & Gold: Tales from a Sporting Nation exhibition.

About The Matilda Effect

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The book cover for 'The Matilda Effect' by Fiona Crawford. The image on the cover shows 7 women in Australian team soccer uniforms jumping, cheering and hugging one another.

The Matilda Effect is the exciting, inspiring, sometimes infuriating and always colourful story of the Australian women's football (soccer) team, the Matildas, and their ultimately successful struggle, alongside other women from around the world, to compete in World Cup football. From the 1980s, when women had to pay to participate in the pilot Women's World Cup, to 2019, when the principle of equal pay for women players was finally accepted amid surging interest in their game, the voices of key figures emerge. A book at once about and not about sport, and with a throughline of human rights and gender equality history, The Matilda Effect takes the reader out of the stands and onto the pitch, into the team's hotels, buses, boardrooms and social media universe, where positive change has been wrestled into being.

About Fiona Crawford

Fiona Crawford is a writer, editor and researcher whose work spans social and environmental issues, the arts and football and has appeared in The Sydney Morning HeraldThe Big Issue and The Conversation among others. She is an adjunct lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Justice and co-authored a book, Never Say Die: The Hundred-Year Overnight Success of Australian Women's Football.

About Grace Gill

Grace Gill is an accomplished Australian soccer player and commentator. She has played for Canberra United in the Australian W-League, for Slovácko in the Czech Women's First League, and has represented Australia as part of the Matildas national team. Gill is currently a football commentator and analyst at Network 10, and will be part of Channel 7's FIFA Women's World Cup 2023 commentary team.

Buy The Matilda Effect book

Type Book event