On a quiet street downtown, history is often hidden in plain sight, in buildings named after men and in plaques that tell only half the story. But for several years now, Australian tour guide and history buff Sita Sargent has been slowly and steadily asking people to stop, look around and ask a simple question: Where are the women?
That question is sitting in the heart she shapes historyWalking-tour company Sargent was founded to highlight the women who shaped Australia’s cities – and whose stories have long been ignored or sidelined. What started as a local project during the pandemic has now become a national movement. Now, with my first book, She Shapes History: Guided walks and stories about great Australian womenSargent’s mission has extended beyond the streets to print.
Like Tours himself, this book refuses to treat history as distant or dull. Part travel guide, part feminist compendium, and part provocation, it asks readers not only to learn differently, but to notice differently.
“I never really planned on writing a book,” says Sargent. When a publisher’s email arrived in the company’s general inbox, it assumed it was spam. “It seemed too good to be true. I really thought someone was trying to scam me.” He ignored it for several days before curiosity got the better of him. A quick Google search revealed that the Hardie Grant Explore was very real. “I wrote back immediately and said I’d love to meet.”
Over Zoom, the pitch was ambitious: take what she was doing in Canberra and turn it into a national travel guide, a series of walking tours through towns and cities across Australia. “Without thinking what it meant, or how much work it would involve, I said yes,” she admits.
Yes, a series of decisions began that would reshape his life. By October 2023, Sargent quit her museum job, spent all her advance money on a Subaru Forester and a rooftop tent, and hit the road. For six months, she traveled across the country, sleeping in her car and immersing herself in local archives, libraries and conversations, tracking down women whose contributions had slipped through the cracks of history.
Those months were transformative. “They completely changed the way I looked at Australia,” she says. “They reinforced what I had already begun to realize through the tours: recognizing the contribution of women to this country is a big issue, but it’s also a solvable issue.”
The result is a book that feels deliberately different from a traditional history text. Designed in a playful, scrapbook-style format, she shapes history There are over 500 stories across 31 towns and cities from Melbourne and Hobart to Coober Pedy and Kalgoorlie. There are 18 self-guided walking tours with maps, but readers can also dip in at random, discovering short vignettes and breakout anecdotes that shed light on lives often left on the margins.
The women on these pages are diverse: disability activists who helped establish Meals on Wheels, flamboyant underworld queens of King’s Cross, political trailblazers, artists, spies, sex workers and suburban organizers. They’re radical and flawed, funny and brave. “I really wanted to show women as complex,” says Sargent. “Not as saints or symbols, but as people who made choices, took risks, and shaped the world around them.”
She Shapes History originated in 2021, when Sargent returned to her hometown of Canberra during the pandemic. After spending several years in Brisbane, she found herself looking at the capital with new eyes – and sensing a palpable absence. “I kept asking a very simple question,” she recalls. “Where are the women? Where are women in the story of Australia? In the story of Canberra?”
What he saw instead were familiar archetypes: bushranger, outlaw, soldier, politician. She says, “Women were often relegated to minor characters, as wives, daughters, secretaries, typists, if they were included at all.” “Countless stories have been lost, unrecorded, undervalued and untold. It felt as if, as a society, we had forgotten that there were women behind many of the moments that shaped Australia.”
The stories existed, she knew that much from her research background, but they weren’t being shared in accessible or engaging ways. “Most Australians didn’t even realize they were there,” she says. Social media came to her mind as a solution, but she kept coming back to the idea of walking. He felt that walking tours were uniquely democratic. They believe that there is no prior knowledge. They meet people where they are.
“Hiking tours don’t just talk to people,” explains Sargent. “You can customize stories in real time and respond to conversations happening within the group. This makes history feel immediate and personal.” Standing in the place where something happened reduces the distance between past and present. “When you’re physically there, it’s easy to see that these stories are part of the places we pass every day.”
By being in place, even silence becomes clear. Missing plaques, nameless buildings and forgotten stories. “It gives you a chance to uncover something that’s been overlooked or erased,” she says. “And it makes people think, ‘I could have been part of that story.’ It’s incredibly powerful.”
that power has increased by that much she shapes history has expanded. What started as a local Canberra project now includes private bookings, partnerships with major museums and cultural institutions, podcasts, storytelling content and special one-off events, including recent collaborations with TEDx Canberra and the National Portrait Gallery. More than a tour company, it has become a cultural platform, using tourism as a tool for social change.
At its core, she shapes history is a social enterprise dedicated to closing the gender esteem gap. The idea is simple but far-reaching: whose stories we tell shape whose lives we value.
Sargent believes Australian history is often dismissed as boring or unrelated because it has been reduced to a handful of male narratives. “The dominant narrative tells us that only men have shaped our nation,” she says. “This means that too many women, particularly women of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and women from the disability community, may not see themselves reflected in our shared past.”
The reality is much richer. Australia was home to the first woman of color to vote, a suburban housewife who became one of the country’s most effective Cold War spies, and the woman who designed the nation’s capital. “When those stories disappear, it creates an alienation,” she says. “The history that people are taught doesn’t match their sense of national identity.”
On International Women’s Day, conversations about representation often focus on the boardroom, parliament and the pay gap. Sargent doesn’t disagree, but he believes the roots of change lie closer to home. “When half the population is literally wiped off the map, the message it sends is that their contributions don’t matter,” she says. “That invisibility determines how we value women today. It reinforces a culture that undervalues women’s work, leadership, and agency, and even contributes to the conditions that allow violence against women to persist.”
Telling local, everyday stories becomes an act of resistance. “Recognizing the women around us makes a big difference in the way we view and value women everywhere,” she says. “I really believe that something as simple as going for a walk can create more respect for women today.”
Ambition doesn’t stop at Australia’s borders. In an important new step, she shapes history Tours have now started in New York – proof that the model travels, and that the appetite for female-centred public history is global. “It’s inspired us to think much bigger,” says Sargent, “about scale, about impact, about what this could look like in cities around the world.”
That worldview is reflected in the book itself, which allows the stories to travel far beyond the physical boundaries of the walkway. “It gives these women access to travel,” she says. “It reaches people who might never come on a tour, and it invites readers to engage with history on their own terms.”
Sargent is particularly open and ambitious for what’s next. his goal is to see she shapes history In every major city around the world. And yes, India is firmly on that list. “There are so many stories out there, so much history of women that is worth seeing and celebrating,” she says. “I would love to walk those streets and ask the same questions.” Where are the women?
Teja Lele is a freelance editor and writes on books, travel and lifestyle.
