STORY - "Sherril Whittington: Herstory."
By Tracey Edstein.

Career advice these days often emphasises the importance of forward planning: “To fail to plan is to plan to fail!" Judged accordingly, Sherrill Whittington failed miserably, yet her career has taken her from St Joseph’s College Lochinvar, via Newcastle classrooms and lecture theatres in Armidale and Canberra, to New York, London, Vancouver, Beijing, East Timor, Senegal, Beirut and many other international destinations.

While it is many years since she stood in a classroom, Sherrill’s first love of teaching has been played out in many different scenarios, with far-reaching impacts and lessons learned as well as taught. Significant in her curriculum vitae has been a variety of United Nations organisations working with and for women whose lives have been affected by conflict, especially in East Timor. There is a thread here that reaches back to the Sisters of St Joseph, who educated her at Charlestown and Lochinvar and who “were the first educated women I knew”. She briefly entertained the notion of entering the convent, but then returned to pursue her degree at the University of Newcastle. However, the gospel values of justice, equity and liberation, imbibed through high school mentors such as Patricia Boland, Carmel Moore, Evelyn Woodward and others, have flourished and been translated into practical action where it has been sorely needed.

Teaching at St Anne’s High School Adamstown – “a bold experiment” – in the 1970s and ‘80s was rewarding and satisfying, and looking back, Sherrill considers St Anne’s “one of the best education systems I’ve seen.” Sherrill’s effectiveness in the classroom led to further studies in history, a subject for which she maintains an abiding passion. When one of her students gained first place in Modern History in NSW, a University of New England professor urged her to embark on a Masters degree in that discipline, rather than educational administration. This was but one of many twists which propelled Sherrill in new, fortuitous directions.

A period of transition in Catholic secondary schools in Newcastle coincided with Sherrill’s beginning to think about other possibilities. She moved to Canberra and completed a Masters in International Relations, working in the Defence Department and the Parliamentary Library. An intense interest in defence policies and capabilities in South East Asia and the Pacific developed, and many papers were written!

Working in international affairs for the Commonwealth Secretariate in London gave way to an opportunity to work with a former Canberra colleague, the first president of the Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver. “I believe that Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Probably only Sydney compares…”

After three years, Sherrill attended a meeting in New York where a galaxy of prominent women working on international issues had gathered. One was Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. Another was Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania, who became Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. ‘Networking’, a very female approach, led to Sherrill’s being invited by Gertrude to work with her.

While leaving Vancouver was a wrench, the opportunity to be involved in an international women’s event was not to be refused, and so Sherrill moved to New York in 1993 and established a global programme to bring young people into the process. “Gertrude said, ‘You’ve been a teacher, you can do this.’ I had to stop being daunted! It was fascinating, working with young people from 15 to 25, mainly from youth organisations, from Indonesia, Jordan, Senegal, Argentina…”

This was the beginning of a long association with the UN, mainly working on special projects in a variety of ‘hot spots’ around the globe. While she has no quixotic notions about the efficacy of the UN, Sherrill feels strongly that, “It’s the best we have. What other organisation could give every nation, large and small, an equal voice?”

Early in 2000, Sherrill arrived in Dili “to see the most incredible destruction… It was not simply the destruction of buildings. The destruction of the people was so visible. The UN Transitional Authority for East Timor (UNTAET) faced one of the biggest challenges of any peacekeeping operation – to set up a government from the very beginning.” The project Sherrill co-ordinated is now the Office for the Promotion of Equality in the Prime Minister’s Department, run by East Timorese women, “working on issues such as violence against women, women’s economic rights, education. That was probably one of the most worthwhile things I’ve done, leaving something like that behind.”

“Timor brought together everything that I’d been working on over the previous 20 years. I drew on the lot – my government experience, teaching… Timor really taught me to listen, because I didn’t have the answers. I was privileged to work with a wonderful man, Sergio Vieira de Mello, Secretary General, Special Representative in East Timor.” Sherrill was intending to work again with him as High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, but he was killed in Baghdad in August 2003. This was a cruel blow, especially
as Sherrill’s mother had died earlier that year.

After East Timor, there were projects in the Solomon Islands, Senegal and Beirut, the latter involving a workshop for Iraqi women preparing for approaching elections. The cause of women’s rights is a thread woven through Sherrill’s professional life, but it is not a concern that confines itself to business hours.

Where to from here? Sherrill says “It’s all a question mark right now.” Possibilities include tertiary teaching, writing, pursuing a doctorate, setting up a leadership centre for women who have been through conflict to share their experiences… She is acutely aware of the importance of ensuring, in the direst of circumstances, that women’s needs are addressed: “If women miss out, they miss out long term. There’s a window of opportunity just after conflict that must be grabbed, and you must know what mechanisms, what processes to put in place. Women’s priorities are different. Sergio said unequivocally, ‘If women had been running East Timor, we wouldn’t be here!’”

For two decades, Sherrill has been learning, implementing and teaching those processes and mechanisms. The journey has been unplanned, often serendipitous, always engaging and it is far from over! Aurora looks forward to the next chapter…

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