Judy Mackinolty
During Women’s Business Week 1999 in Sydney in March, six successful women debated the topic, ‘Can women have it all? Superwoman - myth or reality’. At another function three award-winning female entrepreneurs shared the secrets of their business success.
Received too late for inclusion in the last issue of Wisenet Journal was a call for nominations for Outstanding Women of the Year in Non-Traditional Areas of Work and Study. The five categories to be contested are Women employed for over five years; Women employed for fewer than five years; Women studying for a higher education degree; Women studying in Vocational Education and Training (including TAFE); and Women enrolled in a new apprenticeship. Keep this in mind for March next year and contact the National Centre for Women - Phone 03 9214 8633; Fax 03 9214 8643; Email: sdickinson@swin.edu.au
Clare Nairn, Chair, Partnerships Taskforce, Office of the Status of Women has issued the first newsletter, Partnerships against Domestic Violence. It outlines the scope of this three-year collaborative venture between Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments and provides details of the projects being undertaken at national and state level. Information can be found at: http://www.dpmc@gov.au/osw/Homewarw.htm
Latest edition of the newsletter of Network Exchange of Women’s Services, an organisation funded by the Commonwealth Office of the Status of Women, includes an article on ‘sex slavery’, a note on new guidelines for job advertisements, a list of forthcoming events of interest to women, and a list of some useful websites. The NEWS website is at: http://www.tnews.net.au
Contact can also be made to: NEWS, PO Box 2057, Barker Post Office, Hawthorn, Vic 3122; Phone: 0417 3224 662; Fax: 03 9852 799; Email: tnews@tnews.net.au
Postgraduate PhD student Caroline Denigan is engaged in research on women’s experiences in building their own houses. She is keen to hear from women who want to build a house for themselves, women who are currently building a house either alone or with other women and women who have built their own house, anytime back to the 1970s. You can contact her at Women’s Selfbuild Housing Research Project, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Adelaide, SA 5005 or by Email: denigan@arch.adelaide.edu.au
As part of her thesis program, Caroline enrolled in a 16 seek pre-apprenticeship course for construction workers. Her diary of this experience can be read through her web site: http://www.arch.adelaide.edu.au/-denigan/preapp/index.html (Source: Gender Matters, Summer 1999)
Women in New South Wales are reminded that the NSW government is developing a Register of Women which is jointly managed by the Premier’s Department and the Department for Women. If you are interested in being appointed to government boards and committees you should contact the Department for Women, Level 11, 100 William St, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011. Phone: (02) 9334 1160, Fax: (02) 9334 1023; Email: dfw@women.nsw.gov.au
The NSW Government reports that The Department of Sport & Recreation requires all organisations it funds to develop action plans to increase female membership on their boards. More than half of the Rural Lands Protection Boards now have at least one female director. Nearly a third of indigenous Australians elected to local government councils are women. In the February 1998 intake into the NSW Police Force 43 per cent were women (up from 35 per cent in 1995). In judicial appointments women comprise half of the new magistrates, 11 of the 46 new judges, and four of the six new appointees to the Law Foundation. Women in the Senior Executive Service have increased from 15 to 21 per cent and there are nineteen chief executives compared to eight in 1995. (Source: NSW Department of Women.)
At the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, two of the three Excellence in Teaching awards for 1998 were won by women lecturers in the Faculty of Science and Technology. They were Dr Pauline Ross, lecturer in Biology and Deirdre Tronson, lecturer in Chemistry who were commended for their innovative teaching approaches. It is interesting to note that though the honours and congratulations flowed freely in the academic community, the student body was not informed.
Associate Professor Acram Taji from the School of Rural Science and Natural Resources at UNE received the 1998 Australian Society of Plant Physiologist’s Award at the society’s annual conference in Adelaide last October. The Society has about 1000 members and the annual award is in recognition of a member’s contribution to and promotion of teaching, learning and research in Plant Physiology. Born in Iran but educated at Sydney and Flinders Universities, Acram has formerly been the recipient of Teaching Excellence awards and was awarded a senior research fellowship to Japan through the Australian Academy of Science. Clearly she has set an example worth following as her daughter also intends following a career in science.
Margaret Wertheim, expatriate science writer and philosopher gave a public lecture at the University of Sydney early in March, "Space: The Final Frontier of Science and the Spirit". She also launched her most recent book, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, which provides ‘a cultural history of space from Dante to the Internet’. Ms Wertheim completed a BA in Maths & Computing at Sydney University in 1983 and a BSc in Physics. She now lives in America and has recently been appointed a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (Source: University of Sydney News, 25 February 1999.)
Ms Jane Medhurst from the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Production Forestry in Hobart won a grant from the Maxwell Ralph Jacobs fund to travel to a conference on canopy dynamics and forest management in Estonia, Finland and Sweden in August where she will present a paper on the thinning response in Eucalyptus nitens. (Source: Australian Academy of Science Newsletter, Number 43, January-April 1999.)
Dr Joan Freeman-Jelley who died in April last year was honoured posthumously with the award of AO in the Australia Day Honours List in 1999. She was only the fourth woman to graduate in Physics from Sydney University and was the first woman to be awarded the Rutherford Medal from the British Institue of Physics. (Source: University of Sydney News, 25 February 1999.)
To celebrate International Women’s Day, the March 6 issue of Good Weekend profiled a number of women inventors, many of whom are little known and most of whom received little money or recognition for their work. Test your knowledge or pose research problems for your students with some of these names - Virginia Apgar, Susan Beal, Jocelyn Bell, Katherine Burr Blodgett, Annie Jump Cannon, Rachel Carson, Gertrude Elion, Irmgard Flugge-Lotz, Rosalind Franklin, Grace Hopper, Stephanie Kwolek, Barbara McClintock, Lise Meitner, Ruby Payne Scott, Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, Nettie Stevens, Flossie Wong-Staal, Chien-Shiung Wu.
The same issue surveyed women, who comprise 50.2 per cent of the Australian population, but who: comprise only 21.4 % of members of the Federal Parliament, 7.6 % of all board members, 1.3 % of executive directors, 13 % of academics above senior lecturer, 41 % of solicitors but only 16 % of principals of law firms, 3 % of Fellows of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, 12 % of engineering undergraduates, 30 % of GPs and 5 % of general surgeons. Women also do 70 % of unpaid work, and work over 6 times longer than men on household chores. On the other hand women have longer life expectancy than men, have a higher year 12 retention rate at school, and are less likely to be in prison.
And [from the Editorial Team] the proportion of women Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science is approximately 3.4% (22 of 588).
Cathy Zoi was appointed by the NSW Government in 1996 as the first Executive Director of the Sustainable Energy Development Authority. Her previous work was as Deputy Director and Chief of Staff of the White House Office on Environmental Policy. She addressed a meeting of the Australian Institute of Company Directors on 31 March 1999 at a briefing session entitled "Doing Well by Doing Good - The Environment: An Opportunity Not a Cost".
Victoria Inglis who won the University Honours medal for her BSc (Arch) thesis in 1998 is continuing her work on sick building syndrome. Her study relates to a number of factors such as air quality, lighting, office layout and management, and various psycho-social factors which appear to bring about a range of symptoms experienced by many occupants of specific buildings. (Source: University of Sydney News, 4 March 1999.)
Eighty young people from across Australia are being sent on volunteer assignments to developing countries by the Federal Government. They include Carole Harris who graduated in Pharmacy and who is now enrolled in Sydney University’s Graduate Medical Program. In Vietnam she will work for five months developing a database on the side effects of drugs used to treat TB. Tanya Hilfstein, a postgraduate student in Occupational Therapy in the Faculty of Health Sciences will spend six months in an OT school in Fiji. Mary Milne a research assistant in the Faculty of Agriculture will be in Malaysia for five months to value rice and fruit tree germplasm collections in research stations. (Source: University of Sydney News, 4 March 1999.)
Professor Suzanne Cory, Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research was awarded a Companion in the General Division (AC) for her services to science and the community. She is a leader in the field of biomedical research and an advocate of improved science education. (Source: Australian Academy of Science Newsletter, Number 43, January-April 1999.)
A brochure from the Perth Mint recalls the appointment of the first female employees in 1932 as temporary typists. The Deputy Master wrote to London, "I admit being surprised at their usefulness". The response from London - "We are glad to know that the female staff employed at Perth is giving satisfaction. Of course their scope in a mint is rather limited and we should hesitate here to employ them on other than typing work". The brochure concludes, "Both women were employed as clerks in 1936 and other women, who had come from good family backgrounds, were also recruited". (my emphasis)
It appears that although Australian women use the Internet to a greater degree than women in the US, Europe and Japan, they are less well reprsented in the industry. At an IT conference in Brisbane last year, women only comprised 10% of delegates. At IBM only 30% of staff are women and at management level the gender imbalance is even more marked. As a pointer to future trends it is noted that a very small proportion of IT students at University are female. Why? Leoni Walsh, chair of the ACT branch of Women in Technology sees an image problem "of anti-social mathematical nerds hiding in dark rooms". (Source: Agenda, by Pru Goward in Business Review Weekly, 15 March 1999.)
Dr Tammy Utteridge, Senior Research Manager, IMVS, Gilles Plains, South Australia is one of the chief investigators on the NH & MRC grant to examine whether mobile phone exposure causes an increase in cancer incidence in Eu-pim 1 mice. She is project manager for the joint University of Adelaide and Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science study which received a grant of over $1million. Tammy joins Professor Barry Vernon-Roberts, Dr Tim Kuchel and Dr John Finnie in the work which builds on an earlier pilot project at IMVS from 1992-95. The exposure equipment has been installed and the first batch of mice is due to arrive from USA in April. The mice will be exposed for one hour a day, five days a week for two years, with four levels of exposure ranging from very light to very heavy use of a mobile phone. Tammy’s email address: tdu@camtech.net.au
The YWCA has produced a Guide to Mentoring which covers planning, publicity, training, matching of pairs, monitoring and evaluation. Contact YWCA National Office (02) 6230 5150.
The National Council for the Centenary of Federation is to fund the Federal Office of the Status of Women to produce a book Celebrating Australian Women. The book will cover women’s contribution to Australia’s economic development; social and cultural structures and identity; and political life and leadership, before and after federation. A steering committee of authors and an historian is to be set up to manage the project. Source: NEWS (Network Exchange of Women’s Services), April 5, 1999.
Gemma Figtree, a final year medical student at Sydney University is off to Oxford as winner of the Australia-at-large Rhodes Scholarship. She has already carried out research into heart disease and spent the final year of her honours degree at London’s National Heart and Lung Institute. Gemma is a former bassoon player in the SBS Youth Orchestra and represented Sydney University in hockey, skiing and athletics. Source: University of Sydney Gazette, April 1999.
National Reconciliation Week from May 27 to June 3 has as its 1999 theme - "It’s up to us". May 27 marks the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum and June 3 is the anniversary of the High Court’s judgement in the Mabo case in 1992. There are toll free numbers for Australians for Reconciliation Coordinators in all states and territories or you can Email the Council on car@dpmc.gov.au or check the Council’s homepage at http://www.austlii.edu.au/car/
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age recently reported the death of Victoria’s first woman chemical engineer, Bronwyn Adams, at the age of 49. She graduated from Monash University in 1971 and became the first female engineer employed by Altona Petrochemical Company. By 1982 she was the firm’s technical manager and three years later she became marketing manager. Later she became human resources manager and, in 1989, process manager, responsible for the entire operations of the process facilities. She was also appointed to the National Energy Research and Development Council. In 1991 she joined Melbourne University as executive manager in the School of Chemistry and in 1993 general manager in the Education Faculty. In 1996 she became an independent consultant working with chemical and automotive groups, health, human services and arts organisations, law and education. (Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April 1999.)
Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, co-discoverer of pulsars, presented the 1999 Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics lecture, ‘Cosmic explosions and the creation of the elements’ on 28 April at Sydney University. The winner of numerous awards, she spent eight years at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh and since 1991 has been Professor of Physics at the Open University in the United Kingdom, becoming only the second female physics professor in the UK. (Source: Sydney University News, 15 April 1999.)
Physiotherapist Gillian Ting won the triple jump gold in the NSW Open State Athletics Championships in March with a leap of 12.3 metres.
In order to further the aims of International Women’s Day 1999, Susan Halliday, Sex Disrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner has compiled a set of case studies entitled ‘Harsh Realities’. These reveal the appalling circumstances which have led working women to make complaints under the federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984. The 28 cases cover pregnancy, sexual harassment, victimisation and sex discrimination.
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) is offering Research grants for 'Short Term Visits' (1 - 6 months) for Ph.D. candidates and recent Ph.D's for their dissertation or post-doctoral research (age limit 32). The DAAD also offers 'Study Visits' for research projects in Germany for 1 - 3 months. At least 2 years post doctoral teaching experience at a university or research is necessary to be eligible.
For further information please contact the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Tel. (02) 62701911.
…is the title of a recent column by Ross Gittens in the Sydney Morning Herald. He, the newspaper's Economics editor, discusses how Australia's "miraculous" economy (his words) has seen the unemployment rate fall from 8% to 7.4% in 6 months. He then relates this, among other factors, to changing figures for women's participation in employment. This rose from 43.3% employed in the late 70s to 54% in 1995 then levelled - it was 53.6% in th last 6 months. Comparable figures are UK and Canada 68%, USA nearly 71%, France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway over 74%. Ross Gittens quotes a theory that women's participation has been affected by heavy federal government cutbacks in funding for childcare, and planned higher tax rebates for stay-at-home mums. Ross Gittens concludes by saying "...it's a waste of scarce resources to educate girls as highly as boys, but then make it difficult for women to exploit their education in the paid workforce. ...It's not economically rational".
On Tuesday, 30 March 1999, six Australian "Heroes of Science" received the Clunies Ross National Science and Technology Award at the Annual Award Dinner in Melbourne. The Hon Peter Beattie, Premier of Queensland, presented their awards. The six Australians honoured with the 1999 Clunies Ross Award are:
Full citations, photos and background information are available on-line at http://www.cluniesross.org.au/media99.htm
were described as The Australian Science Logies, at the ceremony on May 4 when the winners were announced and rewarded. This sparkling event at the Australian Museum in National Science Week was attended by finalists for the eleven prizes, sponsors who had contributed $100,000 in total towards the prizes, members of the judging panels, presenters of the prizes including Senator Robert Hill, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and a cross-section of the scientific elite.
The winners were
Also presented were the four Michael Daley Eureka Prizes for journalism, won by
WISENET is an affiliate member of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies which represents some 50,000 working scientists and technologists in Australia. It aims to promote science and technology and, through membership of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, to press FASTS policies.
The FASTS’ web site is http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/fasts/ and among the current information posted there you will find:
Executive Director is Mr Toss Gascoigne. Phone: (02) 6257 2891; Fax: (02) 6257 2897; E-mail: fasts@anu.edu.au