Book Review: Profiles: Australian Women Scientists by Ragbir Bhathal
Reviewed by Anne Sarzin
In an age of anti-discrimination legislation and affirmative action, it is easy to forget the battles educated women have fought to secure and retain their professional appointments.
A book that profiles 16 prominent Australian women scientists also reveals the obstacles many of them faced in their careers - including difficulties faced at Sydney University at the time.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal's Profiles: Australian women scientists, which includes a chapter on Sydney University respiratory diseases specialist Professor Ann Woolcock, contains many references to the University, and not all of them flattering.
While the University played a seminal role in the education and careers of several women scientists in the book’s elite cohort, many of them recall their male peers’ bias against women scientists.
Of course it wasn't as blatant in the 1930s as it had been in the latter half of the 19th century. When Marion Charlotte (Horton) White, Sydney University's third woman science graduate, applied for a job as a junior demonstrator in biology in 1897, the Senate rejected her application on the grounds that "she was a woman and too pretty". In 1904 the Department of Anatomy appointed two women as honorary demonstrators, but it was not until 1908 that a woman was employed on the academic staff and then only as a junior demonstrator.
Cambridge-educated physicist Rachel Makinson, who later had a distinguished career in wool research at the CSIRO Division of Textile Physics, came to the University in 1939 but only on a casual basis. "The prejudice in Australia against married women working was colossal," she said. "But apart from that, I wasn't allowed to have a decent position in the University because my husband was already there. They had fathers and sons in the same department but not husbands and wives. It was an unwritten but definite policy."
But gradually, as Dr Bhathal describes it, "the cobwebs of prejudice began to be pulled aside". Professor Woolcock was among the wave of women entering the workforce after World War II, many of whom were helped by male mentors.
The chapter on Professor Woolcock offers insight into her monumental work on respiratory disease in general and asthma in particular, which she has researched all her life. Interestingly, she believes that women scientists work more co-operatively than their male colleagues.
"My teams are nearly all women," she said. "They can do more than one thing at once. They are used to juggling their lives and their families and all these other things, so doing some more research is not hard for them.
"They have less ego, so that if something goes wrong, they're not so upset. It's a fact, it's not a criticism, it's how things are. I think female teams are very good."
Professor Woolcock concedes, however, that the lot of women researchers can be complex and challenging: childcare is more expensive, there are diminishing funds for research, and jobs can be poorly paid.
"But, given that, I think women will continue to be around and doing things and I hope that some of us are role models for other women," Professor Woolcock said.
This review first appeared in University News on 26 August 1999 and is reprinted with permission.
Dr Bhathal in his research for this book identified 100 Australian women scientists of interest and has completed an oral history of about one third of these individuals. Possibly Dr Bhathal will publish further books on these noteworthy Australians.
(Source: OSW website: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/osw/)