Bookends of a Generation: Two CSIRO Researchers
Joy Bear
Fiona Solomon and Evie Katz
When Jo O’Neil (see WISENET Journal 57, July 2001) asked me for an article for
the WISENET Journal, I thought a profile of CSIRO social scientists Dr Fiona
Solomon and Dr Evie Katz could be inspirational to other women. As Fiona is in
her early thirties and Evie is in her late fifties, this overview brings into
perspective two women’s careers undertaken a generation apart.
Fiona is the group coordinator of the Social Values team at CSIRO Minerals. She has led a number of research projects on social and sustainability issues around the minerals industry in Australia, including stakeholder and community perspectives of mining, stakeholder and community consultation processes, and independent verification of companies’ performance. Fiona undertook a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering degree at The University of Queensland, graduating with first class honours in 1992. Her PhD thesis in 1997 was a philosophical and sociological analysis of engineering and technology.
For the thirteen years prior to joining the research group at CSIRO Minerals in October 2002, Evie worked as researcher, lecturer and tutor in the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University where she is currently an Honorary Research Fellow. Her teaching and research areas have been varied - from anthropological theory, community studies, to the sociology and anthropology of science and technology. Her doctoral study focused on workplace change, in particular changes in technology, management, and systems of recruitment and promotion, and their relationship to theories of organisational culture.
JB: Evie could you contribute a few thoughts on how your career developed in the context of women working in science?
EK: I feel somewhat uneasy about this exercise, partly because of the term ‘career’. I cannot recall ever thinking of having a career – paid work, yes, but the idea of following a particular path, of perhaps planning one, was alien to me. This is probably fairly typical of a woman of my age, time and place. Post WW2 the assumption was that a girl would join the paid workforce, work for a few years, marry, have children, and then her ‘career’ would be that of wife and mother. And indeed, this was more or less my path.
After matriculation, I received a youth leadership scholarship for a year’s study overseas. Upon my return I did a two-year primary teacher certificate at a teachers’ college, and worked as a primary school teacher for three years. The next three years were spent travelling and working overseas, marrying, and then returning to Melbourne. Two children came, and when the younger one began school just at the time that university fees were abolished by the Whitlam Labor government I decided to apply for entry to Monash University. I did a BA, majoring in geography and anthropology, gaining first class honours that eventually, albeit with a number of ‘interruptions’, set me on the path to a doctorate in anthropology at La Trobe University.
JB: Why did you choose to do your PhD in anthropology?
EK: The discipline of social anthropology covers a variety of fields - economics, politics, philosophy, all social and cultural aspects of human life, including science and technology. It does this in a comparative way, and looks at how large-scale processes, for example, globalisation, interact with more local ones, such as family structures, individual decision-making, regional change, work and work relations. I liked this diversity, and found the opportunity to explore a phenomenon such as organisational culture via a number of possible avenues very appealing.
JB: Fiona, why did you decide to take an Engineering degree?
FS: At my girls’ high school we had very small classes for physics and chemistry and had the same great teacher for both. He used to be a process chemist at Golden Circle so his teaching was always very grounded in practical questions. We always did great experiments and had to explore complex questions via longish chains of reasoning and application. In my final years of high school I became quite interested in space, that is, astronauts, rockets, NASA, etc. I lined up work experience at the UQ Space Engineering group in Grade 12 and managed to get a scholarship from Comalco for women in non-traditional fields (1989-1992). The purpose of the scholarship was to support and increase the retention of women studying degrees such as engineering, and to this end it was successful. (JB: Fiona won the Kinhill Prize for the Best Mechanical Engineering Thesis in 1992.) However, I began to have doubts during the course as to whether it was living up to my expectations and whether it was the career for me.
JB: Were women commonly undertaking engineering as a career in your time at university?
FS: Not really, and it varies between engineering disciplines. For example, mechanical engineering (my discipline) had 5 women in a graduating class of 60. Environmental engineering had about 30% women I seem to recall. I became involved in organising women in engineering activities, particularly when I became a postgraduate student.
JB: Why did you move to “Philosophy of Engineering” for your PhD thesis?
FS: I was being drawn to a broader set of questions about technology and society, so it seemed a good way to explore them!
JB: What made you seek your present position in CSIRO?
FS: I wasn’t looking for a standard engineering career after my PhD as I was more interested in, and qualified to do, interdisciplinary research. CSIRO has provided lots of opportunities to travel and take up personal development activities. For instance, I was able to accept the Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation Travelling Scholarship and the St James Ethics Centre Vincent Fairfax Fellowship, in 1999 and 2000.
JB: Evie, what brought you to CSIRO Minerals?
EK: I came to CSIRO by a circuitous route. Fiona was seeking someone for the Social Values Unit’s Social and Economic Integration (SEI) projects, which involve the integration of social and economic sciences into traditional scientific and technological research and development processes. The SEI projects bring together a number of my research interests and skills – namely, the sociology of science and technology, and experience in education.
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JB: It is significant that SEI is one of CSIRO’s five emerging science areas and the Social Values group has led a pilot Organisational Learning Project, examined three case studies of SEI practice in natural resource management, technology roadmapping and mine technology development. The group is presently preparing aproposal for a new round of case studies. |
JB: Fiona, what led you to seek part-time secondment to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)? How does your work there differ from that at CSIRO - what is the connection?
FS: My secondment to WWF is to be the project officer for the Mining Certification Evaluation Project (see the website at www.minerals.csiro.au/certification). It is probably the most important policy R&D project in the minerals industry in Australia at the moment, so I was keen to make sure CSIRO and our research group was involved. The work is very similar to my work at CSIRO, in the sense that it is research that involves a wide range of stakeholders and tries to develop the research agenda via a participatory dialogue. It is different in the sense of it being a small office of 4-5 people who all answer the phones! I take calls from people who want to give money, who are doing school projects, or who want to get media comment on environmental issues, so it is very interesting to also be at the ‘front line’ if you like.
JB: Would you both provide a few comments on your philosophy regarding inter-relationship of career, marriage and family?
FS: So far combining career and marriage has not been too much of a problem, apart from times when I have had to do large amounts of fieldwork interstate or overseas. I imagine that combining careers and children will be far more of a challenge! My partner and I are very committed to the idea of life balance and we look forward to what life ahead holds for us.
EK: I did not find it easy to
combine the roles of mother and wife with paid employment. My guess is that
women and men who wish to combine parenting and careers will continue to find
reconciling the tensions these roles engender difficult to negotiate. My hope
is that family responsibilities will be acknowledged as important – not just
as empty rhetoric but supported materially in workplace policies and
practices.
Joy Bear is an Honorary Fellow with CSIRO Minerals. Her career with CSIRO has spanned more than fifty years with her main researches being undertaken in the fields of mineral chemistry, solid state chemistry and pyro-metallurgy. Joy was the only woman appointed to the research ranks of the Division of Mineral Chemistry of CSIRO over the years of its existence (1959-1987). She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 1986 for services to science. A biographical note about Joy appears in WISENET Journal 60, July 2002, p.9.