Scientific Women
Successful Despite the Odds!
A seminar organised by Manning Clark House1 and the Independent Scholars Association2 of Australia, was held at the House – 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest – from 2 to 4 pm on Saturday September 11, 2004.
Over forty women scientists assembled at Manning Clark House, in Forrest, Canberra, to hear three scientists, in early, mid and later career, discuss women’s achievements in science and their under-representation in scientific awards and honours.
The theme was established by chairperson Dr Ann Moyal who presented a brief history of women scientists from the 19th century who have either faced closed doors (except in a limited number of fields) or were expected to be subsidiaries to men, such as illustrating their scientific work. She pointed out that this changed after World War II which had given acceptance to women in science. But their significant progress has been hampered by lack of mentoring for women scientists. As an example, Dr Moyal noted at the recently attended Prime Minister’s Science Prizes dinner, that all the prize-winning recipients were male and that she felt like she was transported to a past age.
Dr Anna Robinson, National Convener of Women in Science Enquiry Network, (WISENET) a non-hierarchical organisation that links women involved in science, brought this theme forward to the present day. She pointed out that statistics obtainable from the Office of Status of Women, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet show that the reason so few women are recipients of awards is that so few are nominated.
She identified three parts to the problem. One is a lack of experience. It is not part of our culture for women to promote themselves; traditionally it is seen as ‘unbecoming’ or ‘unladylike’ to do so. It requires very active and perceptive interception to change these entrenched cultural attitudes.
The second part of the problem is that women are not familiar with the complex procedure of applying for awards. The process has been simplified with on-line submissions, email communication and r-fax. Dr Robinson emphasised that at the same time the process still requires considerable thought, preparation and advance notice. The myriad of requirements can be daunting, and still requires more help and simplification from the organisations involved. A generic outline of the awards process is published in WISENET Journal 66 and is available online at http://www.wisenet-australia.org. The third part of the problem is that women tend to be more discouraged by failure than men and need to be encouraged to keep trying. Dr Robinson mentioned that economist Linda Babcock, and writer Sara Laschever, in their book Women Don’t Ask describe results from a study that showed men asked for what they want twice as often, and initiate negotiations, four times more frequently than women.
Dr Kim Blackmore, a mathematician from the ANU Department of Engineering, illustrated the situation in her own field. She pointed out that few women set out to become an engineer. Less than 20% of undergraduate students in engineering are women. Career path attrition reduces this to 6% of academic engineers in Australia. At the ANU the situation is a little more encouraging, with 2.5 women among the 14 academic staff in the engineering faculty. The figures among practising engineers are similar.
Dr Blackmore suggests that the world is a poorer place through lack of female participation. Engineering is about improving the quality of life. Engineers need creativity to solve problems but creativity is bounded by one’s life experiences. A design team lacking diversity will consider a smaller range of design options. It will have a narrower understanding of the constraints on the design. It may not recognise the potential applications of the product outside its own experiences, so that the product fails to meet the demands of some larger, unrecognised, consumer set.
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Dr Kim Blackmore at home with family. Photo by Bill Blair |
Dr Blackmore identified two contributors to this lack of female participation. One is the perception of engineering as dull. In selecting a career path, girls are more influenced than boys to make the world a better place. They do not realise that engineers have the power to do just that, by changing the way technology works, and making new technology.
The second inhibitor relates to girls’ experience of mathematics and physical sciences. Mathematics teaching is permeated by the axiomatic tradition. Legitimacy of ideas is through reason and proof; concept is primary and application secondary. Progression is hierarchical. This approach appeals to hierarchical learners, of whom 80% are men. On the other hand, most of the population (both men and women) are relational learners. They learn through observation and experience, relationships are primary, and structure evolves from this. Validation and extension are employed in a continuous process.
The disconnection between the axiomatic approach to teaching and the preferred learning style of most students explains why so many people report that ‘mathematics was their worst subject at school’.In spite of this, girls (who are largely relational learners) and boys (who are more likely to be hierarchical learners) perform equally well in mathematics at school level. Perhaps motivation to succeed drives girls to persevere in spite of discomfort with the learning style. Relational learners become adept at doing the problems, but don’t become convinced that this stuff can really touch the world they are interested in.
Mathematics taught in the traditional way serves as a filter to weed out relational learners. The challenge for mathematicians in engineering education is to facilitate the progression of relational learners into the profession of engineering, because this thinking style is important for diversification of any engineering team. Without relational female minds helping to design the technology of the new millennium, we are in danger of perpetuating a lopsided view of our future.
The final speaker, Dr Elizabeth Truswell, FAA, was Chief Research Scientist at the Australian Geological Survey Organisation. She is now combining her previous work as a palynologist (the study of plant spores and pollen) and her new career as a landscape artist. Not only did this provide an encouraging positive summary of the afternoon’s theme, but illustrated the new worlds that can be created when women combine scientific knowledge and their natural creativity. The audience were very appreciative of the many slides of her work that Dr Truswell presented.
of the natural world as being one of change, in which nothing is static: an awareness that we live in the time plane of the present forming a very narrow interval that is very different from the past. The fact that one landscape replaces another through time is a simple fact of our existence.
Dr Truswell’s work combines her different interests. In one of her charcoal drawings she took an image from Antarctica and juxtaposed it with a drawing based on a painting by the 19th century German romantic painter Caspar David Freidrich. Another set of drawings and paintings were based on fossil wood. The original, much modified imagery, was drawn from thin sections of Cretaceous woods from the Antarctic peninsula, the wood clearly showing the passage of time through annual growth cycles, with small to no cells in winter, to a burst of growth and large cells in spring.
Her most recent works involve trilobites, hard-shelled little arthropods. She creates charcoal drawings using local clay as a base pigment, then wetting them so that the charcoal becomes mobile, to convey the roughing up that the remains have had to endure, yet still be preserved well enough to be understood and classified.
Dr Truswell has had her work hung as a finalist in a number of painting awards.
The previous speaker, Dr Blackmore, had pointed out that women were responsible for the invention of the cooking stove, the washing machine, the dishwasher and the refrigerator. Dr Truswell gave the seminar participants a glimpse of the creative world that is opening up for women when we can overcome the current barriers to getting recognition, as highlighted in the opening address by Dr Robinson.
Summary written by Audrey Guy, Manning Clark House, with minor editorial assistance from Ann Moyal and Anna Robinson.
1. Manning Clark House is a lively scholarly and cultural organisation based at the former Canberra home of Professor Manning Clark, his wife Dymphna, and their family. For more information or to arrange interviews, contact MCH director Penny Ramsay, on 6295 9433 http://www.manningclark.org/
2. Independent Scholars Association of Australia is a network of scholars pursuing interests in the broad streams of the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Their work is produced in a variety of forms including book and journal publications, films and documentaries, script writing and journalism http://www.independentscholars.asn.au/
