Editorial
What does ‘international’ mean to you? In this edition of the WISENET journal, ‘international’ means strong, courageous women; emotion and intellect running through profound experiences.
From Europe to Australia to North America and the world in between, WISENET women have gone and indeed conquered. Are you asking if you should become an international woman? I suggest you already are; with ties via the internet, telephone, television and other media. We publish together, research together and meet intellectual demands together, even if we are thousands of miles apart. Look at the goals of AWIS New Zealand, and the information on Third Stream funding as presented by Rosemary White.
What is most striking about these stories is the strength of connection that remains throughout all of the traveling and work. Though we may move and change jobs frequently, we keep a thread woven through our lives, and constancy over the long-term. We see this in the story of Adut, a courageous traveler who witnessed such sorrow but kept looking forward and kept learning.
They say that the age of exploration is over: the adventurers and swashbucklers that sailed across the seas need do so no longer. But I think we are still those explorers; the adventures are just different. We continue to find new ground and make it ours. Hilary Booth, described as “gentle as the sound of soft snow falling” in the memorial article written for her, felt that the world was her oyster and her adventures challenged and motivated her. Would those early European explorers have felt any differently? Though the transport may have changed from the tall ships to our modern planes the thrill is definitely present and manifests itself explicitly in all of the articles in this journal edition.
There is certainly ‘new ground’ in Nancy Lane’s view, from her article on ethnomathematics, in which we learn there is such a thing as a two-legged pig. This sense of adventure also holds forth on a different level in Sari Ruuska’s story with her fascination of biology and “life on Earth” in all of its forms.
To be resilient we have to learn how
to ‘recycle’ ourselves, constantly taking on the new and shedding, when
appropriate, the old. For myself, I tell of reshuffling skills to fit the
environment and situation at hand, while in other cases letting some lie dormant
for periods of time. Julie Christie juggles more than her career skill set -
adding those of wife and mother in her poignant story. Betty Allan, as explained
in her article, was hired initially to focus in the CSIRO Plant Industry
Division and ended up ‘founding’ a cross-disciplinary way of using statistics
and measurement. May this strong show of resilience and international
perspectives be inspirational for all of us. I hope that this edition reminds us
to continue to try for the world!
Carolann Wolfgang