Interviewed by Dorothy Simons from the Women's Electoral Lobby
WISENET Journal No.33, December 1993, pp. 9-11
Robina Otrupcek is an Australian astronomer. Since this interview, she has moved to head the unit of the CSIRO Australian Telescope National Facility at Coonabarabran, the first woman to be in charge of an Australian telescope. She was earlier interviewed on ABC TV about her promotional wark among primary school children which aims at getting more girls to do science.
Dorothy Simons: What made you interested in science?
Robina Otrupcek: I've always been curious about things and I wanted answers. In my high school years I wanted to be an engineer because I could see how straightforward and practical that was, that the answers I would get would satisfy me.
DS: Did your parents encourage you, did they like the idea?
RO: From early on they encouraged me in my interest in science and they made sure books were available. They were teachers and they always said "Go and look it up" whenever I asked questions. I loved libraries, I felt at ease there.
I went to an opportunity class when I was in primary school. I came from a school with overcrowded classes, 64 in fourth class, where I was one of the most inattentive children. My marks weren't very good, so I was lucky to get into an opportunity class, where they made you aware you had an obligation to use whatever talents you had. They encouraged and stimulated you.
I went to a girls' high school where Physics and Chemistry were combined. Chemistry was a bit like cooking, you had to learn all these things by heart. I did better at Physics; it seemed sensible. But I didn't do either for the Leaving, having been shunted off into Biology.
DS: Why do you think so many girls do Biology rather than Physics and Chemistry?
RO: I think that is because they are more aware of living things. Also many of the exercises we had to do for Physics and Chemistry had examples boys were more familiar with. The whole system was geared to how boys best learned. Fortunately I was very keen on Meccano and marbles.
DS: Did you have brothers?
RO: No, I had an elder sister who was brought up to be feminine. She loved to be in the kitchen and she liked sewing and sitting quietly with my mother and helping. Because I always had trouble sitting still, I was sent out to help Dad and I was the one who fixed the lawn mower or the cistern and I did carpentry with Dad in the workshop. I liked to be active. No, I didn't have a Meccano set. I yearned for one and I would have loved a crystal radio. I used to read all about it.
When my children were young I gave them toys for both options, Meccano sets and dolls.
DS: What kind of career advice did you get?
RO: t had two sessions with career advisers. One suggested teaching -- that's where academic girls went -- saying that it was 'a good job for girls'. My mother then took me to the government's Career Advice Service for a long test. She thought it would be an incentive to get me to pay more attention in class if I saw it might lead to a career. I was seen as a problem child because I was curious, asked questions, fidgeted or stared outt of the window. I didn't behave badly.
DS: Did anyone talk to you about engineering?
RO: I had a cousin who I thought was wonderful. He was doing engineering and at family parties he used to ask me questions about ice melting in a glass, whether it would run over. I was enthralled. This was when I was nine. I would have loved to become an engineer but was told it would be very hard for a girl. My mother thought teaching was a good career for a girl because you could combine it with having a family. So I went off to do a Teaching Certificate.
It wasn't until five or ten years after I left school that I did a Science degree in Physics and Maths. That was after I had done an Arts degree in Psychology. It's amazing the number of women who have gone into science by quite diverse routes and with broken careers. The way I got there was nothing unusual.
DS: How did you get into CSIRO?
RO: I got a job as a technician. My Teaching Certificate was irrelevant. What got me in was my good marks in Maths for the Leaving and an interest in what they were doing.
Once employed, I wanted to know more than I needed to do my job, but I didn't understand some of the science I was writing computer programs for. I could see this great gap. At Macquarie University at that time they had bridging courses and that is where I then did my Science degree.
DS: How did you get on in your career at the CSIRO?
RO: I wasn't competing with the highly qualified men. This place is very benevolent. They could see me getting through my studies, they could see I might be useful. Meanwhile they were using me for doing their observations, and the reductions, they were happy for me to comment on some of the work they were doing. I was encouraged and accepted more and more.
DS: Did you became passionate about astronomy?
RO: Oh yes, I was fascinated by what was going on. When I saw the data coming in on some of the projects I worked on, a millimetre wave receiver in the paddock at Epping - we were doing carbon monoxide studies of dark clouds. When I saw the data coming in, positions I had looked for because of my choice, and seeing what was happening, it blew my mind. You start getting those little maps, your contour maps, and you see something happening there and you get all excited.
A lot of people around here, you can see them getting that thrill constantly, it's what carries them through the drudgery.
DS: Do you have some idea of how many women are working at your level here in the CSIRO?
RO: You can count them on the fingers of one hand. There may well be more coming through now, that I'm not seeing. I do see vacation students and the sexes are becoming more evenly balanced. It is interesting that we might get, say, 160 applicants for 10 positions, of which 20 or 30 might be women, but the numbers chosen are about equal. The women who apply are obviously very good.
Looking at women doing PhDs, the ratio is much higher than ten years ago. Even so, the women who are in scientific careers are not advancing to higher status at the same rate as their male colleagues. The numbers show this.
DS: When you got married were you aware that having children might be a problem, especially if you went out in the bush?
RO: My sister had told me that my children might be emotionally disturbed if I had them minded by someone else.
DS: Does she still think that?
RO: Not now. But when I was having my first baby she gave me a book on how to cope with emotionally disturbed children. She was only repeating what she heard from the people around her. She has come a long way since then.
DS: How have your superiors treated you?
RO: They have been very encouraging. Some were slightly condescending - I wasn't aware of it then. Now I am. Most of the men working here now are really marvellous, there are some wonderful husbands and fathers who go dashing off to their kids.
They don't see me as a threat, possibly because of the way I approach things. I'm so interested in what they are doing. Perhaps my upbringing has taught me subservience as the way to get what you want. Seeming helplessness works too. I'm quite happy to operate that way. I was unaware, it was a way of surviving. I don't mind if they talk down to me if I get what I want.
DS: Are your children interested in science?
RO: My eldest daughter is not, she wants to write. At one stage she wanted to become an electrician but then other things happened. My son was not interested because "Scientists were mostly women". He didn't see science could ever lead to a proper job, it was a game. Men did the real thing, working with money.
My youngest daughter, who is 13, used to sleep in the control room of the radio telescope when we were tracking Voyager. She watched Neptune approaching as Voyager got closer and she thought she was so lucky to be up there, to see the things I was doing. She loves science.
DS: How did your husband feel about your being in a non-traditional profession?
RO: There has ahvays been some distance between what he said and what he actually encouraged. But he was quite proud of me doing this kind of work, provided of course I looked after him first.
What I am doing at this very moment has something to do with this. I am trying to get boys to have a different perspective of women in science.
DS: How did you come to do this promotional work in schools?
RO: In 1985, CSIRO started the 'Women in Science' project. It was an initiative of Barry Jones, who was then the Minister for Science. For quite some time, a number of people had been considering why the gender balance was out and they decided there were not enough role models for girls to follow. That's why we went out to high schools to show them that women were actually doing scientific jobs and to encourage students doing Physics and Chemistry, to keep on doing them.
Then, a few years ago, one of my colleagues who was doing similar work in Perth said she had the best results with girls who came to listen to women scientists if they came with their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. We realised we would have to make an impact on all the people the girls were growing up with.
I then took it one step furfher and argued that we should talk to both girls and boys, when they were young and before they had their stereotyped ideas about women's role in science. Boys can see that. They can also see that most pepple - we don't say "boys and girls", we say 'people" - can combine a career in science with child care and househokl duties. I talk to fifth and sixth classes.
DS: What kind of response do you get?
RO: They love my stories about astronomy. I tell them very simply about the sorts of projects I do and discuss gravity, black holes and galaxies. They are very science literate, even at that age. The questions they ask are unbelievable, they seem to have a good idea of quite complicated mechanisms. They see science shows on television, not just science fiction stories.
I find that when I talk to them when they are older, they are more set in their ways - they don't grasp these really complex things as easily as when they are younger, when they set no limits on their fantasies, their imagination.
DS: Do you notice a difference in response between boys and girls?
RO: There is no difference as regards their comprehension. But last week one little girl asked me how I, as a woman, found it to be a scientist - she might have heard something at home. And another little girl asked me whether I felt guilty about using such expensive equipment when there were so many people starving. At this stage they are really thinking beyond their own lives.
Most female astronomers I talk to don't like to be regarded as different, or as a 'woman astronomer'. They say "No. I am an astronomer, not a woman astronomer". They want to ignore the difference in their career paths, finding it very important to regard themselves as scientists rather than women who need a different approach.
DS: The women in WlSENET seem to be very aware of that difference.
RO: WISENET is a spinoff from the 'Women in Science' project of the CSIRO, that's how I came to join. I can see that women are disadvantaged but it is against my nature to be a militant feminist. I don't like making waves, I enjoy being a woman and I like a lot of the conservative attitudes of women. I guess I'm lucky here at the CSIRO; they treat me like a woman and yet they appreciate my contribution. They don't put me down. I was very careful when I wrote my paper ('Preparing Boys for Gender Equity in Science') that it did not come across as a blast, as saying how dreadful men are.
DS: Are you optimistic about the position of women in science?
RO: Oh yes. I think that at this moment many men are unsure of their role -- they have some way to go and I think women have to keep that in mind.
Reprinted from WEL-Informed, NSW Journal of the Women's Electoral Lobby, July 1993, with permission.