Lines of Exchange: Australian and New Zealand Women on Carnegie and Fulbright Programme Awards c. 1930s–1980s

ABSTRACT

Narratives of international educational exchange programmes such as the US–sponsored Fulbright and the Commonwealth–centred Carnegie grants reveal the formative role these exchanges played in extending the geographical, scholarly, and professional boundaries of women’s worlds. Notably, these award schemes influenced, shaped and expanded the career aspirations and professional experiences of a group of women from Australia and New Zealand. In this article, we take up the question of the distinctive opportunities each programme presented for women awardees and consider their differing experiences primarily due to the specific programme on which they embarked. We argue that the extent to which participation in an exchange programme might have provided benefits to individual Australian and New Zealand women could also become the spur for awardees to advocate for an expansion of opportunities for other women. Furthermore, we consider whether hidden obstacles existed that hindered women’s career pathways and successes.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational exchange
• women
• Carnegie
• Fulbright
• Australia
• New Zealand

Introduction

The history of academic and professional women’s participation in travel and exchange has increasingly captured the attention of historians of education interested in understanding the international flow of knowledge and expertise.¹ For Australian and New Zealand women, their travels predominantly spanned the Pacific or Atlantic oceans.² As early as 1893, for example, among the 500 women delegates to the World Congress of Representative Women gathering in Chicago were two Australian women, journalist Catherine Spence and librarian Margaret Windeyer. Similarly, in 1894, Katherine (Kate) Wilson Sheppard, a primary figure in the New Zealand women’s suffrage movement, attended a meeting in London of the International Council of Women.³

Both conferences, organised by women around their political, social and educational interests, offered opportunities for like-minded women to meet,⁴ exchange ideas, knowledge and expertise, and foster connections with their counterparts in international settings.⁵ Crucially, travel transported ideas and information about “home” beyond geographical borders and, in turn, offered the impetus for women to travel, expand their horizons, be exposed to new professional experiences and gain an understanding of their hosts and host country as well as of themselves⁶ Furthermore, and as we outline in this article, international expertise and exchange was not unidirectional, but dynamic and reciprocal.⁷ In the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, study abroad and international educational exchange programmes intensified as scholars sought opportunities outside their national boundaries to further their credentials,⁸ expand their work in newly established fields such as social work, teaching and home science,⁹ and enhance their academic and professional careers on their return home.¹⁰ Formal fellowships and grants established in the early twentieth century included the prestigious Rhodes (1902), Russell Sage Foundation (1907), Carnegie (1911) and Rockefeller (1913). Each of these programmes had its own purpose and direction and each introduced awardees to a philanthropic world in which they were exposed to a range of new ideas. More specifically, the Carnegie, Rockefeller and later Fulbright programmes promoted American ideals, knowledge and understanding.¹¹ In the early decades of their existence, each of these programmes initially located the male student or academic as the “ideal” international citizen¹² and women were either initially excluded or recruited in insignificant numbers.¹³ It was not until the 1920s that serious attention was paid to travel opportunities for women.¹⁴ By then, the philanthropic grant bodies were active and women academics could apply for these grants.¹⁵

However, as historians have shown, for women awardees these grants provided a diverse range of professional, educational and cultural experiences and opportunities.¹⁶ Importantly, travel by women beyond the geographical boundaries of Australia and New Zealand increased significantly as the philanthropic Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) programme was expanded,¹⁷ and new educational exchange programmes such as Fulbright were introduced in 1946. Less recognised, however, is that the impact of these grants varied, and, for women, there were a number of social, economic and educational barriers to be navigated across their careers.

This article offers an historical narrative of Australian and New Zealand women’s trans-Pacific educational exchanges with a focus on one philanthropic body (the CCNY) acting outside the universities, and one (the Fulbright Program) acting in conjunction with both government and the higher education sector. Here we explore the exchange and circulation of international expertise and the impacts at “home” (Australia and New Zealand) and “away.”

In this article, we extend the literature on women’s educational travel and exchange experiences, and interweave archival material, newspaper excerpts and biographical accounts with oral history testimonies of women recipients to bring to the fore women’s experiences as grant recipients. Our core intention is to better understand the initial opportunities as well as the ongoing impacts of these two educational exchange programmes, and more prominently cast Australian and New Zealand women within the respective histories of the CCNY and Fulbright programmes. Furthermore, the historical narratives presented in this article further illuminate the importance of formal opportunities for international travel in fostering women’s education, expanding their professional experiences and extending their expertise in new and emerging fields both at “home” and in the host country. The extent to which these educational exchanges had a broader impact in expanding women’s professional lives is illustrated by the fields in which the awards were concentrated. The readiness with which women working in those fields took up the opportunities that were offered is just one aspect of the wider picture of women’s educational history.

We begin with a snapshot of the changing educational and social circumstances of women’s lives in the twentieth century. This contextual information foreshadows our discussion on the experiences of women who were awarded either CCNY or Fulbright grants. We then overview ways in which these two exchange programmes propelled ambitious women to undertake travel, research and study in their host country. As we show, travel outside Australia or New Zealand was not permanent; there was an expectation that grant awardees would return “home” and that the support offered was bound by time. What may not have been fully anticipated was that some women and men married while “away,” and that, for some, the host country provided new career directions.¹⁸

Snapshots: Australia, New Zealand and the US

In Australia, women were not permitted to enrol in universities until the 1880s when co-education was introduced in the three public universities.¹⁹ Although these colonial universities were state-funded and secular, women were initially excluded on the basis of their sex.²⁰ It was not until 1883 that the first woman graduated from an Australian university.²¹ During the First and Second World Wars, when fees from male students decreased, there was economic pressure to enrol women students and, consequently, they were gradually accepted as a presence on campus.²² However, prior to the 1940s, postgraduate degrees for women were almost non-existent²³ and exchange programmes such as Carnegie and Fulbright provided grants for women to travel to the US to study at this level.²⁴ In Australia, PhDs only began to be awarded from 1948, initially in small numbers, and women with national or overseas doctoral qualifications were an exceptional minority.²⁵

Until the later decades of the twentieth century, equal pay in the Australian commonwealth public service, public libraries and professional workplaces did not exist. Women earned 54% of the male basic wage and this rose to 75% in 1950.²⁶ It was not until 1969 that equal pay for women was introduced in Australia. A “marriage bar” remained in place until 1966 in the public service and women were required to resign on marriage or were demoted.²⁷

In New Zealand, women were admitted to the University of New Zealand from its inception and graduated with degrees from as early as 1877. In the early decades of the twentieth century, numbers of women students increased, particularly in fields such as home science and the arts.²⁸ Notably, home science, as a new academic field, opened up for women postgraduate study opportunities in the US and England, and scholarships were awarded for women academics to travel and expand their scholarly networks, connections and knowledge.²⁹ From the mid-twentieth century, women increasingly enrolled in male-dominated fields such as law, business and medicine. The marriage bar for women teachers ceased to be enforced from 1936 and was formally rescinded in 1938, although it was not until 1971 that the Equal Pay Act was passed.³⁰

For Australian and New Zealand women, universities in the US were among the first to offer degrees in newly established fields such as social work, teaching and home science. For example, the University of California, Berkeley, was a leader in early childhood education;³¹ the University of Chicago offered degrees in library science and social work; and Columbia University taught dietetics.³²

Until the early nineteenth century, higher education in the US was primarily reserved for men.³³ In 1837, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (later Mount Holyoake College) was established for young women in the state of Massachusetts, and, although women were able to be admitted to Oberlin College in Ohio from 1837,³⁴ there continued to be strong public opposition to women’s higher education.³⁵ It was the Morrill Land Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 that provided federal funding for colleges (universities) which admitted women from their inception. However, few women scholars were hired by universities and were predominantly located in institutes such as the School of Social Service Administration (University of Chicago), or child study institutes at Columbia Teachers College, the University of Minnesota or the University of California, Berkeley. By the 1930s, women had been awarded social science doctorates from universities such as Radcliffe (Harvard), Chicago, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Yale.³⁶ The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial grant and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provided funding for women social scientists to further their own research careers.³⁷

It was from the 1920s that the CCNY and Rockefeller Foundation offered funding to Australians and New Zealanders to study and research at US institutions. Importantly, both philanthropic programmes sponsored women in feminised fields such as home science, social work and librarianship who wished to advance their careers. From its inception in 1946 the Fulbright Foundation was open to women. We now turn to look at each of these programmes.

Carnegie Exchanges and Connections

Established by wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1911, the primary purpose of the CCNY was to foster international peace, advance education and knowledge, and strengthen democracy. Carnegie provided funding to schools, libraries, universities and educational organisations with the primary purpose of supporting individuals and institutions that could assist in resolving the pressing economic, social and political issues of the day. The foundation’s initial focus was the US, but this was soon broadened to include the British dominions and colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.³⁸

From the 1930s in both Australia and New Zealand, the CCNY provided travel grants to individuals with the aim of developing public institutions. Carnegie grants were awarded to Australian and New Zealand women but usually only when suitable men were not available.³⁹ The criteria for selecting those already occupying or in line for leadership positions within institutions favoured male applicants. Hence, awards for women were predominantly for those working in feminised fields such as teaching, social work, libraries, home science, nutrition, dietetics and children’s health.⁴⁰

The first major Carnegie grants followed the 1928 visit to New Zealand by Dean James Russell.⁴¹ Early awardees from New Zealand included Alice Minchin, university librarian (1932–1933); Gwendolen Somerset, adult educator (1935); Dorothy Neal, librarian (1936); Dr Elizabeth Gregory, home scientist (1940); and Dr Helen Deem, Director of the Plunket Society (1947).⁴²

Recipients of these awards reflected Carnegie’s original interest in the use of philanthropic funds for social reform initiatives and to promote progressive educational ideals. For example, Ann Strong was awarded a Carnegie Grant in 1932 and travelled to the US for six months in 1933. There she worked in California and Texas and further explored adult education programmes and pioneered the expansion of home science.⁴³ On her return to New Zealand, Strong campaigned for better health and welfare services for Māori and secured additional funding for Māori women to attend university.⁴⁴ Strong secured a grant from the CCNY of £100 for a scholarship for a Māori nurse, Miss Emere Kaa, to enrol in a home science course and to use her training in dietetics, crafts and social service to improve Māori health.⁴⁵ Integral to her work with the CCNY, Strong established and maintained a professional connection with Frederick Keppel, Dean of Columbia University and President of the CCNY.⁴⁶ She corresponded with him and provided regular reports on her plans for the expansion of home science and nominated potential CCNY awardees in fields such as home science, early childhood, adult education, child health and library work.⁴⁷ As Collins has shown, key women such as Ann Strong served as contacts in New Zealand for the CCNY and utilised her own professional networks to spread progressive ideas about education and health.⁴⁸

Australian women CCNY grantees in the 1930s followed a similar pattern of employment in feminised fields. They included early-childhood specialists Mary Guttridge, Mavis Wauchope (1937) and Gladys Pendred (1937); hospital dietician Joan Woodhill (1938); university librarian Malvina (known as Eva) Wood (1935); and adult educator and organiser of the women’s section of the Agricultural Bureau of NSW, Lorna Byrne (1936). Secondary-school chief inspector Julia Flynn was the only one in an atypical “masculine” role. Mary Tenison Woods, the first woman to graduate in law from the University of Adelaide and to be admitted to practise as a barrister in South Australia, received a CCNY grant in 1935 to investigate juvenile delinquency. She had made child welfare her speciality. She published a book, Juvenile Delinquency (Melbourne, 1937), which argued for greater emphasis on rehabilitation, and she was subsequently appointed to the Child Welfare Advisory Council in New South Wales.⁴⁹

Librarians were a primary focus of Carnegie efforts to modernise and professionalise educational institutions from within. Like her counterpart Eva Wood in Australia, Alice Minchin was the only female university chief librarian in New Zealand. Due to her position, Minchin was nominated by her institution for a CCNY grant to study in the US and obtain a library degree. Notably, before any institution could avail itself of generous CCNY monies for book purchases, any retrained librarian was to be afforded the salary and status of an academic. In this case, the benefits to Minchin were both educational and financial.

Several Australian women received top-up grants to enable them to embark on further sponsored study abroad. An English tutor at the women’s college at the University of Melbourne, Elizabeth Sheppard (Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Canterbury, 1929; Master of Arts (MA), University of New Zealand 1930; and PhD, University of London, 1936) received a CCNY grant for literary research at the Huntington Library in California, without which she would have had to forfeit a $1,500 international fellowship received from the American Association of University Women. Similarly, Royal Melbourne Hospital biochemist Beryl Splatt received a grant (1937) to enable her to attend the Courtauld Institute in London for an intensive postgraduate course in her field. Despite being granted leave on full salary by the hospital, Splatt, who had several people dependent on her, could not go to London without extra Carnegie money to cover her travel expenses. Sculptor Daphne Mayo received funds for the philanthropic Queensland Art Fund, of which she was an unpaid director, rather than getting a travel grant for her own professional development.⁵⁰

In short, while the CCNY grants were valuable to some women, the award and its benefits were dependent on external factors, and women frequently depended on access to additional resources and support.⁵¹

Fulbright Exchanges and Connections

The Fulbright Program was a US government programme established after the Second World War and funded and administered bi-nationally. Its primary intention was to promote peace and international understanding, as a two-way exchange that provided grants for awardees to study in the US, as well as for Americans to study abroad.⁵² This programme concentrated on exchanges and the international movement of individual academics and researchers, usually but not solely between universities. It was a global initiative, not confined to the British dominions. A unique aspect was that in each of the countries where a formal exchange agreement was in place, a local foundation or commission administered the programme. The Board of Foreign Scholarships (BFS) in Washington DC was established to oversee the Fulbright policies, as well as selection criteria and processes administered within the host country. Applicants were selected on merit and their potential to be ambassadors for their country.⁵³ These criteria on which “merit” was based were problematic for women on educational exchange.⁵⁴ The initial Australian and New Zealand Fulbright awards were travel grants and, consequently, candidates had to show evidence of financial support from other sources. This usually meant financial assistance from the university they were visiting or simultaneously holding another grant such as a Carnegie award or a Federation of University Women award.

In 1948, New Zealand became the fifth country to join the Fulbright Program. This programme reflected post-war aspirations to promote goodwill and international exchange.⁵⁵ In similar ways to the CCNY grants, the majority of awardees were men, and those women who ventured to the US were usually in emerging professional fields such as early childhood education, home science and library work.⁵⁶

Between 1949 and 1987, there were 935 New Zealand Fulbrighters, of whom 152 (16.2%) were women.⁵⁷ Table 1 provides an overview of the Fulbright grants awarded to New Zealand recipients.⁵⁸

Table 1. Fulbright Grants, New Zealand 1949–87 (adapted from Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand, 107–16).

Date	Grant	Women (%)	Men	Total
1949–1974	NZ Research Scholars & Lecturers	12 (16.8%)	190	202
1949–1987	NZ Graduate Students	82 (17%)	403	485
1949–1982	NZ Exchange Teachers	34 (28.3%)	86	120
1953–1987	NZ Educational & Vocational Development	14 (14%)	86	100
1980–1987	NZ Cultural grants	10 (35.7%)	18	28
1949–1987		152	783	935

As shown in Table 1, the majority of grants were for women artists and teachers. Drawing further from these lists,⁵⁹ the 1950s and 1980s could be considered the heyday for women awardees across all categories. In the 1950s, 52 women (19.4%) received grants, and in the 1980s there were 57 women (29.6%) awardees.⁶⁰

In Australia, in the period 1949–1954, 32 Fulbright grants were awarded to women, and 33 in the next five years. In this same period, 33 men won awards each year. Although these numbers and configurations do not immediately offer a positive picture, the patterns and trends revealed are significant. Priority was given to women working in professional and feminised fields such as librarianship and social work, and academic fields such as education.⁶¹ Yet Australian women’s proportion of Fulbright awards was highest in the 1950s (14%) compared with the subsequent two decades (8% in the 1960s and 7% in the 1970s), a downward trend that warrants further examination.

In the period 1948–1987, there were 706 Fulbright awardees from the US who travelled to New Zealand. Table 2 is a snapshot of the numbers of women and men in each of the respective grant categories.⁶²

Table 2. Fulbright US Grants, 1948–87 (adapted from Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand, 117–24).

Date	Grant	Women (%)	Men	Total
1948–1987	US Research Scholars & Lecturers	37 (10.3%)	320	357
1949–1987	US Graduate Students	73 (32%)	155	228
1950–1982	US Exchange Teachers	58 (54.7%)	48	106
1980–1987	US Cultural grants	4 (26.6%)	11	15
1948–1987		172 (24.3%)	534	706

As highlighted in Table 2, teachers and graduate students were awarded the majority of grants, with the least number of grants for women academics. Visiting American academics to New Zealand in the 1950s were in the female-dominated fields of librarianship, home science, and child and adult education. Visiting US women scholars, especially those combining marriage, career and a PhD qualification, were considered highly newsworthy by the press in the 1950s–1960s, which duly reported their advanced views on women’s potential for education and professional standing. One notable awardee was Lucile Osborn Rust, Professor of Education and director of the home science programme at Kansas State University who visited New Zealand in 1952. As a result of her activities, an ongoing reciprocal relationship between the Home Science departments at Otago and Kansas was established.⁶³ Emeritus Professor Evelyn Smith (University of Illinois) was awarded a Fulbright in 1957 to study food service in hospitals, and in 1959 Professor Catherine Landreth (University of California, Berkley) returned to New Zealand to undertake a comparative study on early childhood development.⁶⁴

The first New Zealand woman to win a Fulbright award was a lecturer, Jessie Constance Hall (Borland) (1949). Known as Connie, she was a research scholar with Bachelor of Science (BSc) and Master of Science (MSc) degrees (University of Otago) and was based at the American Museum of Natural History in New York during her Fulbright year abroad. On her return to New Zealand, her former job at the Otago Museum had been taken and she subsequently took up a lectureship at Wellington Teachers’ College. In the 1950s, Connie was the New Zealand representative on the International Committee for Children’s Museums in Paris.

Elite US universities such as Cornell, Wisconsin, MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Duke and Bryn Mawr were the destinations for university graduates.⁶⁵ For example, Ruth Frances De Berg was awarded a Fulbright travel grant in 1949 to study at Stanford University. Patricia R. Roberts extended her qualifications in the field of education at Duke University in North Carolina in 1954–1955, and Alison Hanham (later Forester) studied English at Bryn Mawr in 1950 and subsequently completed a PhD at the University of Bristol in 1954.

Over half of the number of men awarded Fulbright grants were accompanied by their wives.⁶⁶ In many of the couples, as enthusiastically reported by the Australian press, and frequently on the women’s pages, the wife was often equally as well qualified as her husband and sometimes in the same field. For example, fossil scientists E. L. and Mrs Lundelius both had degrees from Chicago University; she in invertebrates and he in vertebrates. It was he who had a Fulbright award in 1954.

There were also a few husband-and-wife teams who held joint Fulbright awards in the 1950s in Australia. They included anthropologist couples Richard and Patricia Waterman who went to Arnhem Land, Robert and Barbara Lane who went to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and educationists Robert and Nancy Bush who conducted a study of Australian schools in 1955.

One accomplished husband-and-wife team was Joshua and Esther Lederberg, pioneers in genetics and microbiology. Joshua was a prodigy who at the age of 21 was already a lecturer at Wisconsin University when they married in 1946. Esther became his research associate and received her doctorate in 1950. In 1957, the Lederbergs were resident at the University of Melbourne to work in the virology laboratory of 1960 Nobel Prize winner Sir MacFarlane Burnet, Joshua as a senior scholar. Esther’s collaborative work helped Joshua achieve a Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine the following year, when he was 33. She was not mentioned in the award. They divorced in 1966. She concluded her distinguished career as an emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University.⁶⁷

Hidden Obstacles

Oral history testimonies further reveal the hidden obstacles that women encountered. Maris O’Rourke was from a working-class background, and already married with children by the time she embarked on her academic studies part-time in developmental psychology and education at Auckland University in the 1970s. After achieving a BA and MA with first-class honours, she landed a part-time job teaching developmental psychology at the Kindergarten Teachers’ College in Auckland. The job was shared with another woman, and they were not entitled to apply for any permanent job. O’Rourke thought this was wrong and decided to apply for a position (that she considered she was unlikely to get) as a lecturer in early childhood education at Auckland Teachers College. At the interview she was challenged on her lack of experience as a practising teacher and was asked who would look after her children while she was at work. To her amazement, O’Rourke got the job in teacher training, which she did for 12 years. In similar work leaps she later became Secretary of Education in New Zealand and Director of Education for the World Bank in the 1990s.

O’Rourke also encountered discrimination in obtaining academic grants as a married woman with ambitions to do a PhD overseas. O’Rourke applied for a postgraduate scholarship and leave from the college, including applying for Fulbright and a Shirtcliffe Fellowship, which was to assist a New Zealand graduate to pursue a doctorate at a university in New Zealand or another Commonwealth country. O’Rourke explained:

When I first applied for something, they sort of went “oh no we don’t give it to married women.” So, I spent a year getting the University of Auckland to change their rules to give everything to married women … I was absolutely incensed! Of course, I was in the feminist movement … I got onto everybody … they changed it through the Senate I think.⁶⁸

Her mentors suggested she aim to study with the “top people in behavioural psychology” at the University of Kansas. O’Rourke eventually received a Fulbright travel grant, and an American Association of University Women grant to study there in 1979. She went with her husband and two children and lived in student accommodation. Although her husband was not permitted to work in the US, he found a job that paid cash in hand that helped support them.

The first female professor of chemistry at the University of Auckland, Charmian O’Connor, was happily better supported when she went to Texas A&M University in 1972 on a Fulbright travel grant and an American Association of University Women award, after her marriage had ended and with two children aged two. Six academic friends who had invited her to join them at the university helped her find accommodation, and O’Connor soon discovered a congenial cohort of Australian students who provided social support and babysitting. Excellent creches, daycare and schools were available for her children while she “worked all day in the lab.” Further, her Fulbright-funded health insurance proved a great boon as her little girl was often sick during her tenure. At the end of her 10 months in the US, O’Connor sent the children home ahead of her under the care of an Air New Zealand staff member and went on a lecture tour around the US and Ireland. Despite the formidable challenges of double duty as a sole parent while conducting research and studying for a higher degree, she found the benefits of her Fulbright experience far outweighed the struggle. As O’Connor commented, it was “one of the happiest times of my life.”⁶⁹ It took until 1973 for the BFS to amend Fulbright policy documents to substitute the word “family” for “wife” in clauses dealing with scholars’ travel companions, thereby removing the built-in assumption about scholars’ gender. Sixty per cent of unmarried men who left New Zealand returned as married men, and 14% of unmarried women had married by the time they returned.⁷⁰

Charmian O’Connor said that if it had not been for the New Zealand Federation of University Women Fellowship, which paid for her first research trip to the US in 1963, “I don’t think I would ever have had an academic career.” In 1972 she went to Imperial College, London, supported by a fellowship from the Canadian Federation of University Women, and in Texas the same year she simultaneously held an American Association of University Women award with her Fulbright. O’Connor said of her 1972 Fulbright award to Texas A&M that “they paid my airfares to and from New Zealand. It wasn’t a major deal in those days, it was a Fulbright travel grant.” This paled in comparison to the support she received over the years from International Federation of University Women. O’Connor reflected:

Worldwide, the Federation for University Women/Graduate Women has been pivotal to me having a successful career. It’s been their approval of my career and their ability to fund me, not with huge grants, but there wasn’t anything else! Women couldn’t apply for Rhodes,⁷¹ … there wasn’t anything else for women, and the Federation were supportive.

O’Connor repaid the favour by becoming heavily involved over a lifetime with the administration of the New Zealand Federation of Graduate Women.⁷²

The availability or otherwise of these additional awards such as those administered by the Federation of Graduate Women, and the success of women’s applications assuredly influenced the fluctuations in Fulbright awards taken up in any one year. It also seems that the type of award being offered was significant. When US government funding was cut and the BFS decided to reduce the number of postgraduate awards and increase the number of senior scholars, their decision benefited men rather than women.

Interviews often uncover suppressed stories of highly qualified and ostensibly successful women who applied, sometimes repeatedly, for positions of leadership, but did not achieve their ambitions. Charmian O’Connor was shortlisted for four vice-chancellorships. At one New Zealand interview, she was asked: “New Zealand’s never appointed a woman VC [vice-chancellor], why should we appoint you?” O’Connor said she knew from the question that she had not got the job.⁷³

Procedures of selection, programming, funding and decision-making for travel awards were all performed in a context of male domination of university and professional life that women were having to challenge. In giving awards to women, the Fulbright and CCNY award selections were not immune to the existence of conscious and unconscious biases and discriminatory practices.⁷⁴ As new research fields were developed by women, Fulbright selection committees had difficulty assessing research proposals on the subject of women, or those which brought new theoretical (feminist) perspectives to research, and sometimes they proved too challenging for all-male selection committees.⁷⁵ Indigenous women were among those who did not fare well in the early decades of the programme, although the first identified Aboriginal Australian to win a Fulbright award (in 1978) was a woman.⁷⁶

In the 1980s, New Zealand had more proactive policies than Australia in relation to women and Indigenous peoples, encouraging feminist scholars to develop new courses in universities, and to respond to calls for greater diversity and representation of the Māori population and the exploration of biculturalism. Policies adopted by Fulbright New Zealand in the 1980s specifically targeted women’s studies and fostered bicultural scholars who had the potential to contribute to Māori-Pakeha education. The University of Waikato was a centre for US women who received Fulbright grants in women’s studies. Jenrose Felmley, a librarian with a masters degree from the University of Maryland and Executive Director of the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation, Washington, one of the few US foundations supporting research on women, came to Waikato to organise and classify a collection of materials relating to women and present a series of lectures on the sociology of women. Sandra Myres, an historian from Texas, went to the Alexander Turnbull Library (Wellington) in 1982 to research a comparative study on frontier women.⁷⁷ Helen Bequaert (Becky) Holmes was a Fulbright scholar in women’s studies at Waikato in 1986. Holmes had a PhD in genetics and her primary research interests were in feminist technology, assessment of reproductive technologies, feminist bioethics, and women and genetics.⁷⁸

In 1983, Ann Hill-Boeuf, Professor of Sociology at Cedar Crest College, travelled to the University of Waikato to teach a course on “Women in America.” Hill-Boeuf, a Native American, was selected for her dual expertise in women’s studies and Native Americans. Agnes Dodge Holm, a Navajo language specialist with an MA degree in bilingual education from the University of New Mexico, was brought to New Zealand in 1980 on a joint Fulbright with her husband to work with the New Zealand Department of Education to develop bicultural and bilingual school programmes.⁷⁹ The Holms worked on a reservation school in Rock Point, Arizona, where they had pioneered bilingual education for Indigenous people. In New Zealand they were stationed at Ruatoki, then the leading Māori immersion school in the country. Australia did not have any comparable programmes to recruit Indigenous and women’s studies scholars in the 1980s.

Academic Careers and Professional Lives

For a minority of women awardees, travel to the US was an opportunity to expand their own careers and qualifications.⁸⁰ Often, this was their first time overseas. Further experiences, such as studying in a multicultural cohort unfamiliar in their home communities resulted in enriched (and sometimes unexpected) outcomes. Journalist Lorraine Stumm, for example, was among the early grantees from Australia. Stumm had already achieved success within her male-dominated field when as a wartime correspondent she was the first journalist to arrive in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. She wrote that her experiences on a Fulbright award, among a group of Australians and 117 other Fulbright postgraduate scholars from 32 countries studying at Stanford University in California in the early 1950s, enriched her journalism skills.⁸¹ For Stumm, “it was worth every minute to become a graduate and alumnus of this famous American university.”⁸²

Others became aware of the expanded possibilities to have a career overseas. Scientist Patricia Lee, who came from a small town in Far North Queensland, was the first in her family to go overseas, on her Fulbright award in 1954. Instead of returning to Australia, she married a Canadian diplomat. Counter to her own conventional 1950s expectations that she would give up work on her marriage, and counter to the expectations of the diplomatic service regarding working wives, with her husband’s encouragement she kept up her career as a scientist on their international postings in the 1970s and 1980s.⁸³ Other awardees experienced an equality between professional men and women that was transformational. Anthropologist Ruth Fink (later Latukefu) studied at New York University with Margaret Mead in 1958. Fink recalled grappling with big world issues and taking on micro-leadership roles, with men and women as intellectual equals encouraged to discuss the thorny political issues.⁸⁴

The US was attractive to Australian and New Zealand women scholars in opening new opportunities and enlarging their field of acquaintance. Study in the US offered women more choice of disciplines, and higher degrees in areas that did not exist in Australian and New Zealand universities. Many women who benefited from the Fulbright scheme did so because its purpose was actively developing areas of study that had not been part of higher education in universities where the British model was dominant.⁸⁵ These were fields where significant numbers of women were employed.⁸⁶ This was consistent with the practice of the CCNY before it. The recruitment of candidates from institutions beyond the universities – in libraries, laboratories, hospitals, secondary schools, and teachers’ and technical colleges – worked to the advantage of women.

Librarian and equal pay activist Jean Arnot, who began a 47-year career at the State Library of New South Wales in 1921, experienced frustration and discrimination in her career advancement. When in 1947 she applied to become head librarian with the Queensland State Library, and a man with the same qualifications was appointed, she was adamant that she had been dismissed because she was a woman. Arnot won a CCNY and British Council grant in 1949, to study extension library services in places such as prisons and hospitals. Her travels, however, were an interesting and productive interlude that did not count for a great deal in an institution where both the marriage bar and unequal pay operated until the late 1960s. Although promoted to acting in the prestigious position of Mitchell Librarian in 1955 to 1957, Arnot was overlooked for the permanent position, which went to a man. And while she was on secondment, her former position as chief cataloguer was filled by a man who received a higher wage than she did.⁸⁷

The strong tradition of women’s colleges in the US was an attraction to Australian and New Zealand women who might have been educated at single-sex secondary schools.⁸⁸ They took on added importance as these women’s colleges educated women for future careers. Australian Jill Ker Conway (1934–2018) arrived at Harvard on a Fulbright award in 1960. Fifteen years later she was the first woman appointed as president of the all-women Smith College. There Conway pursued the self-consciously feminist aspirations of women’s education, embracing and furthering the newly emergent field of women’s history in both her teaching and her research. Conway also successfully fought against pressures to make Smith College co-educational.⁸⁹ Her impact on the US exemplifies the two-way benefits of international exchange. Her distinguished career as an educator and academic changed the lives of other women. Conway’s experience captures the changes to higher education that followed as individual women used the availability of award schemes to pursue their career goals and follow a professional pathway. Her story does more: it illustrates the way that women academics who were chosen for Fulbright awards on their merits in their initial disciplines, faced with increased exposure to the gender dynamics of that world, then expanded the horizons of themselves and other women. Accountant Mary Murphy, for example, “spent most of her time in a man’s world” advocating for the importance of equal pay and highlighting the absence of women from public life. She argued for “equality for men and women in job, home and national life,” which she claimed was “Australia’s quickest road to peace, prosperity, and a satisfactory place in international affairs.”⁹⁰

Other women too found that pushing one’s own career forward under the auspices of the Fulbright scheme could also be a means to advance a field for the benefit of other women. Margaret R. Till, for example, received a Fulbright award in 1957, and journeyed to Ohio State University to complete an MSc in medical dietetics. On arrival in the US she was surprised to find that few Americans had heard of New Zealand and that she and the other Fulbrighters were to be given a week’s training on “how you behaved in public.”⁹¹ While away, Till also worked at a New York hospital, and was later involved in a research project at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1964. Her work in the US and subsequent conference attendances in Sweden (1965), Washington (1969) and Germany (1973) prompted Till to implement new practices at home in New Zealand. Her overseas experiences led her to advocate for penalty rates and the end of the marriage bar for women dieticians.⁹² When Margaret (Looker) Guy returned from her study (supported by a Rotary scholarship and a Fulbright travel grant) towards a Diploma of Nursing Administration at the University of Chicago in 1954–1955, she said she would directly apply the principles she had learned in the US to her new post at the Canberra Community Hospital. Guy advocated tertiary nursing education on the US model, to give girls careers offering “better educational and monetary advantages.”⁹³ Nursing subsequently became an area of tertiary study in Australia.

Many other Australian and New Zealand women who received Fulbright awards in the first decade are credited with creating new academic fields. The field of social work, for example, is largely attributed to the energetic Norma Parker who had an award in 1951–1952 and subsequently brought American social workers to Australia. In this way, she helped build up the Social Work departments at both the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales, to boost the profession and embed casework as a practice.⁹⁴ The first Australian woman to receive a Fulbright award, Dorothy Munro (later Shineberg), was later recognised as the founder of the field of Pacific history upon her return to Australia.⁹⁵

Not all academic women who had awards in the first decade found their career paths ran smoothly or followed the same trajectory as their male colleagues. Some felt they had not reached the heights they might have under different conditions. Parker was neither promoted nor appointed to a position as full professor. Shineberg found it difficult to obtain a research-only position and did “not advance as far in the profession as she would have wished.”⁹⁶ Not many of the awards were given for specifically feminist projects, but there is evidence that the connections made through the Fulbright Program also fostered the growth of new disciplines in Australia and New Zealand.

Both the Carnegie and Fulbright programmes worked to circulate the exchange of individuals and ideas across geographical, political and social lines, and, in doing so, knitted awardees together within a spatially diverse community.⁹⁷

Conclusion

In this article, our attention has moved away from a dominant interest in an institutional or organisational account of the Carnegie and Fulbright programmes, to thinking about individual women awardees whose personal accounts contribute to a wider narrative about circulations, exchanges and interconnections.

Drawing on specific examples, we have noted the extent to which formal exchange programmes such as CCNY and Fulbright offered new opportunities for women recipients to expand their horizons. Notably, US educational exchange awards gave some women access to study and to build collegial networks that were often closed to them at home.⁹⁸ As we have shown, women awardees forged new career paths and fostered their ambitions to create new academic disciplines and professional fields of work. Thus, the CCNY and Fulbright awards were instrumental to the spread of new ideas and interactions across geographical, social, cultural and educational boundaries.

The impact on women who received awards could be, and often was, progressive as it directly influenced women’s subsequent experience and agency. As we have shown, Australian and New Zealand women took advantage of the promise of Carnegie travel grants from the mid-1930s and Fulbright travel grants from 1950. An award of a CCNY or Fulbright grant impacted on women’s lives and careers. Some became leaders in their field. In many ways, by making visible both the opportunities and the limitations women faced, CCNY and Fulbright awards offered tangible connections across geographic borders and enhanced women’s career ambitions and professional influence both “at home” and “away.” For many more, their experience exposed the limitations and hidden obstacles Australian and New Zealand women faced at their home institutions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [LP150100904].

Notes

1. See, for example, Morris Matthews, “Imagining Home”; J. Goodman, “Working for Change”; J. A. Goodman et al., “Travelling Careers”; Collins, “Perspectives from the Periphery?”; Whitehead, “Exchange Teachers”; Tournès and Scott-Smith, Global Exchanges; Levine, Allies and Rivals.

2. See Woollacott, “Inventing Commonwealth and Pan-Pacific Feminisms”; Midgley et al., Women in Transnational History; Bryce, “Citizens of Empire.”

3. Devaliant, Kate Sheppard.

4. Curthoys and Lake, Connected Worlds, 5; Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women. Studies of Vida Goldstein include Bomford, Dangerous and Persuasive Woman; Kent, Vida. See also Kirkby, Alice Henry; Fitzgerald and Smyth, Women Educators, Leaders, and Activists on professional women and travel.

5. See, for example, Morris Matthews, “Imagining Home”; Goodman et al., “Travelling Careers.”

6. Horne, “Knowledge Front”; Rees, “Sojourns”; Whitehead, “Women Educators.”

7. Hall, “Imperial Careering at Home”; Woollacott, Gender and Empire.

8. Walton, Internationalism; Crutchley, “Teacher Mobility.”

9. Collins, “Glorified Housekeepers”; Carey, “Transnational Project?”; Dzuback, “Women Scholars”; Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise”; Pietsch, Empire of Scholars; Fitzgerald and Collins, Historical Portraits.

10. Fitzgerald and Collins, Historical Portraits; Rees, “Bursting with New Ideas.”

11. Lagemann, Politics of Knowledge.

12. Lebovic, “Meaning of Educational Exchange”; see also Sherington and Horne, “Modes of Engagement.” For a broader history, see Forsyth, History of the Modern Australian University.

13. Lagemann, Politics of Knowledge; Perraton, Learning Abroad.

14. Collins, “Creating Women’s Work”; Green, “Carnegie in Australia.”

15. Fitzgerald, Outsiders or Equals?; Fitzgerald, “Networks of Influence”; Bevis, World History of Higher Education Exchange; Fitzgerald, “Claiming their Intellectual Space.”

16. Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts”; Pietsch, “Mary Rhodes”; Garner and Kirkby, Academic Ambassadors; Battie, “Fulbright Women.”

17. Lagemann, Politics of Knowledge; Perraton, Learning Abroad.

18. See the accounts of Catherine Landreth and Jill Ker Conway in this article as illustrative examples of this point.

19. University of Sydney (1850), University of Melbourne (1853), University of Adelaide (1874), University of Tasmania (1890) University of Queensland (1909) and University of Western Australia (1911).

20. Kelly, Degrees of Liberation; Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? The University of Oxford permitted women to be awarded degrees from 1920, whereas it was 1948 before women were fully admitted to degrees at the University of Cambridge.

21. This was Julia Margaret (Bella) Guerin who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and then a Master of Arts (MA) in 1885 from the University of Melbourne. See Farley, “Guerin, Julia Margaret (Bella) (1858–1923).”

22. Mackinnon, New Women; Theobald, Knowing Women; McCarthy, “‘We Were at the Beginning of Everything.’”

23. Mackinnon, “Early Graduates.”

24. Deacon et al., Transnational Lives.

25. Dobson, “PhDs in Australia, from the Beginning.”

26. Deacon, “Employment of Women.”

27. Sawer, Removal of the Commonwealth Marriage Bar; Theobald and Dwyer, “Episode in Feminist Politics; Dwyer, “Justice at Last.”

28. Morris Matthews, In Their Own Right; Fitzgerald, Outsiders or Equals; Fitzgerald and Collins, Historical Portraits.

29. Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise.”

30. For an overview of the changing social, economic and educational lives of women, see Nolan, Breadwinning; Nolan, “Unstitching the New Zealand State”; Montgomerie, Women’s War; Brookes, History of New Zealand Women.

31. Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise”; Collins, “Glorified Housekeepers.”

32. Dzuback, “Women Scholars.”

33. Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women; Clifford, Lone Voyagers.

34. Lucy Stanton graduated in 1849 with a literary degree from Oberlin College; the first African American woman to complete a university (college) degree. In 1862, Mary Jane Patterson, also African American, graduated with a BA from Oberlin College. See Perkins, “Bound to Them by a Common Sorrow.”

35. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education; Nash, Women’s Higher Education in the United States.

36. Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade; Walton, Women and Philanthropy in Education; Dzuback, “Women Scholars.”

37. Lagemann, Politics of Knowledge.

38. Rochester, “American Philanthropy Abroad”; Rosenfield, World of Giving.

39. Collins, “Creating Women’s Work in the Academy”; Stingone, Inventory of the Carnegie Corporation; Green, “Carnegie in Australia.”

40. Rochester, “American Philanthropy Abroad”; Fitzgerald and Collins, Historical Portraits; Jordan and Kirkby, “Women Modernists.”

41. James Russell was Secretary of the Dominion and Colonies Fund. His father, James Earl Russell, had been the special assistant to the Corporation and previously dean of Teachers College, Columbia. See Russell, Extension of University Teaching.

42. Carnegie Grant files, Series 111, Box 342, Folder 3, Carnegie Corporation Collection, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University.

43. Fitzgerald, Outsiders or Equals.

44. Thomson and Thomson, Ann Gilchrist Strong; Collins, “Creating Women’s Work”; Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise”; Fitzgerald and Collins, Historical Portraits.

45. Thomson and Thomson, Ann Gilchrist Strong. See also Collins, “Creating Women’s Work.”

46. Glotzer, “Long Shadow.”

47. Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good; Thomson and Thomson, Ann Gilchrist Strong.

48. Collins, “Creating Women’s Work.”

49. Mary Tenison Woods Papers, 1928–1971, State Library of NSW, Ms. See also O’Brien, “Tenison Woods, Mary Cecil (1893–1971).”

50. Garner and Kirkby, Academic Ambassadors.

51. Collins, “Creating Women’s Work in the Academy”; Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good.

52. Garner and Kirkby, Academic Ambassadors; Garner and Kirkby, “Tactful Visitor, Scientific Observer.”

53. Changing criteria are revealed in decisions of the selection committees; see Australian-American Educational Foundation (AAEF, formerly USEF) records, Canberra. Board of Foreign Scholarships records are held in the State Department Archives, Washington DC. McDonald et al., Coming and Going; see also Kirkby and Jordan, “Undesirable Type of Fulbright Grantee.”

54. Kirkby and Jordan, “Undesirable Type of Fulbright Grantee.”

55. Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand; Macdonald et al., Coming and Going.

56. Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise.”

57. Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand, 107–16.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Education was a university discipline in New Zealand from the early twentieth century. See Fitzgerald and Knipe, Historical Perspectives. In Australia, education was a university discipline in six universities by the mid-twentieth century. See Selleck, Shop; Flesch, Committed to Learning; Forsyth, History of the Modern Australian University.

62. Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand, 117–24.

63. Strong, History; see also Fitzgerald, Outsiders or Equals.

64. For an extended overview of the career of Catherine Landreth, see Collins, “Locating Women in Educational Leadership”; Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise.”

65. Macdonald et al., Coming and Going, 8.

66. Macdonald et al., Coming and Going.

67. Richmond, “Esther Lederberg”; Broad, “Joshua Lederberg.”

68. Interview with Maris O’Rourke, conducted by Diane Kirkby, Auckland, 2017.

69. Interview with Charmian O’Connor, conducted by Diane Kirkby, Wellington, 2017.

70. Macdonald et al., Coming and Going, 4.

71. Rhodes Scholarships opened to women in 1976.

72. Interview with Charmian O’Connor, conducted by Diane Kirkby, Wellington, 2017.

73. Ibid.

74. Interview with Adele Millard, conducted by Alice Garner, National Library of Australia (NLA) “Fulbright Scholars” oral history collection; Cass et al., Why So Few?

75. Interview with Hugh Collins, conducted by Alice Garner, Melbourne, 2011–2012, in NLA “Fulbright Scholars” oral history collection.

76. Poet Kath Walker, later known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal, was Poet in Residence at Bloomberg State College, Pennsylvania.

77. The Alexander Turnbull Library (Wellington, New Zealand) was founded in 1918 and is primarily a repository for historical and cultural artefacts (oral, digital, visual, physical), archives and taonga (treasures) linked with New Zealand’s history.

78. Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand.

79. Ibid., 100–1.

80. Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise.”

81. Stumm, I Saw Too Much, 151; Baker, Australian Women War Reporters.

82. Ibid.

83. Interview with Patricia Lee Taylor, conducted by Diane Kirkby, New York, 2017.

84. Ruth Fink Latukefu interviewed by Alice Garner in Fulbright Scholars Oral History Project.

85. Hall, “Imperial Careering”; Walton, Internationalism.

86. United States Educational Foundation (USEF), the Fulbright Programme: the First Eight years and the Future. Canberra, 1958.

87. Kirkby and Jordan. “These Labourers.”

88. Conway, Road from Coorain; Mackinnon, Women, Love and Learning.

89. Conway, Road from Coorain; Conway, True North; Conway, Woman’s Education; Garner and Kirkby, Academic Ambassadors, 153, 158–9.

90. Argus, June 30 1953, cited in Garner and Kirkby, “Tactful Visitor, Scientific Observer.”

91. Cited in Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise,” 60.

92. Crooks, History. Penalty rates refer to higher rates of pay or allowances that apply when required to work particular hours or days. For example, on the weekends or on a statutory holiday.

93. USEF, Fulbright the first 8 Years; Sydney Morning Herald, September 14 1954, 11.

94. Garner and Miller, “How the Fulbright Programme Helped.”

95. Ninham, Cohort of Pioneers; see also Encyclopaedia of Women & Leadership.

96. Ninham, Cohort of Pioneers.

97. Druett, Fulbright in New Zealand; White, “Carnegie Philanthropy in Australia”; Pietsch, “Mary Rhodes”; Collins, “In Search of Scholarly Expertise”; Green, “Carnegie in Australia.”

98. W. Walton, Internationalism.