{"id":3913,"date":"2013-03-04T10:07:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T23:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:25:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:25:08","slug":"quietly-pushing-barriers-aside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2013\/03\/04\/quietly-pushing-barriers-aside\/","title":{"rendered":"Quietly Pushing Barriers Aside"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Every<\/a>
This photo of Hamilton High School in Victoria was taken when my mother was in Form 1 (year 7) in 1953.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week came the disappointing news that the participation in Maths by girls in their final year of school in New South Wales is declining significantly<\/a>.\u00a0 In 2001, the first year when students were no longer required to study a Maths or science subject in year twelve in order to qualify for university entrance, 90.5% of girls studied Maths whereas 96.9% of boys did.<\/p>\n

The disparity between the genders in participation in Maths was already noticeable in 2001.\u00a0 Ten years later this disparity has worsened.\u00a0 By 2011 girls participation in year twelve Maths had dropped to 78.2%.\u00a0 The participation of boys had also decreased but not to such a degree.\u00a0 In 2011 90.2% of boys studied year twelve Maths.<\/p>\n

Rachel Wilson, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at University of Sydney noted that this problem is partly due to the attitude about girls and women being bad at Maths.<\/p>\n

There are many, many examples of girls and women excelling in Maths.\u00a0 Jane Gleeson-White has highlighted the stories of three Australian women who are clearly brilliant at Maths<\/a>.\u00a0 She could have listed many more.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately some dismiss these women as being \u2018unusual\u2019 (which is often code for \u2018weird\u2019 or \u2018abnormal\u2019). Yet the story about Clio Cresswell, senior lecturer in mathematics and statistics at University of Sydney, caught my eye.\u00a0 It is not the tale of success in maths one would expect.\u00a0 Cresswell told Jane Gleeson-White that she struggled with maths at school.\u00a0 What led Clio Cresswell to ultimately succeed in maths at a high level?\u00a0 Read Jane Gleeson-White’s post<\/a> to find out!<\/p>\n

In this post I want to highlight a story of an ordinary woman and her quiet determination to participate in science and to study Maths.\u00a0 She was not brilliant at Maths but she enjoyed it and wanted to pursue it. Her story demonstrates some of the subtle and not so subtle barriers that dissuade many women from studying Maths and Science.<\/p>\n

This woman is my mother.<\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s memories are of growing up in south-western Victoria in the 1940s and 1950s where girls were expected to be just as good at Maths and Science as boys and where girls participated in these subjects at the same levels as boys.<\/p>\n

When my mother attended high school in the 1950s there were three academic streams which high school students were assigned to in Victoria \u2013 professional, commercial and domestic arts.\u00a0 Mum was placed in the domestic arts stream by the school despite her parents requesting her to be enrolled in the professional stream.\u00a0 According to her the first her parents knew about it was when she brought home her report book.\u00a0 Her father went to the school and requested that she be moved to the professional stream.\u00a0 She was moved at the beginning of Form 2 (year 8).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt meant that I had to make up a year of French, Algebra, and Geometry, as the Domestic stream only did Arithmetic\u201d Mum recalls. \u201cHowever, I was really excited about the three new subjects. I had found Arithmetic boring, but the more theoretical stuff was enthralling, and French was good too. So I worked hard. No-one breathed a word about girls being no good at Maths and Science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her father had left school when he was fourteen but devised a good way of helping her with the things he had not learned. \u201cIf I had a Maths problem\u201d Mum remembers, \u201cinstead of just saying he couldn\u2019t help me, he would ask me to show him how to do it, which I would proceed to do. Inevitably, in the telling, I would see my error. It was an ingenious method!\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother and her family moved to Bendigo towards the end of Form 3 (year 9).\u00a0 She was surprised when she found that there were only about four girls in her large Form 4 Maths class at Bendigo High School.<\/p>\n

After just nine months in Bendigo her family moved again.\u00a0 She completed Form 4 at Cohuna High School on the Murray River.\u00a0 Cohuna only had a small population at the time and opportunities at the local high school were limited.\u00a0 She wanted to do science at university but the Maths subject that she needed to complete at high school in order to prepare for university was not available at her school.\u00a0 She studied Maths and French by correspondence but was not able to study Form 5 Physics at all.<\/p>\n

By coincidence Mum\u2019s future husband had been to school with the teacher at Cohuna High School who supervised Mum\u2019s completion of her Maths correspondence subject.\u00a0 He laughed – the teacher had not completed any Maths or Science beyond form 4 level.\u00a0 Mum was on her own.<\/p>\n

As Cohuna High School only offered classes to fifth form my mother transferred to a larger school in a neighbouring town sixty kilometres down the river.\u00a0 The problems caused by her disrupted education manifested themselves during her year at Echuca High School.\u00a0 She struggled due to the inadequate education she had received the year before.\u00a0 While she passed some subjects she did not pass her final year.<\/p>\n

In 1959 my mother moved to Melbourne with ambitions to work and study at night.<\/p>\n

She wanted a job in science.\u00a0 Her supportive father took her to see a careers counselor.\u00a0 \u201cI told him that I wanted to be a Geologist. He said that was not possible for me because of having to go out in the field and camp alone with men.\u201d The Careers Counsellor suggested that she try for a job at the Defence Standards Laboratories (DSL) at West Maribyrnong. \u00a0At DSL she was given a choice between a job in Metrology (which concerns measurement), or Spectroscopy<\/a>.\u00a0 My mother thought measurement sounded boring so she chose to work as a Technical Assistant working on emission spectroscopy for metallurgical analysis.<\/p>\n

Next step was to enrol in a Diploma of Applied Physics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).\u00a0 The enrolment staff were not used to women seeking to enrol in Physics.\u00a0 My mother remembers the staff trying to persuade her to enrol in the diploma of Chemistry \u2013 maybe that was more ladylike?\u00a0 She stood her ground in a quiet but obstinate fashion.\u00a0 She did not want to do Chemistry.<\/p>\n

My mother successfully enrolled in Physics \u2013 the only woman in her year to do so.<\/p>\n

The lecturer read the roll at a lecture but Mum\u2019s name was not called out.\u00a0 He then asked those whose names had not been called to state their name.\u00a0 At that time male students were referred to by their surnames at school, not their first names.\u00a0 \u201cLove\u201d Mum yelled from the back of the lecture theatre, for that was her surname.\u00a0 You can imagine the mirth in the room full of men.<\/p>\n

She was not a star student but passed her first year \u2013 three subjects in Physics and two in Maths.\u00a0 Her subsequent years were badly affected by the death of her father to whom she was close and she dropped out of the course.<\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n

The story does not end here.\u00a0 My mother continued to work in the laboratory doing Spectroscopy and went on to further study in Maths and Science, but I will leave that for another post.<\/p>\n

There were so many points in my mother\u2019s early life when she could have easily given up on her ambition and stopped studying Maths and Science, yet she persisted.\u00a0 An important part of her story is the encouragement she received from her father and the work of her teachers.\u00a0 Men have a vital role in developing a society where women are treated fairly and given opportunities.<\/p>\n

Some women become publicly noted for their achievements and quite rightly so, but there are many women who also push the boundaries in less spectacular ways.\u00a0 The contribution of these women is important too.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s story is not unique.\u00a0 There are others like her but you won\u2019t hear much about them.\u00a0 You might even know such a woman yourself.<\/p>\n

Women have been working successfully in maths, science and technology for a long time.\u00a0 Their stories should be told.<\/p>\n

This is the first of three posts about my mother’s career in science and technology. In the next post I share the story of my mother working in laboratories between 1959 and 1963<\/a>. The final post is about my mother going to university as a mature age student and working as a programmer<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The participation of girls in maths during their final year of school in New South Wales has declined significantly in ten years. An education researcher has noted that attitudes regarding girls being bad at maths were partly to blame.<\/p>\n

In this post I share the story of one woman growing up in country Australia during the 1950s and her determination to study maths and science at university. She had to overcome many barriers that could have easily led her to give up on her dream.<\/p>\n

She was not brilliant. You won’t have heard of her. However, I found her story inspiring.<\/p>\n

I believe that it is important that the stories of ordinary women working in maths, science and technology should be told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[43,100,106,109,129,139,191,194],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Yvonne Perkins","author_link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/author\/yvonne\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7141,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/7141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}