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How AWIS got started

Early days of AWIS: Letter from a founding member…

Our thanks to Janet Davies who originally wrote this article for the newsletter. Jane is now retired but was formerly Associate Professor in Education, Massey University

Thank you for inviting me to write about “the early days of AWIS, who else was involved and what, you think, we have achieved in the meantime…” Well, clearly, a great deal! The profile of women in science in New Zealand is high and positive, due in no small part to the Association’s representation of its members and the consequent recognition of women in science by the science community. The Zonta Science Award, established in consultation with AWIS, provides not only a career goal for women but a vehicle for public recognition of women’s contribution to science. Most importantly, ongoing support for socialization and networking amongst women in the sciences – the primary aims of the Association at its inception - is provided through the newsletter, conferences and, what we could not have foreseen twenty years ago, a website.

The inaugural meeting of the Association of (as it was then) Women in the Sciences was held in February 1986 in the home of Dr Janet Bradford-Grieve. Janet, then Senior Scientist at DSIR (later Science Programme Leader at NIWA, and FRSNZ), was the founding Secretary/Treasurer of the organization, the only officer we felt we needed in those early days.

Key to the shape of our evolving ‘women scientists’ support group’ was founding member Dr Ros McIntosh’s membership of the American Association for Women in Science Inc. Ros, then researcher at the Wellington Clinical School (later Associate Professor at Massey University), provided us with information on possible goals and structures.

The establishment of the group was one half of a two-part response to a Symposium on Women and Employment in Science and Technology that had been held in Wellington the previous year. In parallel was the establishment of a group to support teachers, both men and women, wanting to promote women’s and girls’ involvement in the sciences, subsequently called WISE (Women into Science and Engineering).

The Symposium, which was oversubscribed with 100 attending, was the brainchild of CAWSE, the self-styled Council for the Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering, a group I convened to examine and address the issues for women in the sciences in New Zealand. Then a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, I had identified significant gender differences in attitude, uptake and performance in science, mathematics and engineering at New Zealand secondary and tertiary levels. The fifteen CAWSE members included fellow PhD student and NZAS Vice-President Karin Knedler (recently Director Policy, Ministry of Women’s Affairs) and senior women in the sciences and the public service.

The aim of the Symposium was to raise public awareness and to identify directions for action. Presentations by CAWSE members included a review of the position of women in employment in science and engineering in New Zealand, prepared by Janet Grieve and Penny Fenwick, then at the Department of Social Welfare Head Office (recently Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at Victoria University). Those 1985 findings made shocking reading. While it would be very difficult to determine whether AWIS had influenced any change in employment status, a comparison with the situation today would be interesting.

Congratulations on wonderful work for women in the sciences!