Finding Matilda: deconstructing women’s invisibility in Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage

Introduction

2017 marks 150 years since the establishment of the Royal Society of New Zealand (as the New Zealand Institute) in 1867, and provides an opportunity to reflect on current cultural interpretations and revisions of New Zealand’s scientific past. It seems timely to review and evaluate some narratives of that past, as presented at the November 2015 conference, Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage, particularly focusing on the representation of women in science within the conference and its surrounding discourses. Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage commemorated the 150th anniversary of James Hector’s appointment as head of the New Zealand Geological Survey, and the 100th anniversary of the appointment of Ernest Marsden, who would go on to head the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), as professor of physics at Victoria University College.

Feminist historian of science, Margaret W. Rossiter argued, in her introduction to the first volume of Women Scientists in America:

Approaches and methods

This short communication utilises ‘reading against the grain’ (Batholomae & Petrosky Citation1993)—an approach described by cultural theorist Terry Eagleton as ‘reading against the grain of supposedly self-evident truths, rather than taking them for granted’ (Eagleton Citation2004)—to consider the presentation of New Zealand’s scientific history through the medium of the 2015 conference Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage. ‘Reading against the grain’ is a key tool of deconstruction, used by feminist, subaltern, and postcolonial readers and writers to interrogate historical and literary texts, looking for gaps, omissions and biases (Benjamin Citation1968, p. 256). This technique encourages the disclosure of concealed meaning and is used to push back against the foregrounding of a singular or dominant viewpoint, providing, in this short communication, understanding of the dominance of institutional history, and a high number of participants (for example, retired scientists), on New Zealand historiography of science. ‘Reading against the grain’ offers insight into ways in which women’s contributions to science in New Zealand have been absented or camouflaged. A feminist approach to countering the invisibility of women within the presented histories is offered, drawing upon philosopher of science Sandra Harding’s feminist standpoint theory, which asserts that research must start from the lives of the marginalised:

Colonial infrastructure and invisible women: the narrative structures of New Zealand science history at Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage

Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage focused on commemorating two significant anniversaries and therefore centred the lives and work of Hector and Marsden, and colleagues such as Augustus Hamilton, director of the Dominion Museum. These men, their ‘scientific mentors and contemporaries’ (Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage Call for Papers Citation2015), and other learned men from all fields of endeavour—the missionary William Colenso, the lawyer Walter Buller—were contributing extensively to the burgeoning intellectual culture of the colony. Their contributions, largely made through the establishment of the physical infrastructures of colonial science, and via the provincial branches of the New Zealand Institute, are foregrounded in descriptions of the nature of the conference, discussed in the call for papers and the accepted abstracts. The call for papers lists many of these men by name as suggested paper topics.

Announced as ‘an academic conference to celebrate these anniversaries’ (Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage Conference Announcement Citation2015) of key ‘western’ science events (Mercier et al. Citation2012) in New Zealand, the 2015 conference call for papers provides examples of the dominance of singular viewpoints in the history of science in New Zealand. The call for papers suggested submitters consider scientists and their disciplines, naming Hector and Marsden, but also their ‘scientific mentors and contemporaries’: Colenso, Ferdinand von Hochsetter, Julius von Haast, Ernest Rutherford, Charles Fleming, Charles Cotton (Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage Call for Papers 2015). Papers were sought on scientific institutions and networks specifically. While both Mātauranga Māori and the encounter between indigenous knowledge and European science are suggested as potential paper topics, not a single female scientist is named, and there is no specific mention of women in science.

The conference handbook, with accepted abstracts provided, reflects the call for papers. Papers accepted name Hector, Hamilton, Colenso, Joseph Hooker, Von Haast, Marsden, Rutherford and Thomas Cheeseman (Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage Conference Handbook Citation2015). There are a number of references in presentation titles and abstracts to ‘men of science’, including ‘Phillip Lutely Sclater, forgotten Victorian man of science, and his New Zealand connections’, an abstract which suggests that Lutely Sclater has been wrongfully ‘overshadowed’ by others’ contributions despite his significance in British ornithology (Hughes Citation2015). A paper seeks to ‘resurrect’ the mana of New Zealand’s most internationally renowned 20th century scientist, Ernest Rutherford, claiming that ‘only in New Zealand was Ernest Rutherford looked down on by non-scientists’ (Campbell Citation2015, p. 23). Another paper seeks to ‘balance’ the record for Edwin Jennings, E. H. Gibson and William Goodlet, employees of the Otago Museum whose contributions, the abstract suggests, were imbalanced because of the dominance of the legacies of Frederick Hutton, Thomas Parker and William Benham, the first three curators of the museum (White Citation2015). William Goodlet was the museum’s janitor. New Zealand astrophysics history is described as being ‘from Bickerton to Bateson’ (Orchiston & Hearnshaw Citation2015). Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for a conference that commemorates James Hector’s arrival in New Zealand, his name dominates both paper titles and abstracts.

Analysing the conference abstracts, there are over 130 references to more than 88 individuals; of those, seven are women. Five of those women are named in the abstract for the paper presented by the author, which names 20th century botanists Lucy Beatrice Moore and Lucy Cranwell Smith, as well as the 21st century microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles, physical chemist Nicola Gaston and materials engineer Michelle Dickinson (Hannah Citation2015). Pamela Hyde’s abstract on the Swiss naturalist Henry Suter references his wife Ida (Hyde Citation2015). Cameron Smart’s ‘New Zealand’s radar story’ abstract refers to Elizabeth Alexander leading ‘an operations research group specialising in the interaction between the radar and the weather … she … helped to start Australian radio astronomy’ (Smart Citation2015, p. 21). Of the 81 men mentioned in 46 presented papers James Hector (13), Ernest Marsden (five), William Colenso (four), Julius Von Haast (three) and Augustus Hamilton (three) are referred to in more than two abstracts. The dominance of colonial science and scientists in New Zealand science, as represented within the Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage discourse, contributes to the absenting or camouflaging of women’s contributions. Men’s contributions to the establishment of the colonial scientific infrastructure were significant, and the practices of that infrastructure excluded women—Francis Lucian Reid notes that although ‘many women attended meetings of the philosophical societies as guests of male society members … such female guests were not given speaking rights at meetings’ (Reid Citation2005, p. 24).

A reliance on chronological narratives of New Zealand’s scientific infrastructure and institutions further exacerbates the absenting or camouflaging of women’s contributions. The conference highlighted abstracts on infrastructure: the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute; the preservation, restoration and commemoration of historic Antarctic huts; and a description of the development of an online resource chronicling the history of weather and forecasting. Other accepted abstracts chronicle institutions: science outreach at the University of Otago; the establishment of the DSIR; histories of the DSIR Climate lab, the Industrial Psychology Division, the Geophysics Division and the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute; the Mt John Observatory; and the New Zealand Association of Scientists. A further set focus on museums: the collecting and curation practices at the Colonial Museum, Wellington; the Otago Museum; and the Hawke’s Bay Philosophical Institute Museum. The dominance of infrastructure and institutions provides a compelling narrative, chronological structure for understanding New Zealand’s scientific past as a series of events set in motion by the scientists whose names dominate the Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage discourse. Locating New Zealand’s scientific history in the persons of those ‘men of science’, or the scientific infrastructures they established and led, inevitably creates exclusions; Margaret Rossiter calls this exclusion, specifically within the historiography and sociology of science, ‘the Matilda effect’—‘cases, historical and contemporary, of women scientists who have been ignored, denied credit or otherwise dropped from sight … ’ (Rossiter Citation1993, p. 325). The Matilda effect is named for the 19th century American suffragette, philosopher, writer and inventor, Matilda Joselyn Gage (1826–1898) ‘who in the late nineteenth century both experienced and articulated this phenomenon’ (Rossiter Citation1993, p. 325).

Participant histories and subjectivities: who writes New Zealand’s scientific history?

Participant voices dominate and mediate the representation of the history of science in New Zealand presented by Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage. Participant histories, coupled with the centrality of New Zealand's scientific infrastructure to narratives of New Zealand science, and the dominance of the lives of a collection of ‘men of science’ combine to ‘camouflage’ women and other marginalised groups’ contributions to scientific history in New Zealand (Rossiter Citation1982, p. xv). In the discourses of Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage, participant voices are a key feature, particularly of the conference sessions focused on the historiography of the 20th century. Nearly half the conference presentations are authored by current or former scientists or employees of scientific or research organisations, many of whom are researching and writing about institutions they are or were part of, colleagues they worked closely with, or family members. Two papers presented were written by sons about fathers: John Hearnshaw’s ‘DSIR’s Industrial Psychology Division 1942–54’, about the work of his father, Leslie Hearnshaw; and Keith Willett’s ‘Four Mile Man—Dr Richard (Dick) Wright Willett’, about his father Dick Willett, former head of the DSIR’s New Zealand Geological Survey (Hearnshaw Citation2015; Willett Citation2015).

Participant histories also feature significantly in the wider historiography of science in New Zealand; recent publications include Simon Nathan’s Citation2015 James Hector: Explorer, Scientist, Leader, in which Nathan, Emeritus Scientist at GNS Science asserts in his afterword that Hector’s ‘memory [was] overshadowed’ by the dominance of Ernest Marsden in the middle of the 20th century (Nathan Citation2015, p. 236). John Hearnshaw, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Canterbury is author of a number of books on New Zealand’s astronomical history, including the 2015 Mt John—The First 50 Years which both clearly responds to a desire to chronicle and commemorate, but also to preserve—Hearnshaw describes the observatory as ‘too special to lose’ (Hearnshaw & Gilmore Citation2015, p. 9). A number of short biographical notes about New Zealand scientists have been produced in various scientific society’s journals; for example, A. D. Thomson and E. J. Godley’s work on Ellen Wright Blackwell and William Alexander Thomson in The New Zealand Botanical Society Newsletter (Citation1995). Thomson worked in the Botany Division of the DSIR, Godley was a research associate at Landcare Research. John Jillet, director of the Portobello Marine Laboratory, wrote the entry on his predecessor, Betty Batham, in Te Ara—The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (Jillet Citation2016). Marine biologist John Morton wrote about both Lucy Beatrice Moore and Lucy Cranwell Smith (Morton Citation1995, Citation2016); Richard Dell, director of the Dominion Museum wrote a biographical note about Ellen Wright Blackwell (Dell Citation2016).

Rossiter noted that ‘women’s historically subordinate “place” in science (and thus their invisibility to even experienced historians of science) was not a coincidence’ (Rossiter Citation1982, p. xv); participant histories, impacted by closeness to the subject, memory and a desire to commemorate could lead to further absenting of women from New Zealand’s scientific history, with a concomitant reduction in theoretical or contextual interpretation. Robert K. Merton, discussing scientific reputation in 1968, talked of the ‘accumulation of advantage’—which Rossiter describes: ‘those remembered often already had charisma, previous reputations, positions in large “research schools” and many well-placed disciples’ (Rossiter Citation1993, p. 326). Hector and Marsden, the central figures in Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage have that accumulated advantage. Significantly, given the dominance of male scientists in New Zealand science, historically, those participants writing histories have tended to be men—compounding ‘the Matilda effect’ (Rossiter Citation1993).

Synthesis and standpoint approaches: the opportunities for history of science in New Zealand

Collective and concerted effort has been made, both internationally and within New Zealand, to correct the historic invisibility of women from the history of science. Margaret Rossiter’s three volume work, Women Scientists in America (Citation1982, Citation1984, Citation2012) foregrounds the lives and work of women in science in the United States. Rossiter describes how her project moved from a ‘collective biography’ to a history of an occupational group—‘historical labour economics’—and documents the difficulties for historians of women in science: ‘most of the women scientists bordered … on the invisible’ (Rossiter Citation1982, pp. xi–xii).

Sandra Harding notes that ‘starting thought from women’s lives is something that both men and women must learn to do. Women’s telling their experiences is not the same thing as thinking from the perspective of women’s lives’ (Harding Citation1991, p. 150). Harding’s distinction, which emphasises the difference between chronicling of women’s individual experiences and contextualising women’s shared experiences historically and politically, suggests that what is required is critical thinking and analysis of the motivations for women’s absenting from our scientific past (Harding Citation1991). Contemporary historiography of science in New Zealand must continue to transition from the collective biography mode Rossiter described in 1982 (a kind of women-telling-their-experience approach) towards a variety of modes that might provide thinking from the perspective of women’s lives, and thus work towards a more equitable history of science in New Zealand. One outstanding example of a serious, individual biography centred within one woman’s experience is Christine Cole Catley’s Bright Star: Beatrice Hill Tinsley, Astronomer (Citation2006) which Catley describes as a work of synthesis (Catley Citation2006, p. 14). Catley brought together a multiplicity of resources and voices, combined to create a work which, it is important to note, she felt unable to ‘complete and publish’ until after the death of Beatrice Hill Tinsley’s father Edward: ‘biographers owe their subjects the truth. Those who were or are close to them have feelings to be respected, too. How to deal squarely with all this, in situations likely to cause pain?’ (Catley Citation2006, p. 11).

In New Zealand, alongside participant histories are a number of histories which foreground women’s contributions to New Zealand science history, perhaps in response to the absence of women from New Zealand science historiography, and influenced by the development of feminist theoretical approaches to the philosophy of science. Paula Martin’s Citation1993 Lives with Science: Profiles of Senior New Zealand Women of Science, published to coincide with the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Science Conference, sought to document previously hidden lives of women in science via an oral history project, exhibition and subsequent book. Similarly, Rebecca Priestley’s The Awa Book of New Zealand Science (Citation2006), clearly seeks to consciously redress the historic invisibility of women from the history of science, drawing upon a number of contemporary women in science to increase women’s voices. In Priestley and Veronika Meduna’s Atoms, Dinosaurs and DNA (Citation2008), which is aimed at children, 12 of the 68 scientists profiled are women. That those lives and experiences surfaced in these texts are not present within the discourse of Finding New Zealand’s Scientific Heritage presents a conundrum: despite active work in privileging these histories for a general audience, there is more work to be done in writing ‘a more equitable and comprehensive history and sociology of science that not only does not leave all the “Matildas” out, but calls attention to still more of them’ (Rossiter Citation1993, p. 337).