A shining star for progress
The deaths of Sylvia Plath and Charlotte Bronte, among the most talented writers of their generation, were not registered by The New York Times. Nor was that of New Zealand’s remarkable astronomer Beatrice Tinsley.
The Times is fixing these glaring omissions with new project Overlooked, which is seeing history amended to include those people whose lives were not considered worthy of remembrance at the time.
‘‘To look back at the obituary archives can . . . be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers,’’ the paper writes. ‘‘The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones.’’
The addition of Tinsley, the New Plymouth raised cosmologist whose work at Yale into the evolution of galaxies changed the way scientists viewed the universe, is welcome. A feminist who fought for her place in a discipline dominated by men, Tinsley’s achievements were especially inspirational, considering the hurdles in her way.
These ranged from being unable to secure work at the University of Canterbury because her husband worked there, to being sidelined in favour of her male colleagues and forced to make the choice to leave her children to further her career.
But when it comes to women of science in New Zealand, at least in recent years, Tinsley has in fact been fairly visible. In 2008, Christine Cole Catley wrote the biography Bright Star, and a year later the University of Canterbury – which must have been kicking itself for not employing her – formed the Beatrice Tinsley Institute.
University of Auckland historian Kate Hannah, who studies women’s invisibility in science, said Tinsley stands in contrast to many of New Zealand’s female scientists. An analysis of Tinsley’s life published last year found women and girls in science still struggle with the same obstacles she did: sexism when it comes to education, hiring, payment, career restrictions and the way their work is valued.
Women have always done scientific work, Hannah says, but the way this has been categorised has served to camouflage their achievements. ‘‘They’re defined as technicians, administrative support, they do the typing, the editing, computational work. There was a choice made not to define their work as scientific, but clerical . . .’’
These women were university-trained scientific graduates, wives and daughters. Laura Buller, whose father Walter wrote the seminal Buller’s Birds, did many drawings and translation of academic texts for him.
‘‘I view that as a scientific act,’’ Hannah says. ‘‘In New Zealand in the early 19th and 20th century we had a lot of women who were botanists and botanical artists, doing a lot of illustration and photographic work, but they were lucky to get a plant named after them.’’
In government labs, women were doing a lot of the technical work, but the names on the published papers would typically be their male colleagues.
Hannah and her Victoria University coresearcher Rebecca Priestley are not the only scientists elevating the role of women as unacknowledged authors and collaborators. For its 150th anniversary last year, the Royal Society wrote short biographies for 150 women in science – have you ever heard of Pamela Young, the first woman to work in Antarctica; or Whakaotirangi, the experimental gardener who discovered how to best grow ku¯ mara in New Zealand’s climate?
If we truly want to increase the number of girls entering careers in science, technology, engineering and maths, then increasing the visibility of these role models is key. Let’s hope Tinsley’s belated recognition is just the first wave.