Historical Portraits of Women Home Scientists: The University Of ...

To investigate these questions, it is necessary to go beyond the fleeting autobiographical moment that was captured by the camera to include an analysis of a range of documentary and archival evidence as well as oral testimonies. This wider inclusion of material is necessary so that the frame of the portrait limits neither the interpretation nor the gaze of the viewer. As will be illustrated in the chapters of this book, much of the available biographical evidence to construct and frame portraits of academic women is fragmentary. Jane Martin explained that in reference to the recovery of the lives of women educator activists, ‘the politics of historical survival mean archival gaps’.⁷ The limited biographical material that is available confirms what a physical reading of the image suggests: Ann Gilchrist Strong was the sole woman professor at the University of New Zealand at the time. Thus, this photograph is a stark reminder of the solitary and lonely existence that Strong and her predecessors experienced; they were, in effect, outsiders in the scholarly world of men.⁸

The photo, taken nine years into Strong’s tenure as an administrator and an institution builder, presents a portrait of a confident, soberly dressed woman in her middle years. Yet, for a knowledgeable viewer with access to other biographical sources, there is an alternative narrative that frames this portrait. For example, although she continued to wear her wedding rings and it was commonly understood that Strong was a widow by the time she took up her appointment in New Zealand, in fact, she and her husband were divorced in 1909 following the death of their infant son (who was born in 1908). Perceptions of Strong as an outsider are underscored by her solitary presence and her apparent inattention to or lack of interest in her colleagues and surroundings. What this photograph omits to alert the reader to is the belief by her male colleagues that home science was a low-status field of knowledge and therefore ‘unsuitable’ as a university program or qualification.⁹ Yet, during her twenty years as a professor, Strong worked to promote the credibility of home science to university administrators who were sceptical of its value as an academic discipline and to support the program’s integrity against the Department of Education’s desire to strengthen its vocational links to