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

growing emphasis on the higher education of women. For Boys-Smith, Rawson, and Strong, New Zealand offered opportunities that neither England nor the United States could—the establishment of a scholarly field on their own terms. Similarly, academic study and success as well as the sponsorship of their professors opened up possibilities for professional careers for Gregory, Todhunter, and Landreth. Thus, New Zealand offered a unique convergence of opportunities for these women. Although the country’s traditions drew on its Anglo heritage, New Zealanders’ desire to not fully replicate these structures provided an opportunity for new frames and new traditions to be established. Although new and improved opportunities for women were not easily obtained, visions of New Zealand as a socially progressive, egalitarian nation presented fewer barriers to the opening up of higher education for women.⁴⁷ The contradiction that existed was that although some women were the beneficiaries of the opening up of higher education, the academic and professional environments that women inhabited were deeply influenced by gendered expectations of women’s roles in society. Consequently, the degrees and diplomas women obtained prepared them for a limited range of professional opportunities as older traditions were transplanted to the new colony.

New Frames and Old Traditions?

Positioned on the geographic periphery of the empire, administrators and settlers in mid-nineteenth century, New Zealand remained profoundly influenced by ideas, sentiments, and practices that they had imported from Britain. Despite their proclaimed attempts to disconnect from ‘home’, settler society⁴⁸ nevertheless maintained very strong links with that home,⁴⁹ and accordingly, the class, gender, social, and intellectual traditions of Britain were replanted in the new colony. However, this new land was frequently described as a ‘worker’s paradise’ in the popular literature⁵⁰ because New Zealand offered emigrants the opportunities for paid labour, land and/or home ownership, and a form of escape from the restrictive class structures that dominated their lives in England.