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

work, that were considered appropriate for educated women in the interlude between graduation and marriage.⁷⁵ Notwithstanding this point, women who ventured into academic work sought to outwardly conform to these expectations as they worked to develop their own scholarly expertise and professional authority—expertise and authority that did not directly or publically challenge the gendered boundaries of the academy. Yet, on another level, academic women by their very presence in the academy and their work as home scientists disrupted these gendered narratives.

Conclusion

This book is not a unified account of the scholarly lives of the first generations of academic women. There is no institutional fairy tale to be told about the heroic achievements of these first generations of academic women. There also is no story to be told that situates the University of New Zealand as a colonial patriarchal institution that was unwilling to accept the presence of academic women. It is certainly historically serendipitous that the opening up of women’s higher education and the willingness of the first women professors to look for career possibilities beyond England and the United States coincided. Furthermore, graduates who studied under the first women professors were the beneficiaries of the social and intellectual environment that was created within home science. In effect, home science wedged open the entrance to the academy for women and created an avenue for professional work for university-educated graduates.

From the outset, early women scholars in New Zealand were simultaneously advantaged by the opening up of higher education to women and disadvantaged by the hostile intellectual and social environment of the university. Although all of the women had the necessary academic credentials to enter this world of scholarly men, their gender immediately cast them as outsiders at best and as outcasts at worst. Significantly, each woman was a beneficiary of a number of advantages derived from her familial and educational background and by her wider social connections