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

teacher education.¹⁰ This is the text that lies outside of the portrait but is necessary to be able to ‘read’ Strong’s life and contributions.

This institutional portrait of Strong emphasizes her gendered positioning in the academy but irrevocably fails to consider the complexities of her role and positioning. As her educational biography suggests,¹¹ there can be little doubt that Strong was an academic pioneer who reinforced the tradition of scholarly work for women. She worked tirelessly to ensure that this work was afforded a level of institutional respect. This photographic view also ignores Strong’s work in adult and Māori education, her willingness to confront her male colleagues and the inequities that women faced (such as differences in salary), her ability to draw on her international connections to secure grants and to facilitate opportunities for her staff and students, and her key role in developing professional fields of work for women in nutrition and dietetics. Nevertheless, when it is considered alongside documentary and archival evidence and as a part of the historical recovery of the life and work of Strong, the photo has the capacity to highlight some of the tensions and complexities that were implicit in the professional and academic lives of women. As such, it presents insights into the life and work of one of the key players among the first generation of women home scientists at the University of New Zealand, and it adds new perspectives to an historical portrait of the preeminently gendered world of academia that Strong and her female colleagues inhabited. Thus, the metaphor of the portrait and portraiture offers a way to view individual lives and take into account the wider institutional and historical landscape that simultaneously frames and limits one’s gaze as well as the presentation of the individual and her life.

Frames and Framework

This book offers an historical portrait of the first generations of women home scientists at the University of New Zealand.¹² It examines how these women were instrumental in professionalizing their scholarly work within the deeply gendered traditions of the academy in the early decades of the twentieth century. With a specific focus on the Department