from trial and error about the tough business world.
Now we’ve graduated to smarter premises with more staff, a manufacturing area and a general manager, which allows me to go back to being an engineer for a large part of the time. We tend to employ fresh young graduates straight out of University, still full of energy, who think they know everything and make me feel old, but who don’t realise how much guidance they need. I despair sometimes at the lack of responsibility of otherwise very intelligent young people. Even if wisdom doesn’t always come with age, a systems viewpoint and a sense of responsibility comes with the experience of years, and an insistence on doing the job properly the first time comes with having your own money on the line.
Apart from jointly running a business, I’m a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, and a member of: the Faculty Advisory Committee for Electrical Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology, the Engineering School Assessment Committee for the University of Southern Queensland, and the Advisory Board of the Technology Management Centre at the University of Queensland.
Sometimes I think all these committees just need the token woman and as there aren’t too many older female engineers around, I’m the one they ask. Wherever their agenda may or may not be I have my own unique perceptions and insights to offer and a genuine desire to contribute meaningfully to engineering education and to the development of excellence in universities. I suspect I’m not nearly as token as people might sometimes hope I will be.
Teaching has always been a special love and my business partner and I both try to have a teaching assignment each year. Nothing keeps you up to date more efficiently than having to satisfy a class of some of our best brains who may well know more than you do! At times I kick myself for taking on so much work, especially the night before an 8am lecture, but there is no doubt the close ties with universities give us fresh viewpoints and continuous exposure to the most appropriate new technology.
Last year I was appointed for a three year term to the Board of South East Queensland Electricity. I know Premier Goss was pushing for more women on boards, but his time I can’t claim to be the token woman because two women were appointed. I feel very honoured by the appointment and wonder how anyone can be expected to have adequate qualifications and experience for such a tough assignment. With corporatisation looming and talk of eventual privatisation of the electricity industry, this is proving to be extremely challenging.
These days I can happily admit to being an engineer without expecting an adverse reaction. How things have changed in the last 30 years! I used to shrink from telling casual enquirers what I do because it was likely to embarrass them. Dinner parties were certain to produce hurting wisecracks and worried wives with thoughtless discussions on the evils of feminism.
Back in 1962 when I entered the Queensland University as a first year engineering student, female engineers were virtually unheard of in Australia. With the benefit of a year’s schooling in Denmark (where female engineers were more common), supportive parents and just sufficient faith in my own academic abilities, I weathered the awful first year and went on to graduate with Honours. But the sheltered environment of a friendly University did nothing to prepare me for the hostile attitudes in North Queensland where I went to work after graduating.
Marrying a Mackay local made married life comfortable and easy. Working in my profession was more difficult as I was expected very quickly to settle down and become a home-maker. “You’ll soon stop all that working nonsense”, said my father-in-law very early in the piece.
But of course I didn’t stop all that nonsense and continued to work, full time until the first of my two children was born and then part time for some years.
Working when I didn’t need to financially, was bad enough, but being an engineer was beyond the pale. I can remember my surprise when a man attacked me at a party one evening, asking, “Aren’t you sorry for your husband?” Sorry for him because he had some sort of freak for a wife. For years I found it disconcerting to be considered by so many to be slightly strange or weird, when in fact I felt entirely ordinary. One year I was asked to give a talk on Women in Industry at a TAFE speech night. Preparing for the talk, I interviewed many people including a number of sugar mill managers. One instated he couldn’t have women working in his mill at night. I said, “I often work in your mill at night.” His reply, “You’re different.” So often this is the case, is it not, that black is called white to support what must be so? How uncomfortable and inconvenient to have our inbuilt prejudices questioned.
Working as a research engineer at the Sugar Research Institute for ten years and then as a consultant to the sugar industry with the Brisbane – based Batstone Hendry and Associates, I travelled extensively in North Queensland, looking at transport systems and installing computer systems in sugar mills. In 1972 I won an industry prize for my work on the scheduling of sugar cane railways which saved mills hundreds of thousands of dollars when first introduced.
Fortunately I had otherwise unavailable skills and knowledge badly needed which gave me entry to areas barred to women under normal circumstances. At times the reactions were hostile from professional engineers, but more usually people were simply mystified and worried about how to deal with me. Many is the cup of tea or meal I have had with mill workers’ families to allay the unfounded fears of their wives.
Things have changed over the years. I can now chit-chat happily about my work with strangers without feeling like an alien being. I can now be outwardly proud of being an engineer. For the odd fleeting moment I occasionally fell marginally put out that I’m no longer special. But don’t worry, the moment passes very quickly and I’m thankful that it’s easier for new graduates today.
I can honestly claim to have done my bit for change in the Institution of Engineers. Can you imagine it? The Mackay branch used to have men-only Christmas parties and the annual dinner was held at the men’s club. The first year they sneaked me like a thief into the function room by the kitchen door so the club patrons wouldn’t be scandalised by the presence of a woman on the premises. The next year sanity prevailed and the dinner was held in a hotel with husbands and wives invited. In International Women’s Year, 1975, they voted me in as President of the Mackay Branch.
The format for branch meetings had always been a lecture by a local engineer or guest on a learned topic, followed by supper. I managed to introduce some variations, in particular a series of forums where the group debated topical issues. This seemed to be extremely important to me because very often engineers plan in isolation, as a result inflicting unnecessary stupidities on the general public. As a result of these forums the city council provided smaller trees for the footpath and consulted with the electricity board on where to position the trees, rather than plant forest giants directly under the overhead lines.
When Queensland Rail built a new railway line through an outlying suburb, so many children could no long walk to their old school that virtually overnight the population of one school dropped by some hundreds, while at another tiny school with no facilities the population exploded. It wasn’t until the railway, main roads and consulting civil engineers were jointly made to realise what was happening than a footbridge over the railway was built.
As I mentioned earlier, I love teaching and have always looked for part-time opportunities. One of my most pleasant assignments was to be invited by the Mackay High School to give a series of lessons to some problem Grade 8 children who were very intelligent buy failing. As an experiment, the group of boys and girls was taken out of normal classes for some weeks and three or four outsiders like myself, were invited to spend time with the kids in any way we pleased. I chose to introduce them to formal logic and some of the classic problems which have puzzled philosophers
