Where were the women in Frog research? Absent or overlooked?
Dr Arthur White, president of the NSW Frog and Tadpole Study Group (FATS), looks at the history of Australian women working on frogs. People have worked on Australian frogs since the 1830s but the names of any women don’t appear until the 1970s, 140 years later! Arthur describes the exceptional work of five such women who in the earlier examples, sadly received no formal academic recognition of their outstanding scientific contributions. There was a tradition that only certain people could put their names on publications, along with a hierarchy of whose names could go where, so technicians and other non-academic appointments didn’t get a look in. Arthur briefly describes the cutting edge work and findings of seven outstanding ‘girl guides’!