Heather Howard and Kath Grey: The farce and frustrations of gender inequality in geological mapping

Kath Grey, retired from a 50-year career with GSWA and Heather Howard, a project manager still working for GSWA after almost 20 years, reflect on some of the challenges of working in a field in which women remain a minority.

Transcript

00:01 Kath

She got a phone call from somebody asking to speak to a geologist. And she said, “I am a geologist.” And he said, “Oh, I'm sorry, for a minute you sounded like a woman.”

00:11 Julie

Welcome to The Rocks Beneath Our Feet. In this series, five geologists talk about their years devoted to working for the Geological Survey of Western Australia. From understanding early life, to the tectonic processes that shaped our planet, and making the maps that unearth our understanding of Western Australia’s geology, they reveal their shared passion for discovering the stories in the rocks beneath our feet.

I’m Julie Hollis.

In this episode Kath Grey, retired from a 50-year career with GSWA and Heather Howard, a project manager still working for GSWA after almost 20 years, reflect on some of the challenges of working in a field in which women remain a minority.

00:52 Kath

I'm Kath Grey. I joined the Geological Survey just about 50 years ago and I was one of the early women geologists working for the Geological Survey. There weren't very many women geologists around in those days and I can remember all the way through my life I've had to battle the problem of whether people would accept females in that role.

01:17 Julie

So, how did your move to Australia come about?

01:22 Kath

I'm a 10-pound Pom. They, they paid your fare to get out here if you were coming to a job because they were recruiting people from overseas.

01:31 Julie

Yeah.

01:31 Kath

I remember having a bit of a battle at the time though because the advertisement had said they'd also pay to ship your goods over as well. I didn't have that many but I’d got a couple of boxes of books and things. And when I applied for that, I was told that the advert didn't apply to single females. Luckily for me another geologist from the UK had come out at the same time, a male, and he also applied for it. And of course then they didn't quite know what to say and we were backed by Alec Trendell, who was the Deputy Director at the time and he said look this advert says that you'll pay the costs for getting you out here, you know, whether you’re single or not or female or male it shouldn't make any difference.

02:19 Julie

Good on him.

When Kath arrived, she had an uphill task to become the field geologist she had hoped to be.

02:25 Kath

I always remembered the remarks when I first joined.  I was told right at the start that women weren't allowed to go in the field.

02:32 Julie

Yeah.

02:33 Kath

And it took some years before I managed to persuade them that I was going to do field work. I was very upset to discover that they’d asked John Backhouse was the palynologist, to go and do a six-week trip with BMR to collect fossil fish and then I got called up to head office and the director of the day said, “Well, you can do John's work whilst he goes out in the field. Any questions?” And I said, “Yes, why aren't you sending me?” And they said, “Oh, well women aren't allowed north of the 26th parallel.” Now that was an improvement because that's about Shark Bay but I said, “Why not?” and they said, “Oh, well, it's wild and wooly north of the 26th parallel.” And I said, “What do you mean by that?” And the answer was there are no trees north of the 26th parallel which, meant that they didn't think there was anywhere for me to go to the loo out in the bush. 

03:31 Julie

When Heather joined the survey in 2002, it was no longer a challenge to be allowed to do field work, but she still found herself in a very small minority.

When you started at the survey, there were probably a few female geologists working along with you there, yeah?

03:45 Heather

There were a few in the survey.

03:47 Julie

Yeah.

03:48 Heather

I think, as time went on, some of them had children. Some of them left for that reason. I actually remember getting a postcard from one of the male geologists addressed to Heather and the boys. And that was a moment where I looked around me and thought, Gosh, there were no other female field geologists in the Perth office. And I hadn’t actually noticed that.

04:14 Julie

When Kath joined the survey, there were four female geologists working for the survey, but none were field geologists.

04:20 Kath

They were all qualified geologists. Robin Pierce was a petrologist and she occasionally got to go somewhere down the southwest and collect a few samples, but they were more or less day trips and not really extended bush periods. And the other three just sat in the office and did editing work and answering public enquiries. I remember one of them being very irate because she got a phone call from somebody asking to speak to a geologist. And she said, “I am a geologist.” And he said, “Oh, I'm sorry, for a minute you sounded like a woman.” 

05:00 Julie

Eventually, Kath managed to convince her bosses to let her do field work. But it wasn’t just her employers’ prejudices she had to contend with.

05:08 Kath

On rare occasions we managed to spend a night in a hotel. But I particularly remember the one in Cue. I had to get to Cue to inspect some drill core. So I had an appointment at the local mine to go and see the geologists there. And I got to Cue about lunchtime and pulled up outside the pub and went in to book a room. And it was the usual sort of bush establishment, very dusty and dirty, a couple of locals, equally dusty and dirty, propping up the bar and a rather grouchy barmaid looking terribly bored behind bar. And I asked her if I could have a room and dinner and breakfast and she said, “Oh I’m sorry love, you'll have to see the manageress.” So I said, “Okay, can I see the manageress?” And she said, “Oh, she's not available at the moment.” “Well, when will she be available?” “Oh, I can't say.” So I said, “Well are you booked up? Because if you are, I need to know because I’ll go off and camp somewhere.” She was very evasive on the whole issue. I thought this is funny. Anyway, I sort of said, “Well, you know, I'll be back about 5 o'clock. Can you pencil me in?” and again, she wouldn't commit herself. And one of the locals sort of said, he would accommodate me if I wanted love, with a great leer. I just ignored that. Anyway, I had to get down to the mine. So I said, “Well, okay, I'll be back pencil me in dinner breakfast.” And off I went. And it turned out that the core wasn't actually stored at the mine because the company had lost interest in it because it didn't have any mineralization in it. So they'd stuffed it in an old garden shed at the back of one of the houses they used in town. It wasn't stored in any order and it was covered in spider webs and general dirt. One of the geologists helped me sort of pull it out, put it in order, and lay it out across the yard. It was a very hot day. And I went through and logged it and collected a few samples. The core contains some fantastic stromatolites and they actually subsequently fitted in very nicely with the whole interpretation of the Basin. It was worth doing the work and I felt I'd been quite productive. And I desperately needed a shower.

So went back to the pub and nothing had changed inside- The two locals were still propping up the bar. The bar maid was still looking bored behind the bar and I sort of said, “Oh, it’s me, have you booked me a room yet?” And she said, “Oh, I'm sorry you'll have to see the manageress.” It was beginning to sound like a stuck record. “Well, can I see the manageress?” “Oh, she's not available.” “When will she be available?” “I'm not sure.” So I bought myself a beer and sat down to, you know, get over the afternoon and everything whilst I waited. And I must have just washed the first layer of dust down my throat when the barmaid finally came up and said, “Oh, the manageress will see you now.” So I got up and followed her down a longish corridor. And as we were  walking down the corridor she turned round and said, “I'm sorry about that. But the manageress won't let me book any single women into the hotel until she's inspected them in case they're on the game and they've come up from Hay Street in Kalgoorlie to service the miners.” And, you know, my dirty blue coveralls and everything. I'm sure that would be the case. I must have really looked the part.

I'm not sure I like being mistaken for a hooker.

08:59 Julie

Here’s Heather again.

09:00 Heather

I think being in a minority, whatever kind of minority, is difficult at times. I think for the most part, I haven't noticed. But when I have noticed, I have really noticed. I think probably, I can count just a handful of moments where I’ve felt uncomfortable or sad. And I think working in a small group has been really, really beneficial. And I perhaps have noticed more perhaps on a field excursion where they’ve been many more people

09:32 Julie

Yeah.

09:33 Heather

and mostly male then I’ve noticed that. You know, you don't like to be the only person that says, “Can we just camp where there are some bushes?”

09:43 Julie

Yeah.

09:44 Heather

But that’s often how it is.

09:46 Julie

And here’s Kath.

09:47 Kath

It's easier for a male who traditionally walks to the back of the vehicle and that's it. And of course for a woman you have to scurry off into the bush and find a bit of cover.

I also remember an excursion I went on to the Amadeus Basin in 1996. And I crept across the creek and squatted in the bushes on the far side. And the rest of the excursion, the leaders, were gathered around the vehicle looking at the map and having the emplacement of the Ringwood Salt Dome explained to them. And I suddenly realized that there was one of the American geologists across the creek from me. And it dawned on me that the position I'd taken up was actually in front of the salt dome and he was taking a photograph of the dome.

10:35 Julie

No.

10:36 Kath

I never did find out whether his sort of image of a classic salt dome enhanced by a photo of me squatting in bushes in the foreground.

10:48 Julie

These days, there’s no one in GSWA stopping women from becoming field geologists, so what has been the impact for the gender balance?

10:56 Kath

Now things have changed quite considerably. The number of women on the staff, I think, are about 50%. And they go out and do a full field season, whatever length that season is. But there's no differentiation between who's doing what.

11:12 Julie

Yep.

11:12 Kath

And we've had female field assistants as well as male field assistants. So it's much more female, the equality is much more prevalent than it was in my early days.

11:25 Julie

But Heather points out the distance still to travel.

11:28 Heather

I think early on in my career I didn't really notice. But it's been a few decades now, and yeah, and it hasn't changed that much, or it hasn’t changed enough, should I say.

11:40 Julie

Yeah, ok.

11:41 Heather

There are a lot more females coming through at the lower levels, but higher up, particularly in a geoscience group, we’re still a bit lacking in that area.

11:53 Julie

Yeah.

11:54 Heather

I find it a bit disappointing that there are no females in my reporting line, still, after all this time. And I wonder if perhaps the reason for that is that the social pressures on parents are quite different

12:10 Julie

Yep.

12:11 Heather

for different genders. I certainly feel social pressure to be the one that cares for the family. Whereas I think my husband finds more social pressure to be the breadwinner. Perhaps being the carer doesn't always fit in so well with working away.

12:29 Julie

Yeah.

12:30 Heather

I can remember seeing my daughter’s face when I came back. Disbelief that I was there.

12:36 Julie

Yeah, that’s hard.

12:38 Heather

And we did do some long trips in the Musgraves. There were times when, yeah, it was quite difficult to be away. But I found I just had to get on with it. And be true to the, the person that I am in terms of the things that bring me alive. And I think that being in the field is one of those things.

12:56 Julie

Yeah.

13:56 Heather

And so to lose that, I would lose a part of myself as well, I think. So I’ve made that choice to continue to do that,

13:04 Julie

Yep.

13:05 Heather

even though it is a bit difficult sometimes. And actually I think, from my experience, I think I couldn't have continued to do this job had I not been in the team that were willing to work around when I could and couldn't go in the field and try and accommodate me. They actually made that happen.

13:22 Julie

Yeah.

13:22 Heather

So I’m pretty grateful for that.

13:25 Julie 

In the early 2000s, around the time Heather started in the survey, Kath Grey became not only the first woman, but the first person in the survey to reach level 8, the highest level of promotion on scientific merit rather than through being a project manager – a remarkable achievement and well deserved. But as Kath explains it, some of the context reveals a system still not quite working equitably.

13:47 Kath

In my day we had different grades in different levels and I started off at about grade 1 level 2, because of my qualifications. And eventually, I think we were about seven steps, I reached the top of that. And John Backhouse, who is my colleague and had very similar qualifications, he was a palynologist as well and he'd been at the survey about two years longer than me. He reached level 7 and got promoted almost immediately, but I was held back on the grounds that I hadn't got enough field experience. This is because women weren't allowed out in the field. So, you know, it's a real Catch-22 situation. Anyway, eventually I got promoted to level 2 and then up the scale of it. And then they changed all the scales around. But finally I became the only paleontologist because they didn't replace the others when they left. There were three of us originally and I was the only one and went by the grand title of Chief Paleontologist. There weren't any Indians, just the chief. So I had to do all the jobs which involve looking after the collection as well as trying to do a lot of research and sort of service the regional mapping and other programs going on because by then there were big programs going on in hydrocarbons as well. So I was trying to do all that. So it's a bit of a tall order really. And eventually my supervisor said you better apply for level 8. The reason essentially was because we don't have enough women in higher positions in the Mines Department because it's so male oriented and they're worried about the quotas of women.

15:45 Julie 

OK

15:46 Kath

By that stage I'd certainly published about a hundred papers as well as a couple of monographs. I think I had about 200 internal reports to my name. So I managed to put a fair bit of information together.

Anyway, I applied for it and got it. And apparently I'd been holding up a few other people, you know, because I hadn't got it, they wouldn't let other people get it. But it was actually an appointment on merit. Normally people got promoted because they were put in charge of mapping project or something like that. But this was the first time they'd actually appointed somebody on the scientific merit because I didn't have any Indians to boss around essentially, so I couldn't be a manager. They didn't quite know how to handle that. But once I’d got the promotion on merit, various other people were able to follow in my footsteps. It always sounded so grand being Chief Paleontologist. Essentially, I was still doing the same work I'd done all the time.

16:53 Julie 

And here’s Heather for a final word.

16:55 Heather

The times when I have noticed that I'm the only female, one moment springs to mind. We had an excursion in the Musgraves. And it’s the way that men greet men and men greet women and it’s completely different. That, all of a sudden, I think about five or six men arrived in our camp. And there was all this, “How are you going mate?” And all this back slapping. And men don’t greet women like that. And I immediately felt so different. 

17:29 Julie 

It immediately isolates you.

17:31 Heather

Yes.

17:31 Julie 

And of course, that’s not the intention. There’s no ill feeling.

17:35 Heather

No, no, and I didn't really want my back slapped. Yeah, but I think, we don't all want to be robots. We all want to be ourselves and talk to each other as we would. But sometimes in those environments, yeah, you can really feel the minority that you are.

17:57 Julie

You’ve been listening to The Rocks Beneath Our Feet. You can discover more about GSWA by visiting dmp.wa.gov.au/gswa or find GSWA on LinkedIn and Facebook. If you like what you’ve heard, give them a follow.