An Absent Presence: Women Professors at the University of New Zealand 1911-1961

The historiography of women’s higher education has almost exclusively charted women’s admission to universities, institutional responses to increasing numbers of women students and women’s struggles to claim a presence as academics and administrators. Less attention has however been paid to the history and agency of women professors who were invariably positioned at the margins of the Academy. For example, at the University of New Zealand (1871–1961) only four women were appointed as professors and all served in the Faculty of Home Science. This article sketches a collective portrait of Winifred Boys Smith (1911–1921), Helen Rawson (1921–1924), Ann Strong (1921–1941) and Elizabeth Gregory (1941–1961) and theorises women’s presence at the margins of men’s scholarly worlds.