Issue 70 Contents

Frances Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Allan was the first statistician ever employed by CSIRO. The history of her career, which began 75 years ago, is the subject of John Field’s comprehensive biographical article ‘CSIRO’s First Statistician: Frances Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Allan’, which can be found on the web at www.cmis.csiro.au/reports/FEA_article_for_cmis_website.pdf

This article in WISENET Journal follows on from the article above and its purpose is to reflect on some of the themes from Betty Allan’s career. In particular, I look at the issues of helpfulness and career progression, and family and careers both then and now.

[She has] “shown herself to have a rare gift for first-class mathematics, and at the same time is exceedingly helpful and congenial in co-operative work within the laboratory”. This glowing reference by pioneer statistician Dr RA Fisher was about Betty Allan, hired by CSIR in 1930.

Field’s archival research found that Betty Allan thought that being helpful, and not “anxious to obtain kudos” was an important attribute of being a CSIR biometrician (biological statistician). It is interesting to consider, however, if Allan’s helpfulness might have limited her career.

Almost as soon as she had started there, CSIR realised her value. Betty Allan’s statistical work was seen as adding rigour to its science. So instead of focussing on a few areas in one division (Plant Industry) as she was initially employed to do, her expertise was put to use across all six divisions that existed at the time and even called on by outside organisations. In fact, within three to four years several other biometricians, all women, were recruited to share the increasing workload.

So high was the demand for Allan’s help, she was not given any statistical research of her own to do, even when Dr ACD Rivett, then CSIR Chairman, suggested to Allan’s Divisional Chief that this would be worthwhile. Such a move would have given Allan her own research and recognition but taken her away from the support that was proving so useful.

Her letters show that Betty Allan was happy with her work at CSIRO and saw great opportunities for biometrical work in Australia. While not really wanting to leave CSIRO, she was ambitious enough to apply for a ‘better position’ at ICI in England, which she didn’t get because they wanted a man. So she stayed and helped.

Not everyone was happy with the ‘helper’ role. Helen Newton-Turner, one of the biometricians hired after Betty Allan, found it a thankless task. And she eventually left it for research so she could get more credit for her effort. When I met her in the mid-1980s at CSIRO’s Division of Molecular Biology in Sydney, Newton-Turner was a semi-retired geneticist, well known for her research on ‘twinning’ in sheep.

Being seen as 'helper' is still a challenge for statisticians, women and men. Even in today’s CSIRO, statisticians at CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences often collaborate with other CSIRO Divisions – designing experiments, advising on environmental monitoring schemes, doing sophisticated data analysis – usually dealing with other people’s data. These behind-the-scenes jobs are sometimes overlooked when it comes time to give credit for the research.

Things are changing, however. CSIRO statisticians are now leading important research projects involving scientists from other Divisions and disciplines. In 2004, a team of mathematicians and statisticians won CSIRO’s highest honour, the Chairman’s Medal, for developing world-leading technologies for measuring land cover change across the whole of Australia – a vital input for the National Carbon Accounting Scheme. The importance of statistical research is also being recognised in fields such as biotechnology. Here, new types and vast quantities of data require totally different approaches to data analysis which, in turn, have contributed to a new discipline – bioinformatics.

Despite this success, when it comes to promoting themselves and their work, statisticians can be their own worst enemies. In my experience as a communication officer, statisticians are often afraid of being seen by their collaborating Division as taking too much of the credit. Not “anxious to obtain kudos”, they tend to play down their contribution to other’s projects even though their work is often critical to the project’s success.

Some of today’s CSIRO statisticians, shown here sunburnt at a Tasmanian salmon farm, use advanced statistical techniques to discover the genetics behind salmon amoebic gill disease.

While statistics thrived at CSIR under Betty Allan, it was a Dr EA Cornish who headed up the first separately recognised Biometrics Section, forerunner to the present day CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences. That Allan missed out on the job was partly unhappy timing. Her marriage and therefore, by law, her retirement occurred at more or less the same time as the position came up. She did apply for it. But Cornish was the successful applicant, with her blessing.

Seventy-five years later, Allan’s legacy is a CSIRO Division which employs scores of statisticians from Australia and overseas. These people are working on problems and conducting research of national and international significance.

Allan’s career, like most women’s in the public service of the day, came to a halt with her marriage. By law, CSIR was to deem women ‘retired’ when they married. Cabinet asked CSIR on several occasions to report on whether it had married women in its employ and whether a man could do the job instead.

CSIR, being arms length public service, was able to be a little bit more flexible and Allan was able to work for a year after her marriage to a fellow CSIR employee Joseph ‘Pat’ Calvert. Her letters show she was happy enough to leave and not forced out unwillingly. It’s easy to imagine her career expectations would have matched the social practice of the time. Today, however, her expectations and aspirations might well be different.

One wonders what Allan might have achieved if her ten year career in CSIR had been allowed to continue. As it was, science’s loss was teaching’s gain. Allan’s marriage and the birth of her son. She took up lecturing at the Canberra Forestry School where she was a valued member of staff for many years. Students of the school were pallbearers at her funeral in 1952.

To modern eyes, a marriage bar seems very harsh and old-fashioned. However, in times of high unemployment, such as during the Great Depression, it can be argued that it probably kept some families out of poverty by sharing the jobs between households. But for Allan it came at a time when she was adding a lot of value to CSIR’s research and when World War II would have diminished the pool of labour.

While few Australian women today, if any, leave their jobs when they marry (the marriage bar was removed in 1966), there is still an exodus when they start to have children. Perhaps we have just replaced a marriage bar with a kind of ‘parent bar’.

In her recent article for the Harvard Business Review, commentator Sylvia Ann Hewlett describes several high profile corporate women in the US who have left their careers to raise their children after finding the work-life juggle too difficult. Radio announcer and comedian Wendy Harmer is a local example of one who has stepped off the career fast track for family.

Hewlett’s article shows that many professional women are finding the feminist ideal of ‘having it all’ is proving impossible and, as a result, employers are losing some of their best talent. Her book ‘The Battle for Motherhood’ details a survey she conducted in 2000 revealing that those women who do pursue careers often miss out on family, with many high-achieving women having no children or fewer than they want.

Hewlett’s solutions for giving women a better work-life balance include more flexible workplaces and better career ‘on ramps’ to allow women back into the workforce much more easily than they can achieve it now.

To its credit, CSIRO is now generally a family friendly workplace. Betty Allan and her colleagues would not recognise the organisation today. Twelve months maternity leave (with 12 weeks paid), flexitime, parental leave, 40/52 week working years – these and other policies reflect a real desire to retain and attract staff, and also reflect changing times and expectations. Other government and some private organisations are equally progressive and a few even more so.

On a personal note, I have greatly benefited from these policies and am still very much a part of CSIRO many years and two children later. Another beneficiary is Dr Melissa Dobbie, a talented CSIRO statistician who is part of a team of environmental statisticians in Brisbane. One of her recent achievements was being part of team that organised a successful CSIRO workshop on statistical modelling. Earlier this year Melissa returned to work after 12 months maternity leave. She now works part-time, two days a week, and spends the other days with her son Oscar, now almost 18 months, going to the park, pottering around, doing the things that toddlers love to do. She is finding that, in a two-day working week, some things just have to drop off the bottom of the to-do list but when Oscar and any potential siblings are older, the work days can ramp up again.

Men, and indeed whole families, also benefit from family friendly policies. Another CSIRO statistician, Dr Glenn Stone, took combined paternity and personal leave when his second daughter was born this year and his wife had a longer hospital stay.

Not all employers, of course, are as progressive as CSIRO. Only one-third of Australian organisations offer paid maternity leave, for example. Talk to any group of new mothers and you’ll find horror stories abound. Even in recognised family friendly organisations, an uncooperative supervisor can undermine the best-intentioned, best-written policies. Hewlett’s US findings would resonate with many Australian women.

Seventy-five years after Betty Allan was hired by CSIR fresh off the boat from her exciting overseas study, there are obviously some lessons to be learnt if we are to ensure that today’s Betty Allans can contribute to science and enjoy family life.

Carrie Bengston is a Communication Officer for CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences and WISENET member. She has been with CSIRO for 12 years and enjoys learning about and promoting the work its mathematicians and statisticians do. She would like to thank John Field and CSIRO librarian Rosi Pillon for help with material for this article.