INDUSTRY & RESEARCH campusreview. com. au
Women of influence
Three academics recently listed amongst the nation’ s leading women give their perspectives on how the gender gap still affects the higher education sector.
By Andrew Bracey
Most Australians would probably not be overly familiar with former Irish president Mary Robinson.
Born Mary Bourke in the mid-’ 40s to a pair of Irish medical doctors, Robinson eventually went on – via a career as an academic and barrister – to lead her country as its first female president from late 1990 until her resignation in 1997 in favour of a senior UN posting.
And to a young, self-described“ bookish farm girl” living in rural New South Wales, Robinson provided an inspirational example of powerful – and cool – careers to which women could aspire.
“ People think I’ m hilarious, but I had a scrapbook full of articles about women who looked cool, and a whole scrapbook dedicated to Mary Robinson because she’ d turned up in the Australian Women’ s Weekly when she became president and I just thought she was the bee’ s knees,” Dr Susan Harris Rimmer says.
“ It shook my world finding out there was such a thing as Mary Robinson, and she is still a great source of inspiration for me,” Harris Rimmer says.“ I mean being a
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