Trailblazing women immunologists of Australia and New Zealand

L–R: Professor Katharina Gaus, Professor Barbara Heslop, Professor Margaret Baird, Miss Dora Lush,

Dr Margaret Holmes and Miss F Eleanor Williams MBE ARRC. The authors were unable to obtain
photos of Dr Lucy M Bryce CBE and Dr Hildred Butler. Image: Immunol Cell Biol.

Dr Jess Borger,  Catriona Nguyen-Robertson and Dr James Harris, have published an essay on trailblazing women immunologists of Australia and New Zealand.

See their lively, informative essay in the journal Immunology and Cell Biology, where they have pulled together previously scattered or difficult to locate information to showcase the achievements of these outstanding female immunologists.

Borger JG, Nguyen-Robertson CV, Harris J. Trailblazing women immunologists of Australia and New Zealand. Immunol Cell Biol. 2021 Apr;99(4):338-343. doi: 10.1111/imcb.12454. PMID: 33860547.

Urgent government funding is needed for effective, diverse and equitable medical research

Figure 1 from the article showing gendered trends in application and funding rates

Dr Jess Borger recently co-authored an article on the loss of women from the medical research sector, published in Women's Agenda. She, Dr Kate Lawlor and Dr Kylie Quinn discuss how the government needs to inject funding into research or we will lose Early-Mid Career Researchers (EMCRs), especially women, from the system. They canvass the following topics:

• Government support of research has been waning
• The impact of COVID-19 on research is inequitably distributed
• Australia lags behind the global response
• Women and EMCRs receive less funding support
• How do we mitigate a loss of women from research?

Perspectives on Women in Science

A recent publication in Baker IDI's Perspectives has focused on Women In Science. The article by A/Professor Rebecca Ritchie and Professor Bronwyn Kingwell was also published on Women’s Agenda last month.

A/Prof Rebecca Ritchie (left) and
Professor Bronwyn Kingwell (right)

"It is widely agreed that there is a great deal more work to be done to improve the representation of women at senior levels in Australian medical research. In this edition of Perspectives, we focus on gender inequality in the Australian science sector and explore how individuals and organisations are taking steps to effect change."

This publication is digital-only and is available via the Baker IDI website.