Women's Leadership and Transpacific Exchange: Australia and the US, 1950s--1970s

This paper asks how the transpacific exchange of scholars under the Australian-American Fulbright Program helped foster women’s leadership during the Cold War.  The Fulbright program aimed to develop a new pool of leaders, and from the outset included a minority of women. Australian and US women sought travel and leadership grants to advance their careers and enlarge the opportunities for themselves and other women. In the US in the first two decades of the Program, Australian Fulbright grantees encountered the struggle for civil rights, protests against the Vietnam War, and the burgeoning women’s liberation movement. They experienced education and leadership at women’s colleges and international friendships. US women who came to Australia encountered the struggle for recognition of indigenous land rights, a strong labour movement and a deeply entrenched sexual division of labour, and an extremely sex-segregated labour market. Women negotiated a gendered and politically-sensitive space as the Cold War drew administration  of the Fulbright Program more firmly within the foreign policy objectives of the US government and Australia’s alliance with the US drew it into war in Vietnam. Funding cuts imposed on the Program when Senator Fulbright opposed the Vietnam War made it more difficult for women. I explore these issues and ask what impact the experience of the Fulbright program had on the organisational networks and political activism of Australian and US women who crossed the Pacific. I focus on the interaction between gender dynamics, international geopolitics  and women’s leadership in a transpacific nexus of cultural exchange.