The first women psychologists in Australia

Abstract

Three of the first four psychologists appointed to the Australian state public services were women. These beginnings of professional psychology in the 1920s were complicated by factors of sex and personality as well as by the low visibility and insecure status of scientific psychology. The high demands made upon the three women by their various state governments were probably due in large part to the employers' unrealistic expectations of benefits to be wrought by psychology's new tool, the intelligence test, in the area of prime concern, mental retardation. The striking differences in achievement and recognition within the public sector of Lorna Hodgkinson in New South Wales, Constance Davey in South Australia, and Ethel Stoneman in Western Australia reflect not only their personal roles but also various facets of the context of the development of the new “helping professions” within which they worked.

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