‘An Undesirable Type of Fulbright Grantee’: Women, Gender and Transgression in the Cold War Asia–Pacific Region

Abstract

The Fulbright Program has, since it was established in 1946, facilitated international scholarly exchange to and from the United States on an unprecedented scale. 1 This programme, designed to foster a global intellectual leadership, was from the outset inclusive of elite women and therefore offers opportunities to evaluate the influence of gender. Although the programme was legislated by a male-dominated Congress and administered by a male-dominated bureaucracy, women nonetheless had a minority presence. 2 Some served on the Board of Foreign Scholarships (BFS) which administered the programme, some were appointed as directors of bi-national commissions set up in partner countries and others were recipients of awards. 3 Scholarship on the Fulbright Program has recognised that the majority of grant recipients were men. 4 Yet neither the meaning of the minority status of women in the programme nor its impact on the experience of women themselves has been questioned. This programme which has been the most far-reaching scheme for fostering educational exchange across the world has not been exposed to critical gender analysis. The programme's stress on the personal attributes of candidates created opportunities for gendered interpretations of merit. Selection committees in participating countries were strongly advised to give 'as much weight to character and personality as you do to academic standing'. Grantees were to become 'unofficial ambassadors' so the successful students 'must be emotionally stable and the kind of persons. .. who will mix well with United States students'. 5 In evaluating these non-academic criteria for Fulbright scholars, committees were bound to be influenced by expectations of gender norms. The Fulbright Program was skewed heavily towards male scholars. Hence its standards of character, personality and behaviour-what constituted a desirable type of grantee-were formed with men in mind. Women who succeeded under these conditions were effectively 'honorary men', up to a point. Plant biologist Adele Millerd was among the first Australians to receive a Fulbright grant in 1950. Millerd vividly remembered, some sixty years later, the humiliation she felt in the selection interview before an all-male panel. One of the men 'ran his eyes up and down' her and asked how