Dr Ann Olivarius was published in the Financial Times, reflecting on how the Rhodes Scholarship has transformed since its creation by Cecil Rhodes. She writes about the programme’s long-delayed progress toward gender and racial equality. She also reflects on recent milestones, including the global expansion of the scholarship and the appointment of its first female warden, setting these changes against her own experience as one of the early women to win a Rhodes Scholarship.
Drawing on personal history, Dr Olivarius describes the discrimination she encountered during the selection process and at Oxford, and how those experiences helped shape her lifelong commitment to representing women who face inequality, harassment, and abuse in education and the workplace.
Extract:
It took years of legal wrangling and an act of parliament to finally allow female scholars in 1977 – the year I applied in New Jersey. At the interviews, the men were asked what they would do if they became secretary of state; women’s topics were confined to health, education and welfare. At the reception the night before, the men were offered Scotch, women received soft drinks.
I was turned down. Afterwards, the head of the selection committee, media mogul Malcolm Forbes, put his arm around me and walked me outside to offer some consolation. “Don’t worry,” he said, “You can make some man senator some day!” I gave the only answer possible under the circumstances: “But Malcolm, what if I want to be senator someday?” He stopped walking: “Dammit, that’s what we couldn’t understand about you!”
The next year, I was chosen. It was a different selection committee.