At my dream job in the ’80s, the chauvinism surprised me: I blame early zoologists

“Let’s see you lift that up there, love.” The head zookeeper nodded to the loading dock above us. This was my third interview at the zoo. It was 1983, and newspapers still advertised vacancies under separate men’s and women’s columns. Men did men’s jobs and women, the “weaker sex”, did other stuff like typing or looking after children.

I’d been so many things already – debt collector, dog washer, petrol-pump attendant, server, aged-care worker, farm hand, conveyancing clerk, kennel maid, translator and interpreter – and now I really wanted to be a zookeeper. I was wearing a dress and I was nervous. I was 31 years old, going for a junior position in a dress that wasn’t even mine. Not being a girly girl, I didn’t own any. I’d borrowed this “frock” from my boyfriend Rob’s Aunty Jean; the outfit resembled a man’s safari suit with pockets and a belt, which I thought might be appropriate attire for an interview at the zoo.

Arriving at Taronga Zoo on beautiful Sydney Harbour, I walked through the imposing entrance with its iconic façade as if it were hallowed grounds. I was met by two middle-aged men in uniform who walked me down to the zoo’s off-display area where all the behind-the-scenes work happened. The place was bustling with more men in khaki uniforms.

This was where the commissary was, the place where the animal food was delivered, sorted and distributed to the various departments. We stood below a loading dock where there were several hessian bags of kangaroo feed pellets, apparently waiting for me. “We just want to see if you’re up to doing the work,” said Bill, the head keeper. I saw him and the assistant head keeper exchange some amused glances.

The general curator was the one who would make the final hiring decision, but I was told he’d be late: he’d left the gas on and rushed back home to prevent his house burning down. Meanwhile, these two blokes took advantage of his absence, trying their hardest to intimidate me. On the walk down to the works area they peppered me with questions like: “Do you think this is a glamorous job?” and “Do you realise you’ll get dirty doing this kind of work?” (I clearly looked too neat and clean in Aunty Jean’s frock.) “You’d be doing a man’s job: how do you feel about that?”

My “examiners” appeared almost disappointed when I lifted three 50-kilogram bags onto the dock (undoubtedly in an unglamorous way) and decided to take me back where the actual interview was going to be. The general curator had arrived, presumably having averted a fire at his place. Once he was in the room the interview continued along more traditional lines, with questions regarding my animal husbandry experience, expertise and qualifications. I had certificates in zookeeping and veterinary nursing. What seemed to be a stumbling block was that I was also a qualified translator and interpreter of Dutch, German, French, Spanish and English, with a steady, well-paid job at the Commonwealth Bank. If offered, the zoo job would pay less than half of my current salary, possibly further adding to the suspicion I was after glamour and fame.

With English naturalist David Attenborough in 2003.Credit: Courtesy of Erna Walraven

Someone else got that job, but a few weeks later I got a phone call: I was offered a six-month contract in the veterinary hospital and quarantine centre. The general curator, a tall, bearded American, got me in through the back door. When the six months were up, I was hired as a permanent staff member. I was one of the first female zookeepers in Australia and a foreigner (from the Netherlands) to boot. For a few years there were rumours that any women employed as zookeepers must have slept with someone higher up to get the job. Perhaps the men found that easier to accept than a woman getting a zookeeper job on skill and merit.

Despite the gossip and obvious opposition, I just loved the work. If landing my dream job meant working in a male-dominated environment, then so be it. The opportunity to get close to and get to know fabulous, exotic creatures was worth tolerating some grumpy blokes. I looked the part now in khaki King Gees, though sadly the issued uniform was tailored for men and not comfortable. But I got to feed carrots to giraffe Charity, who had the longest eyelashes, or get chased by black rhinoceros Dynah as I shifted her to the outside yards.

Every day was different and exciting, even if the lunchroom was heavy with testosterone and many, though not all, of my male colleagues felt my employment negatively impacted their image as macho men: If a girl could do the job, what kind of man was I?

---

I had arrived in Australia in 1980 after falling in love with Rob, an Australian backpacker, in Spain. We travelled back and forth between Europe and Australia for a couple of years and eventually settled in Sydney. I worked as a translator in Spain, and to do the same work in my new country I had to get accredited.

Bottle-feeding kangaroo orphans in 1983.Credit: Courtesy of Erna Walraven

Permanently moving to a new country so far away made me question what I wanted from life and career. Since childhood I’d been fascinated by animals, and I’d fallen in love with Australian native wildlife. Rob worked for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and we would go camping and bushwalking in remote wild places. I became interested in birdwatching and at night we’d go spotlighting around the campsite to see what nocturnal creatures we could find. The sheer uniqueness and variety of native mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in my new country enthralled me. The potential of also getting to know tigers, chimpanzees, lions, meerkats and hundreds more species convinced me that zookeeping was for me.

While working full-time as a translator, I completed certificate courses in zookeeping, devoured nature documentaries and books about animal behaviour and everything I could lay my hands on to learn more. All of which led to that six-month trial position and then on to everything else that would happen to me at Taronga.

Everything I read about gender roles in nature confirmed my inferiority to men. I did not feel inferior, though – was there something wrong with me?

As I started my new job, I experienced a level of chauvinism I’d not encountered before. I suppose those documentaries and books about animals confirmed it was natural for males to be in charge: females were portrayed merely as spectators in the energetic lives of males. From Aristotle to Darwin and beyond, male biologists were influenced by their contemporary cultures, cultures that were at best dismissive of females and at worst deeply misogynistic. I blame those early zoologists for explaining the natural world through their cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. Females were expected to be quiet, pleasant, modest and devoted mothers. All things I am not.

These views about females have dominated human cultures ever since – even though, more than two millennia ago, the noted zoologist and philosopher Aristotle was aware some domestic hens were having it off with more than one rooster and likely did so wilfully, taking control of their sex life. Despite these early observations, he is widely interpreted to have continued describing female animals as passive onlookers in the dynamic, purposeful lives of males. Females who did not neatly fit into the chaste and coy model were ignored or, even worse, considered an aberration.

In his text On the Generation of Animals, dating back to the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher also characterised the female as a “mutilated male” and spent quite a bit of time explaining why women were inferior to men. Aristotle is still read widely, quoted and taught at universities.

Looking after a young Malayan tapir in 1998.Credit: Courtesy of Erna Walraven

Many centuries later, in Victorian England, these views were still firmly in place when the interest in the natural world was fuelled by access to the ecosystems of the growing empire. Educated men like Charles Darwin and others set off to foreign shores to “discover”, steal and describe the animals they found and, in Darwin’s case, develop the theory of evolution. As a newbie zookeeper, I studied evolutionary theory and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, as devotedly as others might delve into religion. Darwin was my hero.

Modern zoology originated in Darwin’s time, and gender roles were informed by the chauvinism of the era. I came to know that science is not immune to social influences, but in the early 1980s I believed what I read in these important books by serious authors. Those Victorian-era naturalists, mostly male, interpreted the natural world through a narrow lens of male supremacy. As a result, everything I read about gender roles in nature confirmed my inferiority to men. I did not feel inferior, though – was there something wrong with me?

Soon after reading all this, I was working with the most magnificent wild creatures and was perfectly placed to look at how the sex of an organism impacted the role it plays and how this influenced the kind of society that develops. Finding so much opposition to my employment as a low-ranking zookeeper ignited and fuelled my interest in the roles of female animals in their societies. I was spending as much time as I could before, after and during work times looking at animals interacting, socialising, courting and mating in real life and from footage of hidden cameras taping any overnight action.

It became more and more obvious that the animals I looked after did not conform at all to the notion that females were the prototypes of passivity and males the model for vigour, aggression and dominance – that seemed as outdated as the long-dead white male biologists themselves. I saw quite the opposite in the vixen, bitches, cows, ewes, hens, pens and sows I got to know. They are fierce creatures, not merely sidekicks to the males of their species.

Edited extract from Hear Me Roar by Erna Walraven (Affirm Press, $35), out now.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.