Where are they now? The women tipped to make it in 'a man's world'
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In 1990, they were celebrated by The Bulletin as women who would make it in "a man's world". Ann Arnold tracked down these two bright-eyed school girls, and found they had been able to push through a system that still often works against women.
Clipping across Martin Place in the Sydney CBD is an elegant woman in a stylish black shift and Prada heels.
But doctor Alina Zeldovich has, as she reminds me, just spent half a day in "pyjamas and moccasins" — her surgery wear.
She has been performing complex cataract surgery in the historic Sydney Eye Hospital complex around the corner. Her specialty is high-risk cases.
When she is operating, Dr Zeldovich is in another world. Working inside a 2 millimetre incision in the eye, peering through a microscope, she has one hand on a tiny jackhammer tool that breaks up the cataract; the other hand manipulating the cataract; one foot operating the jackhammer machine, and the other foot adjusting the microscope magnification.
The focus is absolute: "I'm fully there".
In her work as an emergency doctor, Zoe Rodgers spent three years with the rescue helicopter service.
With long, blonde, ringlet curls falling over dark blue overalls, she stood out in the male-dominated medical action world of retrievals, fetching those in need.
Now, she is an emergency physician at Sydney's Prince of Wales Hospital, in charge of whichever unit she is rostered onto — fast track, acute or short stay.
'Bred to win in a man's world'
In 1990, Dr Rodgers and Dr Zeldovich were featured on the cover of the Australian news magazine The Bulletin, which ceased publication in 2008.
They were singled out as two of the top 10 academic achievers at the then partly-selective Sydney Girls High School.
The headline announced the young women had been "bred to win in a man's world" and predicted the nineties would be "the decade of the new woman".
One of the "most remarkable changes" in the past 20 years, observed Bulletin journalist Glennys Bell, was that "girls now have the same career choices and ambitions as boys".
"In the 70s and 80s, feminists fought for equal pay and position," Bell wrote.
"In the 90s, women plan to collect the trophies; the power, titles, status and salaries."
In many ways, Dr Rodgers and Dr Zeldovich are 'the new women', and have collected the trophies.
Both went on to pursue difficult, high-status careers, start families and develop their preferred female identities.
There have been pressures and hurdles along the way, but both women see themselves as having had a pretty good run.
It's a drizzly Friday afternoon when we meet back at Sydney Girls High School, where their story began.
It's a reunion for the two doctors; the last time they spent time together was straight after their HSC exams, when they took off on their schoolies break — just the two of them — to Anna Bay near Port Stephens.
We gather at the base of a wooden staircase where the mural they originally posed in front of still exists, faded and a little chipped.
More than one teacher pops their head around the doorway and suggests we move a dusty plastic pot plant out of shot.
Meeting the women of the future
As Dr Rodgers and Dr Zeldovich chat about their work and kids, it's clear they still have much in common.
Both medical specialists — and both daughters of European refugee mothers who were, or are, doctors — they have spent years training and doing punishing shifts in hospitals.
Both are also married mothers; Dr Zeldovich has a 14-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son, while Dr Rodgers has a four-year-old-son and is currently 18 weeks pregnant with her second child.
(Having endured four miscarriages, Dr Rodgers' advice to younger women is to: "Have your children young, and just find a way to make it work with your career". Getting pregnant later on, she says, is too hard.)
Still, almost three decades since The Bulletin story was published, that women can push through to the upper tiers of their professions in many instances remains the exception, not the rule.
Among the group of 10 Sydney Girls High students featured in that article, was Rebecca Huntley, now a social researcher and author.
"I think we thought, 'If we're clever and excel at school, then the structures will change around us'," Dr Huntley said.
Certainly, according to associate professor Rae Cooper, a work and gender specialist at Sydney University's Business School, "success" for Australian women in 2017 is a mixed picture.
There has been "spectacular change" in education, she says, with more women than men now completing Year 12, as well as bachelor and masters degrees.
But that's not necessarily translating to more women holding senior roles in the workforce.
In Australia, the overall gender pay gap seems stuck at around 18 per cent (in the finance and health sectors it's about 30 per cent).
The blockages are partly because of organisational cultures, Associate Professor Cooper says, where leadership and performance are often defined by traditionally male characteristics.
And then there are family issues. Only recently Associate Professor Cooper conducted a focus group with women who were thinking about having children, or had just begun to.
Asked how they viewed the prospect of negotiating part-time work, or what part-time roles might mean for their career progress, "they used words like fearful, terrified, worried".
Pressures and prejudice
Dr Zeldovich is quick to point out the support she has had. Both her parents help out with child care, as do her in-laws.
"And now there's the dog," she says. She smiles apologetically across the table at her mother, who doubles as her surgery assistant.
There have been testing moments.
While undertaking her specialist training in a rural location — and missing her small child back home in Sydney — a senior male colleague told her: "I don't know why we bother training up women because they're just going to have babies and work part-time".
When she first started practising as a young surgeon, she faced occasional prejudice.
After explaining her surgery plan, for example, some patients would ask: "But who will be doing it?"
When Dr Zeldovich confirmed that she would, there was sometimes a surprised raised eyebrow.
When she added reassuringly that her mum would be helping her, there would often be two raised eyebrows. The mother and daughter doctors have had a few good laughs about that over the years.
The hospital emergency department where Dr Rodgers works is staffed with many "amazing women".
Dr Rodgers renegotiated her work life when full-time shifts there became too draining, especially the midnight finishes.
She now does two days in emergency, and on other days is the department's director of simulations — a training method involving realistic scenarios.
Dr Rodgers has only just told the hospital she is pregnant and will be wanting maternity leave. Her employer's response was: "Of course! How long would you like?"
Her beef is more with the way men's roles are viewed. Her radiographer husband's request for parental leave with their son, Alex, was met with raised eyebrows.
He is now studying medicine full-time. How many male doctors would take parental leave, I wonder. "Like, none!" Dr Rodgers says.
Then she remembers one, and another who is working three-quarters of the week, out of her entire circle of doctor colleagues and friends.
It's a long, slow road to change.
Ann Arnold is a Radio National journalist.
Topics: careers, family-and-children, feminism, women, work, offbeat, sydney-2000
