IWD profiles: Gill Braulik
International Women’s Day 2024 – #InspireInclusion
International Women’s Day is an opportunity to champion the power of women’s voices and drive positive change.
We spoke to women across the the University who all have one thing in common – an unwavering pursuit of equality. We asked them why they thought it was important to mark IWD, who inspires them and what they love about being a woman.
Dr Gill Braulik, Scottish Oceans Institute
Is there a woman who has inspired you personally or professionally?
One of my inspirations was Jane Goodall. From a young age I wanted to travel the world and have adventures and also to work on nature conservation and her example of going alone to Tanzania and defying the odds in studying chimpanzees in a wild and remote place was so inspiring. I ended up doing similar things myself and spent many years studying endangered river dolphins in remote parts of Pakistan. Later I lived in Tanzania and ran projects on marine conservation including on whales and dolphins in the western Indian Ocean. I finally met Jane Goodall in Tanzania many years after I first read her books as a teenager. (in the photo above, my daughter is giving Jane book about river dolphins).
Why do you think it is important to mark International Women’s Day?
I think in the western world we are getting closer to equality and it can be easy to take that for granted, especially for young people. I think it is so important to look to the past and realise how things were so different so recently. Women have only legally been able to vote for less than 100 years. International Women’s Day can serve to show us how far we have come, but remind us that there is still a long way to go.
What did you want to be when you were young?
I grew up in the suburbs of north London far from any wild places. Then at age 11 I went on an outward bound trip to Devon and then on a family holiday to Wales. Those experiences out in nature blew me away and after that I wanted to either be an outward bound instructor, taking other young people out to show them the wonders of nature, or, working to try and save wild places by being a conservationist. In the end I somehow combined both these dreams into one, and I now do conservation science which involves leading groups of people to do scientific surveys in wild places, and the results of that work help to protect those places.