Did anything interesting happen within the Fulbright Program in Poland during the 1960s? You’ll find out by reading the second episode of the series #FulbrightDecades, created as part of the #JestemFulbrighterem (#IAmFulbrighter) social media campaign.
It is certainly worth noting that the 1960s saw the first female grantees sent from Poland to the United States as Fulbrighters! In the 1963-64 academic year, Helena Norwid and Anna Witkowska were sent as scholars to the United States. Dr. Norwid was a humanities researcher specializing in American Literature, specifically the works of Thomas Wolfe. Dr. Witkowska was a specialist in Physical Sciences. Unfortunately, we have no more information available about these two grantees as their records are unreachable.
It is quite interesting to see that in the 1960s, a total of 16 out of 73 grantees were women (approximately 23%). Most grantees during this time specialized in philology, just like Dr. Lyra and Dr. Aaron, the first ever Fulbright Poland grantees we discussed in the previous episode of #FulbrightDecades. In the 1970s, the amount of female grant recipients decreased significantly, wherein out of 93 total grantees only 9 were female (less than 10%). Fortunately, since the 1980s, the number of female Fulbrighters has consistently grown. In the 80s we saw a total of 46 women out of 231 grantees (about 20%) who came from Poland to the USA as Fulbrighters. In the 1990s, we saw a total of 91 women out of 327 grantees (about 28%), a large increase from the previous decade. Unfortunately this data is only a partial portrayal of the full story; not a complete representation of the underlying trends. When analyzing older records, it is not uncommon to stumble upon incomplete or missing information, making the process of statistical analysis cumbersome.
Despite the large number of English-American philology scholarships, which in some way characterized the beginnings of the Fulbright Program in Poland, the program was also rapidly developing in other areas, which we will share with you soon!
