The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2016 49 ing and worthwhile career in the world. Phyllis Oakley joined the Foreign Service in 1957 and resigned one year later to marry FSO Robert Oakley. In 1974, she rejoined the Foreign Service and rose through the ranks quickly, beginning in the Bureau of International Orga- nizations. She retired in 1999, having served as the assistant secretary for intel- ligence and research. These excerpts are taken from interviews by Charles Stuart Kennedy between 2000 and 2004 and from her essay, “Paving the Way for Women” ( Inside a U.S. Embassy , Second Edition, 2005). A Female Ambassador: What Could This Mean? MARY OLMSTED I had been in Washington for a long time and I was looking for an onward assignment and was getting nowhere with it when one day [in 1974] there crossed my desk a big fat memorandum asking for permission to open a new post in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. As I thumbed through the memo I thought to myself, “I wonder what poor devil we will send to the jungles of New Guinea?” But somehow it stuck in my mind. … I began to think, “Wouldn’t it be fun to open up a new post?” So I wrote a memorandum to the Director General and sent copies of it to the director of personnel, the head of assign- ments, and everybody else I could think of, and said I would like to be considered to open the post, which would open as a consulate general in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Well, dead silence ensued. And several days later the Director Gen- eral came into my office with my memo in hand, and he said, “You really mean this?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” So indeed he delivered. There was some protest from the desk level in the geographic bureau, but I weathered that storm. The desk thought it was nonsense to send a woman to Papua New Guinea. …That point was made very clear, and in writing, and when I got that memo I had to laugh a little bit. I said they won’t dare cancel this assignment now that there is written evidence that cancellation would be on the basis of discrimination. … I learned consider- ably later, toward the end of my tour there, that the government of Papua New Guinea, the people who were running the country, were very puzzled when the United States sent a woman there as their first representative, and they didn’t know how to take it until the United States named Anne Armstrong as ambassador to the United Kingdom. They read about that in Time magazine, and they thought, “Well, the United States sent a woman to London, and they sent one to Port Moresby.” And they felt that kind of put them in the same league as the United Kingdom, and they felt very pleased. Then they began to say, “We, too, should have women who are able to take high positions in our government. We should train them and bring them along and give them appoint- ments.” And I think my appointment there had something to do with improving the status of women in Papua New Guinea. Their ambassador here [in 2004] was a woman. Mary Olmsted joined the Foreign Service in 1945 and was posted to Consulate General Montreal as a junior economic analyst. During a more than 30-year career she also served in Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Vienna and New Delhi, as well as in Washington, D.C. She was assigned as the first consul general to Papua New Guinea in early 1975 and was promoted to become the first U.S. ambassador to the country after its independence from Australia in September 1975. Ms. Olmsted was the first president of the Women ’ s Action Organization and the 1972 winner of AFSA ’ s Christian Herter Award for intellectual cour- age and constructive dissent. She retired in 1979. These excerpts are taken from interviews conducted by Ann Miller Morin in 1985 and Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1992. n The government of Papua New Guinea, the people who were running the country were very puzzled when the United States sent a woman there as their first representative; they didn’t know how to take it. —Mary Olmsted