Narratives of international educational exchange programmes such as the US-sponsored Fulbright and the Commonwealth-centred Carnegie grants reveal the formative role these exchanges played in extending the geographical, scholarly, and professional boundaries of women's worlds. Notably, these award schemes influenced, shaped and expanded the career aspirations and professional experiences of a group of women from Australia and New Zealand. In this article, we take up the question of the distinctive opportunities each programme presented for women awardees and consider their differing experiences primarily due to the specific programme on which they embarked. We argue that the extent to which participation in an exchange programme might have provided benefits to individual Australian and New Zealand women could also become the spur for awardees to advocate for an expansion of opportunities for other women. Furthermore, we consider whether hidden obstacles existed that hindered women's career pathways and successes.