Throughout her career, Johnstone was concerned about sexism in academia. In the 1970s, she helped improve working conditions for women in science and academia through her service on the Committee on the Status of Women at McGill. Reporting to the university’s senate, the committee recommended actions to end sexual discrimination, most of which were implemented. At McGill University, Rose was the first woman to hold the Gilman Cheney Chair in Biochemistry and the first and only woman chair of the Department of Biochemistry in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine.
