Women have been in science for as long as anyone else, but more often than not, their work in the field is discredited because they're female.
Today I am going to explain the stories of 6 women who have been overlooked by the scientific community because of their gender. The earliest case I've found is from 1851. Vermont born Nettie Stevens was an extremely smart woman who determined that an organism's sex is dictated by it's chromosomes rather than natural environmental factors. Stevens received her doctorate degree from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and proceeded in the study of sex determination with a colleague named Edmund Wilson, who did the same work, but came to conclusions later than Stevens did. Stevens discovered and researched sex determination by chromosomes much sooner than geneticist Thomas Morgan, but Morgan is credited in his textbook, rather than Stevens.
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Wu was one of the physicists in the Manhattan Project and she conducted vast amounts of research on radiation detection and uranium enrichment. Years later, two men by the names of Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang approached Wu for help disproving a scientific theory. Wu conducted an expirement which proved the theory false, but instead of Wu receiving a Nobel Prize for her significant research and experimenting, Lee and Yang took the coveted award instead. Looking at this case later on, the problem with Wu not receiving what she deserved is simply because she is a woman. Pnina Abir-Am also says that her ethnicity played a role in this also. How on earth someone can be discredited for all of their hard work because of their gender, I don't
Miller, Alice H. Eagly, and Marcia C. Linn, it measured gender-science stereotype, “” (2). which is defined as associations that connects science with men more than women. This is believed to come from a lack of representation of women in the relative field. The study notes that putting women in science related fields in media, or having more women in the field, lessons that stereotype. They conducted the experiment by measuring 66 nations, which consisted of 350,000 participants’ explicit and implicit gender-science stereotypes. They found a relationship “between women's representation in science and national gender-science stereotype” (Eagly, Linn, Miller 8). The results of the study concluded that “implicit and explicit measures indicated strong association of science with man” (Eagly, Linn, Miller
In Reflections on Gender and Science by Evelyn Fox Keller, Keller writes about the presence of masculinity, rather than femininity, in science. Keller begins makes it clear that, although there are significantly more men than women in the field, the issue at hand is not the lack of women working in science, but the “attribution of masculinity to science as an intellectual domain” (76). This means the language, tone, and overall dominance. Keller states that this stems from the myth that masculinity is associated with objectivity and neutrality, whereas femininity is associated with subjectivity and emotions. Therefore, because of these two associations, it is believed that men are better suited to be scientists than women, which is why the
Marie Daly is a famous biochemist who had to overcome dual hurdles of racial and gender bias to peruse her lifelong love of chemistry. Marie had to undergo judgment from her being a woman and trying to become a scientist, which was a male dominated occupation and also had to endure racism because she was an African American. Marie made many scientific discoveries that we are lucky to have today.
As a student coming from a purely humanities background, the idea that gender discrimination could occur in the field of science as a concept was completely alien to me. However it has come to light that gender discrimination in the field of science is not a myth but in fact a harsh reality for which the reasons remain skewed.
Many women have had an impact on science over the years and their accomplishments tend to be underappreciated by the public eye. Often times, there are important people that have made a significant impact on the world that we have today that do not receive the credit and attention that they deserve for their accomplishments. Recognizing and acknowledging people that have made an impact on society now and in the past, is an important part of learning about history and the accomplishments of the past.
Throughout Gender and Race in the Physical Sciences, I have been struck by how rarely in STEM we shed a light on the women of color that already exist and thrive in the sciences. Often, when we discuss diversity in the sciences, we only discuss it in the frame of a problem. More specifically, we tend to focus on the problem of there not being enough of these women in the field. As a result of the lack of attention paid to pioneering women in STEM, many young people of all backgrounds are inclined to believe that there are no women of color doing great things in the field- that there are no role models. With this paper, and an on-campus event to be held in the spring, I hope to challenge people’s assumptions about what a scientist looks like, and inspire people through a discussion of innovative women of color.
As hard as is it is today for women to succeed in the sciences, one must give kudos to those that came before us. These are the women that paved the way for today's generation of women scientists. One such woman is Rosalind Elsie Franklin, a chemist who had a great impact on the modern day field of genetics.
As German biographer Johann Eberti acknowledged while recounting the life of astronomer Marie Cunitz, the perpetual conflict between a flourishing career and stable home life compelled women to abandon their household responsibilities to truly liberate their science career (Document 1). From the masculine perspective, critics of women representation, including Eberti, saddled immense responsibility on these women, attempting to scrutinize their every move to disincentivize increased involvement. Without a societal affirmation to share responsibility and champion the progress of inclusion, women retreated into the shadows of the household, stirring resentment towards the patriarchy for failure to evolve. Beyond the acquiescence of morality to household responsibilities, women who attempted to balance the endless obligations were affirmed by society as the paradigm of success, setting impossible standards for the majority. When Dorothea Schlozer first received her Ph.D., she was editorialized by the Göttingen newspaper as the ideal gentlewoman scholar, because of her mastering of household and scientific duties while maintaining her appearance. (Document 13). With the small minority of women able to balance domestic and career responsibilities, the mainstream media subjectively commandeered these women as the optimal view of society; After all, for the newspaper to appease the predominantly conservative
In today 's world, women have an important role. They keep the sanity of others in tact, they maintain the peace, and provide a lot to communities all over the world. Women are just as capable as men when it comes to intellectual thinking, professions, and ideas. But one thing that cannot be changed is that men are just naturally physically stronger than women. So in the 1600’s and about up to the 1950’s, because women were not as physically strong, they were seen as weak in other aspects too. They were treated like decorations, just to be seen and not heard, just hang on a wall. But evidentially this is not true. Women are very powerful in many ways and Anne Hutchinson portrays that throughout her court case. American Jezebel by Eve
The fact that many people probably have not heard of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Lise Meitner, Esther Lederberg, Chien-Shiung Wu or Rosalind Franklin, is not surprising. These women, among many other female scientists, have been robbed of their recognition due to sexism. Female scientists have a reputation of being ignored, in a sense that they did not receive enough, if not any, credit for their ideas and work. If you ask people who were responsible for the discovery of DNA, most people would answer Watson and Crick. However, there were some scientists that made key contributions, and are not properly acknowledged. Rosalind Franklin is seen as one of the most discredited researchers of all times. She had played an important role in the development of the model of the DNA molecule, but the other male scientists took all the credit, and, received the Nobel Prize for ‘their’ discovery.
Inez Robb, an impressive woman herself, wrote an article entitled, “Youthful Physicist Wins ‘Woman of The Year’ Award”, published in the Washington Post on December 30, 1945. Less than a year after the end of World War II, women were feeling pressure to return to their positions back in the home, to go back to being the feminine ideal.
During her tenure, she spoke about an issue she named the “Quiet Crisis” Which is the declining population of qualified American researchers and scientists. She argues that a greater effort is needed to attract the minorities of women to fields such as science and engineering. She also shares her perspectives on energy security. The need for improved technology and innovation. She reflects on her legacy, hoping her work with different institutions will allow them to address some of the issues in the twenty-first century.
Many men and women believed that women shouldn't research science because it is unwomanly like and that they belong in the kitchen. Johann Eberti a german astronomer said about Marie Cunitz in 1650, "She
Feminism in science will be proved significant in the sense of providing a paradigm for exposing human values suppressed within scientific work by demonstrating how assumptions of gender have influenced scientific practice. As science is not and can never be wholly objective, it will be argued that the feminist critique does not undermine the objectivity of science, nor does its contributions make it more objective as science was never objective to begin with. It will then be discussed how feminist theories that are based on objectivity diverge from the crux of this matter and can be seen as detrimental to the field.
Marie Curie became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize when the Curies shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Becquerel in 1903 for their work with radioactivity. In the 1900s, women still had a relegated role in science. Marie Curie wasn’t allowed to speak with her husband on stage at the award ceremony and had to sit in the audience. Her mere presence was an affront to men. Some members of the Nobel Prize committee even considered not including her in the prize at all, despite the fact that she was largely responsible for the discovery.