More than you think, but still not enough

The secret history of women in STEM Before WWII

Ladies who Lab

Dr. Margaret Rossiter was one of the first researchers to compile a comprehensive history of women scientists in the United States, beginning in the 1970s. When she began her research, one of her male colleagues dismissed her efforts, predicting that her book would be very short. To her surprise, she kept uncovering more and more documents revealing that there had been far more women scientists in the United States than she had been led to believe. Finally, her research ended up filling three very weighty volumes!

There were many women scientists in America before World War II, when we saw waves of women entering the scientific workforce. Their history remained largely hidden or unknown until the 1980s.

There were far more women scientists in the United States than one would be led to believe. However, there still were not enough. Especially, in the STEM workforce. But by ‘hiding’ their history, the male scientific establishment can claim that women have ‘no interest’ or ‘aptitude’ for STEM. This is false. Women have been doing science for centuries.

The Question of Women’s Higher Education

Formal educational opportunities for women were practically non-existent in the United States before the early 19th century. Women who tried to enter university or the professional workplace met strong male resistance, whose arguments centered on female incapacity, their own self-interests, and sexist gender roles [1,2]. Yet, women were apparently capable enough to work in textile factories when it meant freeing up the men to work as farmers [3]. Soon, employers saw education as a means to give workers “useful knowledge” and this coincided with a gradual acceptance of women’s basic education.

However, it was the creative and determined activism by women that ultimately led to more advanced educational opportunities. Most notably, Emma Hart Willard, with financial support from the city of Troy, opened the Troy Seminary for Women in 1821 [4,5]. Over two hundred teachers were educated at Troy, and Willard published several influential textbooks. The network of alumnae went on to open schools of their own [6], and Willard’s organizing and vocal support for women’s education was responsible for the spread of high schools for women. Another notable pioneer in women’s education was Catherine Beecher Stowe. Her 1841 Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home was the first comprehensive book on home management and is now regarded as one of the first Home Economics textbooks [7,8]. Stowe’s seminaries were more intellectually rigorous than contemporary seminaries and set women up for future financial independence [8]. Ultimately, however, Stowe argued that a woman’s highest duty was to be a wife, mother, and housekeeper [7].

By the beginning of the American Civil War, there were over 40-degree granting colleges for women, the first opening in 1839 (the Georgia Female Seminary, now Wesleyan) [2]. Common arguments by women advocates for women’s postsecondary education were typically contextualized in regards to vocation, such as preparing them to be better homemakers or teachers [5,9]. This may not be surprising given that American college curriculums in the early to mid-19^th century were incorporating more vocational aspects, including science, mathematics, agricultural, and engineering courses [2]. Often, women’s higher education was justified as a means to increase her aptitude to be a mother and wife. Whether women activists used this strategy to camouflage the radicalness of their intent, or they truly believed this sentiment, has been debated.

Entering Academia

After the Civil War, women’s postsecondary educational opportunities expanded, though they were largely sex-segregated. The Morrill land grant act of 1862 established higher educational institutions that were purportedly co-educational. Many Western and land-grant institutions began to admit women, and more independent women’s colleges were established [2,5]. While elite institutions, such as Harvard, Brown, and Columbia universities still refused to admit women, women’s “annexes” were developed (i.e., Radcliffe, Pembroke, and Barnard) in which women took equivalent classes and exams [2].

By the late 19^th century women worked to gain graduate degrees. Sometimes, women were admitted, studied, but were not awarded a doctoral degree due to university politics [13]. Eventually, women slowly “infiltrated” doctorate programs through making contact with friendly professors to gain admittance, attending less-highly regarded schools, establishing doctorate programs at women’s colleges, and creating philanthropic donations aimed at women’s education [5]. A few women who were interested in scientific study, attained university education abroad [10]. They returned and pressured universities to admit them for graduate study or joined women’s college faculties to educate future generations [12]. Between 1890 and 1900, there were finally larger gains in the awarding of doctorates to women [5]. Because of this activism, from 1870 to 1910, the percentage of conferred doctorates for women in the U.S. increased from 0% to 11% [14].

However, even “coeducational” public universities implemented segregation in admission decisions. The few women and students of color who were admitted usually faced a hostile environment. Typically there were separate facilities (and even entrances) provided for women and African American students [15]. In addition to threats of racial violence, Black students were usually excluded from residence halls, clubs, social activities, sports teams (or not allowed to play competitively) and often faced financial stress. They also faced ridicule in campus performances and student publications [16]. Supreme Court rulings like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and Gung Lum v. Rice in 1927 enforced segregation of African Americans and whites in public institutions. Once admitted, female students and students of color were usually counseled against high-paying majors, thus virtually ensuring they would remain in low-level economic positions after graduation. For example, women students were often pushed into socially deemed “feminine” areas such as Home Economics or Education. African American students were often pressured into vocational training programs [17]. Creating new institutions to study the sciences without harassment was one solution.

Students and Faculty in a coeducational Summer Nature Study Program at Cornell University, 1898. Professor Anna Botsford Comstock advocated for the program.

Women’s colleges provided opportunity to study science

Women’s colleges increased in popularity and reputation after the Civil War and allowed women to study traditionally male-typed fields, such as the sciences. However, women’s colleges varied in quality and purpose. Some of the most prestigious institutions attempted to mimic the curriculum of elite Eastern institutions and provided opportunities for women to study STEM fields and prepare for graduate school. By 1885, some of the most-well known women’s colleges, including Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr had opened. These colleges started off with sizable endowments and rigorous curriculums and were better positioned than other women’s colleges of the era [9] [18]. In fact, scientific paraphernalia was the largest single investment at Vassar, after building costs [19]. They would also go on to train and hire a sizable number of female scientists of the era [20]. By the early 20^th century, these so-called “Seven Sisters” colleges (Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley) would gain a reputation for educating white Protestant women from elite backgrounds, similar to their Ivy League counterparts (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Yale). They earned a reputation for emphasis on social graces (i.e., posture, speech, etiquette) which, in combination with their rigorous academics and avoidance of vocational training, seemed to enhance their prestige [18].

Notably, independent women’s colleges provided unprecedented employment and educational opportunities for women scientists [5]. Early female faculty members at women’s colleges were responsible for designing curriculum, teaching, and planning laboratories. There was less involvement in research and publishing due to lack of funds, administrative ambivalence towards research, and prevalent sex discrimination in academic hiring. Several graduates went on to earn doctorates at coeducational institutions and became instructors and faculty [10], often, at women’s colleges [5, 10, 11] . But many women graduates were unemployed or worked in a different sector [5]. Some women who did conduct original research, sometimes did so on topics that could be researched from home (i.e., child psychology) or received equipment, books, and advice from family [5, 12].

While many graduates went onto notable careers, it was more typical that women college graduates, especially those only with bachelor degrees from these institutions, were under-employed or unemployed.

African American women were in a unique position of exclusion from higher educational opportunities.

Largely denied opportunities at predominately white institutions, women were also underrepresented as bachelor degree recipients at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) until the 1940s [21]. Even then, they were usually shuttled into Education or Home Economics majors with low earning potential. Few African American women were admitted to the Seven Sisters colleges until the 1950s, and usually their admittance was either unintentional or related to tokenism. Radcliffe, Smith, and Wellesley had the most continuous and longest history of educating African American Women from the mid-1880s, while Barnard and Bryn Mawr admitted no African Americans for decades [22]. The African American women who were admitted often came from well-educated upper- and middle-class families. Even these women, however, had to contend with isolation, condescension, segregated housing, racist peers, ridicule, conflicts with faculty, and poor career counseling from advisors [22]. However, several African American graduates of these Seven Sisters schools went on to become prominent scientists and physicians.

HBCUs that catered to women had the best record of graduating Black, female scientists. Bennett College (1873) and Spelman (1881) are the most well-known HBCUs for women [18]. Spelman in particular, benefited from donations from northern philanthropists, and had a dedicated mission to high academic standards [23]. Bennet and Spelman college produced many graduates who went on to obtain STEM PhDs [24].

Women in the lab , 1919, Spelman college.

After Graduation

In the United States by 1920, 34% of bachelor’s degrees were held by women. 15% of doctorates were awarded to women, and 26% of academic faculty were women [14]. By 1921, there were 323 women doctorates in scientific fields at American intuitions and 5256 men in scientific fields [24] (p. 157). So roughly 6% of scientific doctorates were held by women.

However, the challenge of sex discrimination in hiring after graduation persisted. Women who did become faculty members were paid less than men with the gap increasing at higher faculty ranks [14]. More typically, female science graduates after the 1880s were relegated to low ranking and low paying teaching and research jobs [5] (think of modern day lab technicians or adjunct positions). At male-dominated universities, women with advanced degrees would often work as laboratory assistants doing basic, repetitive tasks. This emerging concept of “women’s work” solidified sex segregation in the sciences for the following decades and would play a vital role in the rise and fall of Home Economics departments.

Only 18.2% of women scientists were married in 1921. Regarding employment, there were 280 women scientists employed in academia and 82 employed outside of academia in the United States [5] (p 140, 172). Thus, academia, was the main employer of women scientists, and breaking into industry or governmental research was very difficult.

While these numbers were nowhere near 50/50, they were not zero. And there are many interesting stories accompanying these women in science. It was through advocacy that they succeeded. And they created remarkable research spaces that still have positive impacts on today’s scientists.

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References

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[2] A. M. Cohen and C. B. Kisker, The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System, Second. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.

[3] R. Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999.

[4] C. W. Conable, Women At Cornell: The Myth of Equal Education. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

[5] M. W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

[6] A. F. Scott, “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary 1822-1872,” Hist. Educ. Q., vol. 19, no. 1, p. 3, 1979, doi: 10.2307/367807.

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[10] J. C. V. de (ed. . Wate, “The Faculty Salutes the Alumnae,” Vassar Alumnae Magazine, Apr. 1961. [Online]. Available: https://newspaperarchives.vassar.edu/?a=is&oid=vq19610401-01&type=staticpdf&submitted=1&e=------196-en-20-vq-1--txt-txIN-%22home+economics%22-------&g-recaptcha-response=03AGdBq245pNyNJG2fVfqZ0Mn9rgXk6E7X-hsFbTMaZdttYrOM7Nnn7ptw_xpnZ_Qm5rCdADi1HUW_X9HiATA

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[13] M. W. Rossiter, “Doctorates for American Women, 1868-1907,” Hist. Educ. Q., vol. 22, no. 2, p. 159, 1982, doi: 10.2307/367747.

[14] P. A. Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,” Signs (Chic)., vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 759–773, 1978, doi: 10.1515/9783110978933.218.

[15] C. Kammen, Part & Apart: The Black Experience at Cornell, 1865-1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009.

[16] R. Geiger, “Mass Higher Education, 1915-1940,” in The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016, pp. 423–478.

[17] B. C. Clewell and B. T. Anderson, “African Americans in Higher Education : An Issue of Access,” Humboldt J. Soc. Relat., vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 55–79, 1995, [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23263010

[18] L. Miller-Bernal, “Changes in the Status and Function of Women’s Colleges Over Time,” in Challenged By Coeducation: Women’s Colleges Since 1960, L. Miller-Bernal and S. L. Poulson, Eds. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006, pp. 1–20.

[19] D. J. Warner, “Science Education for Women in Antebellum America,” Univ. Chicago Press, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 58–67, 1978, [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/230608

[20] M. W. Rossiter, “Women’s Colleges: The Entering Wedge,” in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, pp. 1–28.

[21] N. E. Bertaux and M. C. Anderson, “An emerging tradition of educational achievement: African american women in college and the professions, 1920‐1950,” Equity Excell. Educ., vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 16–21, 2001, doi: 10.1080/1066568010340203.

[22] L. Perkins, “The African American Female Elite: The Early History of African American Women in the Seven Sister Colleges, 1880–1960,” Harv. Educ. Rev., 1997, doi: 10.17763/haer.67.4.136788875582630j.

[23] F. D. Graham and S. L. Poulson, “Spelman College: A Place All Their Own,” in Challenged By Coeducation: Women’s Colleges Since 1960, L. Miller-Bernal and S. L. Poulson, Eds. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006, pp. 234–256.

[24] M. W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World since 1972. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

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