{"id":181525,"date":"2021-03-29T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181525"},"modified":"2021-03-26T06:46:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T06:46:42","slug":"erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Erasing Women from Science? There\u2019s a Name for That"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"subtitle\">\n<blockquote><p><em>Countless women scientists have <\/em><em>been shunted to the footnotes, with credit for their work going to male colleagues. This is called the Matilda Effect.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_181526\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-181526\" class=\"wp-image-181526 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/erasing_women_science_matilda-effect-feminism.jpg 1050w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-181526\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Matilda Joslyn Gage<br \/>via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>20 Mar 2021 &#8211; <\/em>If you base your understanding of science history on what the textbooks tell you, you might believe that up until about a hundred years ago, Marie Curie was one of the only women in science to have achieved anything notable. In reality, Curie was just one of many groundbreaking women scientists\u2014what sets her apart is the fact that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/daily.jstor.org\/how-marie-curie-claimed-credit-for-her-scientific-work\/\" >her accomplishments were recognized in her time<\/a>, mostly due to her own efforts. Other women in science haven\u2019t been so lucky.<\/p>\n<p>In 1883, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/25118273?mag=erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that\" class=\"jcitation\" >feminist, abolitionist, and sociologist Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote an essay titled \u201cWoman as an Inventor.\u201d<\/a> Gage begins by disputing the common assertion that women possess \u201cno inventive or mechanical genius.\u201d In reality, Gage points out, \u201cAlthough woman\u2019s scientific education has been grossly neglected\u2026some of the most important inventions of the world are due to her.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pull-quote center\">\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"pull-quote__text tweetable\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/daily.jstor.org\/erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that\/#\" ><em><strong>For many women, claiming credit for their inventions was a futile exercise, according to Gage.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"subtitle\">\n<p>Gage lists dozens of women\u2019s inventions, including the aquarium (by naturalist Jeanette Power), the deep-sea telescope (by Sarah Mather), and the production of marble from limestone (by Harriet Hosmer). Gage\u2019s essay famously claims that Eli Whitney had been instructed by Constance Greene on how to put the pieces of the cotton gin together. For many women, claiming credit for their inventions was a futile exercise, according to Gage. Their limited social and financial mobility meant that they could rarely reap the benefits of their work or fully exercise their inventive powers.<\/p>\n<p>More than a century later, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/unheralded-women-scientists-finally-getting-their-due-180973082\/\" >science historian Margaret Rossiter<\/a> coined a phrase to acknowledge \u201cthe sexist nature of\u2026women\u2019s systematic under-recognition.\u201d <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/285482?mag=erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that\" class=\"jcitation\" >She called it the Matilda Effect<\/a>, in memory of Gage and her early articulation of this systemic erasure. Gage \u201cglimpsed what was happening, perceived the pattern, deplored it,\u201d writes Rossiter.<\/p>\n<p>As Rossiter explains, women in science who were \u201cunrecognized in their own time\u201d stayed that way, but even many of those who \u201cwere well-known in their day have since been obliterated from history,\u201d sometimes \u201cby historians with definite axes to grind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trota of Salerno, the eleventh-century physician, is \u201cprobably the most outrageous erasure or transformation of the history of science or medicine,\u201d writes Rossiter. \u201cIn the twelfth century a monk, assuming that such an accomplished person must have been a man, miscopied her name on one of her treatises, giving it the masculine form in Latin, a mistake which has confused the issue of her sex ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 1939, Lise Meitner helped discover the physical characters of nuclear fission in \u201cone of the biggest collaborative discoveries of the century,\u201d and in 1944 her male partner alone was awarded the Nobel Prize.\u2028In the 1950s, physicist Chien-Shiung Wu <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atomicheritage.org\/profile\/chien-shiung-wu\" >devised a groundbreaking experiment to test the law of parity conservation<\/a>, for which two male colleagues received a Nobel Prize. (Wu\u2019s contributions to nuclear physics are now <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/store.usps.com\/store\/product\/buy-stamps\/chien-shiung-wu-S_480204\" >commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp<\/a>.) Even Mileva Mari\u0107, Albert Einstein\u2019s first wife and fellow trained physicist, is now thought to have been \u201csystematically under-recognized, either deliberately for strategic reasons or unconsciously through traditional stereotyping.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps if we call attention to [Matilda Joslyn Gage] and this tendency,\u201c writes Rossiter, \u201cit will remind and help current and future scholars to write a more equitable and comprehensive history.\u201d Rossiter encourages scholars to document the past in a way \u201cthat not only does not leave all the \u2018Matildas\u2019 out, but calls attention to still more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>___________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/jessica_romeo-300x300-1.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-181527 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/jessica_romeo-300x300-1-e1616475555102.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a>Jess Romeo is a science writer with a passion for literature and a tendency to fall down rabbit holes. Her work has appeared in<\/em> Popular Science, Undark, <em>and<\/em> Scholastic Classroom<em> magazines.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/daily.jstor.org\/erasing-women-from-science-theres-a-name-for-that\/\" >Go to Original &#8211; daily.jstor.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>20 Mar 2021 &#8211; If you base your understanding of science history on what the textbooks tell you, you might believe that up until about a hundred years ago, Marie Curie was one of the only women in science to have achieved anything notable. Countless women scientists have been shunted to the footnotes, with credit for their work going to male colleagues. This is called the Matilda Effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":181526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[260,304,525],"class_list":["post-181525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-history","tag-science","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}