Women in the Sciences

Reinforcing and perpetuating this imbalance is a persisting social perception that science, if not specifically masculine, is still somehow essentially nonfeminine. Brush (1991, p. 406) cites Newsweek's expression putting the popular attitude in vivid form: "Real men don't do science, real women don't even think about it." Science is not perceived as particularly virile, but even the common image of the nerd is still specifically male.

Now, it is certainly true that women are underrepresented in nearly all the high-power, high-status professions, and in positions of influence generally. We should not expect this to be less so in the sciences than in other fields. Yet the exclusion of women seems to be stronger in the sciences than in other fields, and more persisting.

Consider, for example, a profession far removed from academia, the law. Women were long barred from most practice of law. Moreover, lawyers have a combative, tough image, surely as far remo

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tolerated in aristocratic men; it must be remembered that the proper and popular pastimes of their class were hunting, gambling, and duelling.) Literature and activities were activities of the aristocratic parlor. But when women were forced into a private sphere, they were permitted to remain in the parlor when the talk was literary, being sent out, it seems, only when conversation turned to science. Women are prominent in the traditional literary canon from Jane Austen on; there has been no need for modern feminist scholars to rediscover their contributions. Literature remained open to women when the sciences were closed, just as the sciences remain closed today when other professions such as the law are opening up to them. Clearly something has acted powerfully, from the nineteenth century on, to exclude women more fully from science than from other comparable endeavors. References Brush, S. G. (1991). Women in science and engineering. American Scientist 79 (September-October), pp. 404-19. Schiebinger, L. (1989). The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge: Harvard. Is science, Cartesian or Newtonian in its essential attitudes, a masculinized mode of thought that is in some wa
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Approximate Word count = 1575
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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