Abstract
The availability of secondary and then higher education in the U.S. by the end of the nineteenth century led to women’s greater entry into the scientific professions. The women’s colleges played a significant role in this evolution both by educating women in the sciences and by providing employment opportunities for them as professors. However, the doctorate (the PhD) and the difficulty women had obtaining the degree, both abroad and in the U.S., proved to be a barrier to women’s advancement in the sciences. So did the professionalization of the various scientific fields as most of the scientific societies did not welcome women at all or not on the same basis as men. At first, women didn’t realize their second-class citizen status. But as the early 1900s wore on, it became obvious that men could be employed in industry and academia and that women didn’t have the same opportunities. Nevertheless, many women succeeded and shone through the late 1800s and early 1900s.
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Notes
- 1.
Elmira College is today a private, coeducational, liberal arts college.
- 2.
One of the major problems of the early women’s colleges was finding enough adequately qualified students. Wellesley ran a preparatory school until 1880. Vassar ran theirs until 1888.
- 3.
The first three editions of James McKenn Cattell’s American Men of Science: A Biographical Dictionary (1906, 1910, and 1921) listed 504 women. Of a group of 483 of them, almost 40% had attended eight eastern women’s colleges. The women’s colleges were major employers of female scientists. Between 1900 and 1920, they employed 21 of the 23 female physicists listed by Cattell. In 1906, 57% of all the women whom he listed worked at these institutions. By 1921, the percentage had fallen to 36%, although the number of jobs doubled, primarily because opportunities were opening up at the larger state and private universities.
- 4.
Johns Hopkins was proclaimed as the first full-scale graduate school in America when it opened in 1876. Apparently, its trustees were not sympathetic to women and its first President, Daniel C. Gilman, felt he had enough issues to deal with without having to deal also with coeducation.
- 5.
In 1895, Mary Whiton Calkins passed all of her examinations at Harvard but was denied her PhD. In 1898, Ethel Puffer (later Howes) passed all of her examinations with such distinction that a committee of eight full professors deemed her to be unusually qualified for a Harvard PhD but it was not to be granted. In 1902, Harvard established the Radcliffe Graduate School to grant university degrees to women and both Puffer and Calkins were offered Radcliffe PhDs; Puffer accepted but Calkins refused insisting on a Harvard degree or none at all.
- 6.
Yale and the University of Pennsylvania admitted women in 1892. Barnard College, a coordinate college for women, was established by Columbia University in 1889. It is named for Frederick A.P. Barnard, the tenth president of Columbia College, who argued unsuccessfully for the admission of women to Columbia University.
- 7.
The professors at German universities were quite opposed to admitting German women for doctorates. Foreign women were less of a threat since they would return home and not expect to teach in Germany. As early as 1902 and as late as 1908, the German universities began admitting their own countrywomen and awarding them degrees. Some of the first German graduates were faculty daughters who had been watching the American women and waiting for their own chance to attend the universities and earn degrees.
- 8.
Thomas Say is considered the father of American entomology. Lucy Way Say was an illustrator for her husband’s book and publications. She was the first woman member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (her husband and his brother were co-founders and leaders). She may have been the first woman to join an American scientific society.
- 9.
There were many local all-women science clubs including the Female Botanical Society of Wilmington, Delaware in the 1840s; the Dana Natural History Society of Albany, New York in the 1860s, the Syracuse Botanical Club, and the Botanical Society of Philadelphia. Other clubs existed in Jersey City, New Jersey in the 1870s and 1880s and in Boston in the 1890s and early 1900s. The (Women’s) Natural Science Club was established in Washington in 1891.
- 10.
Membership requirements of the American Society of Naturalists: Membership in this society shall be limited to persons professionally engaged in some branch of Natural History as Instructors in Natural History, Officers in Museums and other Scientific Institutions, Physicians, and others. The following persons shall be considered professionally engaged in natural history within the meaning of Article II, Section 1: – Only those who regularly devote a considerable portion of their time to the advancement of natural history; first, those who have published investigations in pure science of acknowledged merit; second, teachers of natural history, officers of museums of natural history, physicians, and others who have essentially promoted the natural-history sciences by original contributions of any kind.
- 11.
In 1971, the name was changed to American Men and Women of Science.
- 12.
Botanist Asa Gray so objected to Maria Mitchell’s election that he erased Fellow from her certificate and wrote honorary member instead. No other woman would be elected to the Academy until 1943.
- 13.
Ladd-Franklin studied mathematics instead of physics because university laboratories did not admit women and mathematics did not require laboratory work.
- 14.
In 1926, Johns Hopkins righted what is called a “grievous wrong” and awarded Ladd-Franklin her PhD.
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Tietjen, J.S. (2020). The Fight for Educational Equality. In: Scientific Women. Women in Engineering and Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51445-7_3
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