Women, in the origins of modern science, are the Ivan Ilych's to the Peter Ivanovich's of burgeoning modern science's universities, academies, and formalities.
Schiebinger's The Mind Has No Sex? provides a critical historical perspective on how the revolution of science from an informal intellectual pursuit to a professional institution of thought, a transformation in the social construction of science, excluded women. What I most connected in Schiebinger's text to Tolstoy's short story was the emphasis on the construction of the female identity by the men of early modern science and their institutions that resulted in the exclusion of women from professional science. The establishment of formal scientific bodies, through academies and universities, "led to the hope that science could provide objective evidence in the debate over woman's intellectual and physical character" (Schiebinger 215). Of course, the goal of finding such evidence, as Schiebinger outlines, is rooted in the popular social conception of sexual complementarity and the exclusive domestic sphere for women that paralleled the formalization of science. Eighteenth century anatomical studies conducted on female skeletons--in all cases carried out by men except for the study by Thiroux d'Arconville--were self-fulfilling prophecies. Scientists chose female skeletons that reflected their idealized notions of women: large pelvis bones and relatively small ribs, and a smaller skull. Even Thiroux d'Arconville's rendition of the female skeleton, with obvious inaccuracies, became widely accepted because it fit the notion that women were inherently different from men, a notion that supported the notion of sexual complementarity.
Male-dominated scientific institutions were therefore able to ignore the reality of intelligent, capable women of science just as Peter Ivanovich largely ignores the reality of death. The social context of early modern science enabled this ignorance. But there is a silver lining in Schiebinger's story of early modern science's origins just as the smell of the decomposing corpse is a silver lining in Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych (that is, if you can imagine such a smell being a good thing). Male-dominated science could largely ignore the ability of women scientists because social convention allowed it, but on the rare occasion, just as with Ivan Ilych's death, reality punctured the veil of social construction. Schiebinger gives us the story of two women--Dorothea Erxleben and Dorothea Schlözer--who, despite the rarity of females entering the professional sciences, were able to secure professional degrees in eighteenth century Germany. For both women, the process of receiving a degree was fraught with contempt; Erxleben had three male doctors request that she be prevented from practicing, and Schlözer's promotion inspired a series of written works against the intellectual freedom of women. A century's time passed before such degrees were again awarded to women in Germany. These rare acknowledgements of women's scientific ability were not pleasant occasions for the male-dominated scientific community, just as the smell of a corpse was likely unpleasant for Peter Ivanovich. Nevertheless, these two women punctuated the status quo; they made their abilities as scientists a heard reality in a social environment where the voice's of women were often silenced.
There is a major flaw in my analogy of Ivan Ilych and the women silenced in science: Ivan Ilych is dead, but women capable of science live on in different generations. Schiebinger's text gave me a strong sense of the social forces that initially oppressed women's involvement in science; what social changes have slowly enabled women to become respected, professional scientists? As Schiebinger suggests, documenting these social changes is complicated. First, we must look at the women who were not accepted into the professional field, such as the wives of scientists and the lifetime assistants to male scientists like Maria Winkelmann and Caroline Herschel, to see the beginnings of such social changes. But, as Schiebinger also suggests, histories of such women are often forgotten:
Historical memory is highly selective: books that are ignored are lost, their message forgotten. Women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries failed to win a place for themselves in the academy. Even the memories of hose struggles were eventually also lost, as the words of those who opposed orthodox views of women's nature were seldom preserved in libraries or taught in university lectures. The did not, in other words, pass into the Western canon. (Schiebinger 270)Schiebinger's text focuses on the revolution in European theoretical and experimental science. Aside from her discussion of Maria Merian, an eighteenth century entomologist who spent two years in Suriman collecting bug specimens, field scientists are left out of her discussion. This is perhaps because field science, like women scientists, have often received little attention from historians until recently. Henrika Kuklick and Robert E. Kohler, in their introduction to the Osiris volume Science in the Field, point out that, "Defining scientific rigor by the standards of the laboratory, scholars have judged the field to be a site of compromised work: field sciences have dealt with problems that resist tidy solutions, and they have not excluded amateur participants" (1).
The reading I have done so far, particularly of Science in the Field, makes me hopeful that a rich historical record of women field scientists and protoscientists exists; now I need to uncover it. The very untidiness of field science, Kuklick and Kohler argue, that make the field sciences perhaps more available to women by allowing them to escape from conventional domestic expectations (12). The status of science as a formal, authoritative institute has been achieved at different times in different parts of the world. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, in his discussion of Elizabeth Campell's role in the Lick Observatory's field expeditions, suggests that the presence of women like Elizabeth Campbell in the field was possible because field expeditions were organized at the familiar observatory and college level in America, not by rigorous scientific institutions like the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain (40). Perhaps the formalization of science is even younger in other parts of the world, making the chance for preservation of women scientists' narratives even greater.The professional transformation of field science is also arguably younger than the professional status given to theoretical and laboratory science, indicating that there has been less time for women field scientists' stories to be erased from the Western canon.
The question of finding preserved narratives of women field scientists, however, is cast in doubt that the narratives are transcribed in the first place. Naomi Oreskes, in "Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science," points to the same male-created social constructions that ultimately deem the work of female scientists invisible as Schiebinger. Oreskes argues further than Schiebinger that the value of objectivity in science is superficial and masks the emotional ideology of heroism. The marginalization of women scientists, Oreskes argues, is inevitable as long as the heroic rhetoric prevails:
By emphasizing attributes associated with masculinity, heroic ideology renders the female scientist invisible. By emphasizing activities that might be considered irresponsible if undertaken by a woman, heroic ideology relegates women's work to the realm of the inconsequential. The marginalization of women in science is a predictable consequence of heroic rhetoric, irrespective of whether the individuals invoking that rhetoric are consciously sexist or not. (Oreskes 111)The heroic rhetoric is particularly pungent, Oreskes argues, in the field sciences, where the ideals of athleticism and physical conquest are emphasized. The heroic story of science is most often the public story, and if women scientists exist outside of the heroic rhetoric their work goes unacknowledged, like Eleanor Lamson's work on the reduction of marine gravity data.
After this introduction to the history of women in science and the history of field sciences, I am left inspired to ask more questions and search for more documentation of the history of women field scientists. Can women scientists, in particular field scientists, thrive in the heroic rhetoric under changing social conditions, or does the rhetoric have to change at some point in history in order for women field scientists to succeed? Osekres implies that the latter must happen, but I am skeptical. When does the transition from women scientists acting predominantly as assistants and wives to predominately as principal investigators take place, and why? Does the timing and conditions of this transition differ on a global scale?
Works Cited:
Kuklick, Henrika and Robert E. Kohler. "Introduction." Osirus. 2nd series, v. 11, p. 87-113. The History of Science Society: 1996.
Oreskes, Naomi. "Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science." Osirus. 2nd series, v. 11, p. 87-113. The History of Science Society: 1996.
Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Harvard UP: Cambridge, MA, 1989.
Soojung-Kim Pang, Alex. "Gender, Culture, and Astrophysical Fieldwork: Elizabeth Campbell and the Lick Observatory--Crocker Eclipse Expeditions." Osirus. 2nd series, v. 11, p. 87-113. The History of Science Society: 1996.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilych, in The Riddle of Life and Death. Feminist Press: New York, 2007.
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