Disparate Measures
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An exploration of workplace participation and earnings patterns for diverse women in US STEM professions that upends the myth that STEM work benefits women economically. Seen as part economic driver, part social remedy, STEM work is commonly understood to benefit both the US economy and people-particularly women-from underrepresented groups. But what do diverse women find when they work in US STEM occupations? What do STEM jobs really deliver-and for whom? In Disparate Measures, Mary Armstrong and Susan Averett challenge the conventional wisdom that a diverse US STEM workforce will bring about economic abundance for the women who participate in it. Combining intersectionality theory and critical data theory with a feminist economic analysis, the authors explore how different groups of diverse women truly fare in US STEM professions. Disparate Measures is centered on eight unique, in-depth case studies, each of which provides an intersectional economic analysis (a term coined by the authors) of diverse women working in STEM occupations. Four case studies prioritize women of color and examine the STEM participation and earnings of Black women, American Indian and Alaska Native women, Asian and Pacific Islander women, and Hispanic women/Latinas; four additional case studies illuminate intersections that are frequently neglected by the STEM inclusivity literature- foreign-born women, women with disabilities, Queer women, and mothers. What the authors find in their groundbreaking, detailed analysis is that the promises of STEM are only partly true- when compared to women not working in STEM, most women are indeed economically elevated by STEM occupations-yet when compared to white men in the same STEM occupations, women's second-class status is usually reaffirmed. The authors conclude by offering seven "big-picture" recommendations for rethinking STEM equity, showing just how we can successfully confront the entrenched patterns of economic disadvantage faced by diverse women in STEM jobs.
Athena Unbound
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Why are there so few women scientists? Persisting differences between women's and men's experiences in science make this question as relevant today as it ever was. This book sets out to answer this question, and to propose solutions for the future. Based on extensive research, it emphasizes that science is an intensely social activity. Despite the scientific ethos of universalism and inclusion, scientists and their institutions are not immune to the prejudices of society as a whole. By presenting women's experiences at all key career stages - from childhood to retirement - the authors reveal the hidden barriers, subtle exclusions and unwritten rules of the scientific workplace, and the effects, both professional and personal, that these have on the female scientist. This important book should be read by all scientists - both male and female - and sociologists, as well as women thinking of embarking on a scientific career.
The Mind Has No Sex?
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As part of his attempt to secure a place for women in scientific culture, the Cartesian Francois Poullain de la Barre asserted as long ago as 1673 that "the mind has no sex?" In this rich and comprehensive history of women's contributions to the development of early modem science, Londa Schiebinger examines the shifting fortunes of male and female equality in the sphere of the intellect. Schiebinger counters the "great women" mode of history and calls attention to broader developments in scientific culture that have been obscured by time and changing circumstance. She also elucidates a larger issue: how gender structures knowledge and power. It is often assumed that women were automatically excluded from participation in the scientific revolution of early modem Europe, but in fact powerful trends encouraged their involvement. Aristocratic women participated in the learned discourse of the Renaissance court and dominated the informal salons that proliferated in seventeenth-century Paris. In Germany, women of the artisan class pursued research in fields such as astronomy and entomology. These and other women fought to renegotiate gender boundaries within the newly established scientific academies in order to secure their place among the men of science. But for women the promises of the Enlightenment were not to be fulfilled. Scientific and social upheavals not only left women on the sidelines but also brought about what the author calls the "scientific revolution in views of sexual difference?" While many aspects of the scientific revolution are well understood, what has not generally been recognized is that revolution came also from another quarter--the scientific understanding of biological sex and sexual temperament (what we today call gender). Illustrations of female skeletons of the ideal woman--with small skulls and large pelvises--portrayed female nature as a virtue in the private realm of hearth and home, but as a handicap in the world of science. At the same time, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women witnessed the erosion of their own spheres of influence. Midwifery and medical cookery were gradually subsumed into the newly profess ionalized medical sciences. Scientia, the ancient female personification of science, lost ground to a newer image of the male researcher, efficient and solitary--a development that reflected a deeper intellectual shift. By the late eighteenth century, a self-reinforcing system had emerged that rendered invisible the inequalities women suffered. In reexamining the origins of modem science, Schiebinger unearths a forgotten heritage of women scientists and probes the cultural and historical forces that continue to shape the course of scientific scholarship and knowledge.
Nobel Prize Women in Science
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Since 1901 there have been over three hundred recipients of the Nobel Prize in the sciences. Only ten of them -- about 3 percent -- have been women. Why? In this updated version of Nobel Prize Women in Science, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne explores the reasons for this astonishing disparity by examining the lives and achievements of fifteen women scientists who either won a Nobel Prize or played a crucial role in a Nobel Prize - winning project. The book reveals the relentless discrimination these women faced both as students and as researchers. Their success was due to the fact that they were passionately in love with science. The book begins with Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Readers are then introduced to Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Emmy Noether, Lise Meitner, Barbara McClintock, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Rosalind Franklin. These and other remarkable women portrayed here struggled against gender discrimination, raised families, and became political and religious leaders. They were mountain climbers, musicians, seamstresses, and gourmet cooks. Above all, they were strong, joyful women in love with discovery. Nobel Prize Women in Science is a startling and revealing look into the history of science and the critical and inspiring role that women have played in the drama of scientific progress.
Women in the Field
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Men generally dominated the study of the outdoors in the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. But there were women in the field, too. Marcia Myers Bonta gives biographies of twenty-five of these women naturalists in this well-detailed study. Bonta divides the women by the subject of their study: naturalists, botanists, entomologists, ornithologists, and ecologists. She also describes a group of women that she considers pioneers, showing them in all their individuality, as field persons, as professionals, and as friends with others in their field. A handful were recognized experts. Agnes Chase was considered the best agrostologist in the world; Alice Eastwood was made honorary president of the seventh International Botanical Congress in Sweden; Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton was called the mother of bryology. In the 1950s conservationist Rachel Carson became a well-known voice in the fight against pesticides, and in 1962 she published Silent Spring, a chilling account of the effects of pesticides on people, wildlife, and the environment. Others were less well known. Jane Colden did botanical work and drawing in the 1740s and 1750s, with the support of her father. Martha Maxwell developed a new method of taxidermy in the 1860s, displaying animals in their habitat. Kate Brandegee, of California, hid her identity from the established botanical community in the East for many years, knowing they would look down on dissenting work done not only in the West but by a woman. This book provides insight and information about the history of American nature study as well as women's roles in the natural sciences.
Silent Spring
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Rachel Carson (1907-1964) spent most of her professional life as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By the late 1950s, she had written three lyrical, popular books about the sea, including the bestselling The Sea Around Us, and had become the most respected science writer in America. She completed Silent Spring against formidable personal odds, and with it shaped a powerful social movement that has altered the course of history.
Beyond Innocence
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This second volume of Jane Goodall's autobiography in letters covers the years of her greatest triumphs and her deepest tragedies. During this time she made many of her most important discoveries about chimpanzee behavior -- including the dark discovery that like us, they wage war and commit murder. She gave birth to a son, Grub, but her marriage to his father, Hugo van Lawick, came to an end. When some Stanford University students working with her were kidnapped by guerrillas, she was thrust into an international controversy. She fell in love with and married Derek Bryceson. After surviving a plane crash with him, she realized that her life had been entrusted to her for a reason. A visit to an American laboratory where chimps were injected with HIV made that reason clear, and she began to dedicate herself not just to understanding chimpanzees but to saving them. Derek's death in 1980 was a terrible blow, but afterward she threw herself even more relentlessly intothe battle to save our closest relatives and to repair the health of the planet. AFRICA IN MY BLOOD told of a young woman finding her life's work in the place of her dreams. BEYOND INNOCENCE tells of the events that shattered many of those dreams and changed her from a rather private observer to a public crusader.
Feminine Ingenuity
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"Written with clarity and a lively eye both for detail and for the progress of feminism in the United States." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In this fascinating study of American women inventors, historian Anne Macdonald shows how creative, resourceful, and entrepreneurial women helped to shatter the ancient stereotypes of mechanically inept womanhood. In presenting their stories, Anne Macdonald's thorough research in patent archives and her engaging use of period magazine, journals, lectures, records from major fairs and expositions, and interviews, have made her book nothing less than an overall history of the women's movement in America.
Making Time
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Readers of Cheaper by the Dozen remember Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972) as the nurturing mom who endures the antics of not only twelve children but also an engineer husband eager to experiment with the principles of efficiency - especially on his own household. What readers today might not know is that Lillian Gilbreth was herself a high-profile engineer, and the only woman to win the coveted Hoover Medal for engineers. She traveled the world, served as an advisor on women's issues to five U.S. presidents, and mingled with the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart. Her husband, Frank Gillbreth, died after twenty years of marriage, leaving her to raise their eleven surviving children, all under the age of nineteen. She continued her career and put each child through college. Retiring at the age of ninety, Lillian Gilbreth was the working mother who did it all. Gilbreth's life story - one that resonates with issues faced today by many working women. Lancaster confronts the complexities of how one of the twentieth century's foremost career women could be pregnant, nursing, or caring for children for more than three decades. Yet we see how Glibreth's engineering work dovetailed with her family life in the professional and domestic partnership that she forged with her husband and in her long solo career. The innovators behind many laborsaving devices and procedures used in factories, offices, and kitchens, the Gilbreths tackled the problem of efficiency through motion study. To this Lillian added a psychological dimension, with empathy toward the worker. that allowed the mother to be professionally active if she chose, while the parents worked together to raise responsible citizens. Lancaster has woven into her narrative many insights gleaned from interviews with the surviving Gilbreth children and from historical research into such topics as technology, family, work, and feminism. Filied with anecdotes, this definitive biography of Lillian Gilbreth will engage readers intrigued by one of America's most famous families and by one of the nation's most successful women.
Carbon Queen
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The life of trailblazing physicist Mildred Dresselhaus, who expanded our understanding of the physical world. As a girl in New York City in the 1940s, Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus was taught that there were only three career options open to women- secretary, nurse, or teacher. But sneaking into museums, purchasing three-cent copies of National Geographic, and devouring books on the history of science ignited in Dresselhaus (1930-2017) a passion for inquiry. In Carbon Queen, science writer Maia Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, Dresselhaus defied expectations and forged a career as a pioneering scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials and helped reshape our world in countless ways-from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague. Her path wasn't easy. Dresselhaus's Bronx childhood was impoverished. Her graduate adviser felt educating women was a waste of time. But Dresselhaus persisted, finding mentors in Nobel Prize-winning physicists Rosalyn Yalow and Enrico Fermi. Eventually, Dresselhaus became one of the first female professors at MIT, where she would spend nearly six decades. Weinstock explores the basics of Dresselhaus's work in carbon nanoscience accessibly and engagingly, describing how she identified key properties of carbon forms, including graphite, buckyballs, nanotubes, and graphene, leading to applications that range from lighter, stronger aircraft to more energy-efficient and flexible electronics.
Soft Power for the Journey
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This is a story of an African American woman working at the highest levels in STEM. Dr. Sandra K. Johnson earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas, in May 1988, the first Black woman to do so. She then became a successful global technology leader and an IBM Chief Technology Officer (CTO). The story narrates the inextricable human dimension of dealing with various personal and familial challenges that people naturally encounter--with the highs and lows, and exhilarations and disappointments. It portrays her inner strength, persistence, dedication, boldness, quiet resilience, wisdom and strong faith, this soft power she leverages throughout her life. It is a heartwarming, compelling story designed to encourage, be aspirational and awe-inspiring, and uplift the spirits of a broad and diverse readership. From tragically losing her father at the age of two, to being raised by a single mother of four children, Sandra showed promise in math and science, and discipline and unrelenting drive at a young age. Raised in the deep South, she exhibited leadership even while in kindergarten and blazed trails in leadership while in junior high and high schools. Her early education was in segregated schools, with integration coming to her hometown as she started the 5th grade. Dr. Johnson's innate abilities led her to a summer engineering program for high school students, then on to college and graduate school. Dr. Johnson has made innovative contributions in high performance computing - supercomputers - and other areas of computer engineering. She has dozens of technical publications, over 45 pending and issued patents, and a plethora of recognition and honors in her field. The book is a fascinating and intriguing story that conveys in captivating and relatable ways the remarkable life arc of a resilient person from an underprivileged background who persistently overcomes whatever odds and challenges are encountered in her life. It is a riveting human tale of a triumphant spirit, moving forward with soft power to celebrate achievement and handle obstacles with steel willpower, influential support, and faith. Access the authors' webpage here https: //softpowerforthejourney.com/
Tu Youyou : China's first female Nobel Prize winner
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As the first Chinese female scientist to win a Nobel prize (in physiology or medicine) in 2015, what were Tu Youyou's formative experiences and the major events that shaped her life? How did this remarkable woman - without a medical degree, doctorate or overseas work experience - make
such a valuable contribution to the control of malaria? This book explores the extraordinary career of this modest, frugal and very unconventional scientist and records her inspirational work.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST INFLUENTIAL" (CNN), "DEFINING" (LITHUB), AND "BEST" (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE * ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS * WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Entertainment Weekly * O: The Oprah Magazine * NPR * Financial Times * New York * Independent (U.K.) * Times (U.K.) * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * Kirkus Reviews * Booklist * Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family--past and present--is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family--especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
Rosalind Franklin
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In March 1953, Maurice Wilkins of King's College, London, announced the departure of his obstructive colleague Rosalind Franklin to rival Cavendish Laboratory scientist Francis Crick. But it was too late. Franklin's unpublished data and crucial photograph of DNA had already been seen by her competitors at the Cambridge University lab. With the aid of these, plus their own knowledge, Watson and Crick discovered the structure of the molecule that genes are composed of -- DNA, the secret of life. Five years later, at the age of thirty-seven, after more brilliant research under J. D. Bernal at Birkbeck College, Rosalind died of ovarian cancer. In 1962, Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their elucidation of DNA's structure. Franklin's part was forgotten until she was caricatured in Watson's book The Double Helix. In this full and balanced biography, Brenda Maddox has been given unique access to Franklin's personal correspondence and has interviewed all the principal scientists involved, including Crick, Watson and Wilkins. This is a powerful story, told by one of the finest biographers, of a remarkably single-minded, forthright and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.
Woman of Valor
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Drawing on new information from archives and interviews, Chesler illuminates Margaret Sanger's turbulent personal story as well as the history of the birth control movement. An intimate biography of a visionary rebel, this is also an epic story that is indispensable reading for generations of women who take their reproductive and sexual freedoms for granted.
Marie Curie
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This encyclopedia examines Marie Curie's life and contributions. The chronology provides a thumbnail sketch of events in Curie's life, including her personal experiences, education, and publications. The Introduction provides a brief look at her life. The body of this work consists of alphabetical entries of people, ideas, institutions, places, and publications important in making of Curie as an important scientist. The final section of the book is a bibliography of both primary and selected secondary sources.
Marie Curie
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"In this stunning and richly textured new biography, Susan Quinn presents us with a far more complicated picture of the woman we thought we knew. Drawing on family documents, Quinn sheds new light on the tragic losses and patriotic passion that infused Marie Sklodowska Curie's early years in Poland. And through access to Marie Curie's journal, closed to researchers until 1990, we hear in her own words of the intimacy and joy of her marriage to Pierre Curie and the depth of her despair at his premature death." "The image of Marie Curie as the grieving widow, attired always in black, is familiar to many of us. Much less well known is the affair with a married colleague that helped her recover from her loss. The testimonials of friends, hitherto unavailable, lend this love story a sometimes painful immediacy." "Marie Curie's public triumphs are well known: she was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and one of the few people, to date, to receive a second. Unknown or barely known are the defeats she suffered: her rejection by the French Academy and her public humiliation at the hands of the French press over her love affair." "As a scientist, Marie Curie has always been associated with the discovery of radium and polonium. But in fact more important than her work in isolating new elements was her idea that radioactivity was "an atomic process." Susan Quinn's biography provides a closer look at Marie Curie's work, and at the discoveries that led up to it and flowed from it. We come away understanding that Marie Curie was important but not singular: one of a small group of brilliant scientists whose combined efforts brought us to our current understanding of the material universe."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Carbon Queen
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The life of trailblazing physicist Mildred Dresselhaus, who expanded our understanding of the physical world. As a girl in New York City in the 1940s, Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus was taught that there were only three career options open to women- secretary, nurse, or teacher. But sneaking into museums, purchasing three-cent copies of National Geographic, and devouring books on the history of science ignited in Dresselhaus (1930-2017) a passion for inquiry. In Carbon Queen, science writer Maia Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, Dresselhaus defied expectations and forged a career as a pioneering scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials and helped reshape our world in countless ways-from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague. Her path wasn't easy. Dresselhaus's Bronx childhood was impoverished. Her graduate adviser felt educating women was a waste of time. But Dresselhaus persisted, finding mentors in Nobel Prize-winning physicists Rosalyn Yalow and Enrico Fermi. Eventually, Dresselhaus became one of the first female professors at MIT, where she would spend nearly six decades. Weinstock explores the basics of Dresselhaus's work in carbon nanoscience accessibly and engagingly, describing how she identified key properties of carbon forms, including graphite, buckyballs, nanotubes, and graphene, leading to applications that range from lighter, stronger aircraft to more energy-efficient and flexible electronics.