Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

"Maintaining that with equal husbandry
The woman were an equal to the man."

Not the least of the contributing factors to woman's intellectual growth, and especially to her future achievements in science, are the recent adjustments for women in social and economical conditions brought about chiefly by far-reaching changes in the industrial world. Even so late as the last half of the nineteenth century the energies of women, when they were not engaged in the kitchen or the nursery, were spent on the domestic loom, spinning wheel and the knitting needle. All the various processes from carding the wool to making it into clothing for all the members of the family were in the hands of the housewife. Ready-made clothing was far from being as common and inexpensive as it is now. Canned foods and cereals, which do away with so much of the drudgery of the kitchen, were unknown. Electricity, which has proved to be such a remarkable aid in every modern home, was little more than a mysterious force that was utilized in the electric telegraph. Most of the domestic labor-saving machines were still in their infancy and possessed by but few people. Large fortunes were confined to only a favored few in our great metropolises. The mass of the people was preoccupied with the struggle for existence.

But science, the spirit of invention and the advent of the age of machinery have completely changed the conditions of life which obtained but a generation ago. They have not only opened up for women countless occupations that were undreamed of in their mother's time, but have also given to tens of thousands of them the necessary means and leisure to indulge their tastes for study and research and enabled an ever increasing number of them to realize their aspirations for achieving distinction in the divers departments of scientific research.

As an instance of this marked change in the intellectual activity of women, we need only consider what an important part they now take in our present prodigious literary output, as compared with their share in similar work but a few decades ago. As authors, as writers and readers in the editorial rooms of our leading periodicals, as contributors to learned journals and reviews dealing with every branch of science, even the most abstruse, they now occupy a conspicuous place and are doing work that is quite as creditable as that of men.

And it is no longer necessary, in deference to public sentiment, for them to write under a pseudonym, for it is no longer considered unfeminine, as it was in the time of the Brontë sisters, for women to acknowledge themselves the authors of books or of articles in magazines. If they elect to devote their lives to literary or scientific work, they will not be deterred from so doing by what Mrs. Grundy may say, or by the fear that some feeble imitator of Molière may dub them as Précieuses Ridicules. The value of their productions, like those of men, is gauged solely by merit and not by any narrow-minded considerations of the author's sex.

So also will it be in all other occupations where women choose to gain their livelihood by devoting themselves to scientific pursuits rather than to manual labor or to secretarial work in the counting-room. There are positions open for them in colleges, universities and the government service where, as professors or experts in every branch of science, their talents have full liberty of action and where they have the same opportunity of achieving distinction in their chosen life-work as have their male colleagues.

In Germany there are to-day a million more women than men. It is the same in England. In France the number of women who are widows or unmarried or divorcées or mothers with full-grown children aggregates no less than four and a half millions. A similar condition obtains in other parts of Europe. A large percentage of this number is without home ties and, as the old fields of labor are no longer open to women, they are forced to find new ones. They naturally demand the privilege of exercising their talents in occupations which are most congenial to them. Many have no inclination for any of the avocations in the industrial or commercial world, but have a very decided inclination as well as talent for scientific pursuits. Hence the ever-increasing number of women who seek employment in chemical and biological laboratories, in museums and astronomical observatories, as well as aspire to professorships of science in schools and colleges. From this large number of votaries of science some are sure to achieve distinction in their calling and to contribute materially to the advancement of knowledge. In the course of time the number of those, like Mme. Curie, Mme. Coudreau, Mary Kingsley, Sónya Kovalévsky, Eleanor Ormerod, Caroline Herschel, Zelia Nuttall, Harriet Boyd Hawes, Donna Eersilia Bovatillo, Sophie Pereyaslawewa—to name only a few—who will become prominent as chemists, explorers, naturalists, mathematicians, entomologists, astronomers, archæologists, biologists will be vastly increased, for women will find a greater stimulus for such work and more numerous demands for their service in the constantly expanding sphere of scientific research.

Many women will, doubtless, become specialists in some specific branch of science, particularly if they have a genuine love for it, or be fired by an ambition to achieve fame as discoverers. But it is not probable that they will ever specialize to the same extent as men do. For men scientific work has to a large extent become a métier, and success, as in industry, depends on a division of labor. Hence it is that their field of investigation is daily becoming more and more circumscribed. This is observable in all the sciences, but especially in such all-embracing sciences as chemistry, biology, and archæology. A man now does well if he master a single branch of any of these sciences, and is hailed as exceptionally fortunate if he succeed in making some notable discovery in his limited field of research. So great, indeed, has been the activity of scientific men in every department of science during the last half century, and so thoroughly have they explored the most hidden recesses of nature, that it, at times, seems as if there were but little left to discover. A prominent scientist recently well expressed the difficulty of making any striking additions to our knowledge of nature by asserting that all great discoveries would hereafter be made in the sixth place of decimals. This statement is well illustrated by the delicate experiments that were required to isolate such rare elements as radium, polonium, helium and neon, which occur only in infinitesimal quantities.

While men of science will be forced to continue as specialists as long as the love of fame, to consider no other motives of research, continues to be a potent influence in their investigations, it is probable that women will have less love for the long and tedious processes involved in the more difficult kinds of specialization. They will, it seems likely, be more inclined to acquire a general knowledge of the whole circle of the sciences—a knowledge that will enable them to take a comprehensive survey of nature. And it will be fortunate for themselves, as well as for the men who must perforce remain specialists, if they elect to do so. For nothing gives falser views of nature as a whole, nothing more unfits the mind for a proper apprehension of higher and more important truths, nothing more incapacitates one for the enjoyment of the masterpieces of literature or the sweeter amenities of life, than the narrow occupation of a specialist who sees nothing in the universe but electrons, microbes and protozoa.

But just at the critical moment, when men of science would rather discover a process than a law, when they are so preoccupied with the infinitely little that they lose sight of the cosmos as a whole; when their attention is so riveted on particular phenomena that they will no longer have aptitude for rising from effects to causes; when they cease to have any interest in general ideas and stray away from the guidance of the true philosophic spirit; when, like Plato's cave men, they have so long groped in darkness that their powers of vision are impaired, then it is that woman, "The herald of a brighter race," comes to the rescue and holds up to their astonished gaze the picture of an ideal world whose existence they had almost forgotten. For women, as a rule, love science for its own sake, and, unlike the specialists in question, they are, in its pursuit, rarely actuated by any selfish or mercenary interests, or by the hope of financial reward. Precise and never-ending observations with the microscope and spectroscope, which at best give them but a superficial knowledge of certain details of science, while it leaves them in ignorance of the greater and better part of it, do not appeal to them. They prefer general ideas to particular facts, and love to roam over the whole realm of science rather than confine themselves to one of its isolated corners.