the women fellows' jubilee

The Women Fellows' JubileeAuthor(s): Joan MasonSource: Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 125-140Published by: The Royal SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/531889 .

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Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 49 (1), 125-140 (1995)

THE WOMEN FELLOWS' JUBILEE

by

JOAN MASON

Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge CB2 3RH

We celebrate 50 years of women Fellows of the Royal Society of London in 1995, at a time when the position and progress of women in science are under active discussion. Last year the Office of Science and Technology published the report 'The Rising Tide' which discusses the low survival rate of women in science and

engineering into positions of seniority and influence. A Hansard Society Commission report, 'Women at the Top', has catalogued the dearth of women in the

upper reaches of public life: in Parliament, government and the judiciary, in

corporate management, and in the universities, the media and the trade unions.2 There was no formal exclusion nor indeed any mention of women in the original

charters and statutes of the Royal Society. One woman appears in the early histories of the Society, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who paid a visit to the Society in 1667 at her own request. Thomas Birch describes the exper- iments that Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke performed for her,3 and Samuel Pepys records that she was 'full of admiration'(Diary, 30 May 1667). She was a prod- igious writer, the first Englishwoman to encompass natural philosophy as well as drama, stories, biography, essays, orations and poetry. She was greatly interested in science, which she picked up from her husband William Cavendish, whose tutor was Thomas Hobbes, from her brother-in-law, Charles Cavendish, and from her brother John Lucas, who was an original Fellow of the Society. She was indignant that her own education was so poor.4

Neglect of women's education was general in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Britain the dissolution of the nunneries in the 16th century had removed, at one blow, the major source of education for girls, learned pursuits for women, and the positions of dignity and influence of the abbesses and prioresses. Throughout Europe in the 17th century, women were excluded from the academies, as from the universities and public schools, except in

Italy.5 The Prussian Academy in Berlin owed its foundation in 1700 to the Electress (later Queen) Sophia Charlotte, and to Leibniz, who wanted women to take part,6' 7 but in the event only a few women, including Catherine the Great, were admitted, as honorary members. In the scientific societies of the 18th century 'a handful of women were members and participants in an equal number of provincial academies'.8

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© 1995 The Royal Society



Joan Mason

As time went on, slow infiltration of the learned societies began. Women were not excluded by the Zoological Society, founded in 1829, nor by the Royal Entomological Society (1833), although few were elected. The Royal Astronomical Society awarded Caroline Herschel a gold medal in 1828, and elected Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville to honorary membership in 1835, but admitted women as Fellows only in 1915, despite agitation on their behalf from the 1880s. The Physiological Society admitted women in 1915,9 and the Chemical Society in 1920 after arguments spanning 40 years.°

Of Mary Somerville it was said that her bust, though not her person, was admitted to the Royal Society. She wrote in 18321

It was unanimously voted by the Royal Society of London, that my bust should be placed in their great Hall, and Chantrey was chosen as the sculptor.

About mid-century the Royal Society introduced conversaziones at which guests were invited by the President and entertained by displays of scientific interest. These gatherings became the responsibility of the Society in 1872, and in 1876 a second soiree was introduced to which ladies were invited. 2 It was at such a Ladies' Conversazione in 1899 that Hertha Ayrton demonstrated her work on the electric arc, which was no doubt considered most unladylike. She showed that the hissing, sputtering and instability of the arc were due to oxidation of the carbon electrodes, and could be avoided by proper shaping of the carbons; and that a stable arc obeys the Ayrton equation, in which the voltage is proportional to the length of the arc and varies inversely as the current.13 14

The next year, 1900, saw the first formal approach to the Royal Society about the admission of women to the Fellowship. The Council minutes15 record the receipt of a letter from Marian Farquharson F.R.M.S., with a cutting from the Women's Agricultural Times of November 1899 reporting a resolution, which was seconded by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, adopted at a meeting of the Lady Warwick Agricultural Association for Women:

That it is desirable and important that duly qualified women should have the advan- tage of full fellowship in Scientific and other Learned Societies, e.g. the Royal, the Linnean, and the Royal Microscopical.

Mrs Farquharson was a cryptogamic botanist and author of A Pocket Guide to British Ferns (1881). She became a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1885, with the support of a present, past and future President, but as a woman was not allowed to attend the meetings.16 She complained, further, that the Linnean Society would not admit women, and that she was excluded from the Herbarium of Linnaeus and from cryptogamic discussions.17 18 Her approach to the Royal Society received the reply that the eligibility of women 'must depend on the interpretation to be placed upon the Royal Charters under which the Society has been governed for more than three hundred years'. Before 1919, lawyers could opine, and many did,

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The women Fellows' Jubilee

that a woman could not be a Fellow of a Society incorporated by statute because her person, in common law, was covered by that of her father or her husband.

The first proposal of a woman in the history of the Royal Society was of Hertha Ayrton in 1902.14 Her candidature was rejected on the grounds that she was a woman and, worse, a married woman. This episode was not mentioned in the Record of the Royal Society in the editions of 1912 or 1940, but is described in the 1992 Supplement to the Record. Hertha Ayrton was the first woman to read a paper herself before the Royal Society, in 1904, although an earlier paper of hers had been read by John Perry, in 1901. She was the second to receive one of the Society's medals, the Hughes medal, in 1906. The first woman medallist had been Marie Curie, who shared the Davy medal with Pierre Curie in 1903.

At the end of the first World War women gained the right, in principle, to exer- cise any public function, judicial office or profession. At the same time they lost the skilled employment they had gained in wartime as the men came home. From 1919, following the Sex (Disqualification) Removal Act, institutions could no longer quote statutes or charter to justify discrimination against women (though Cambridge Uni- versity admitted women to membership only in 1948). The 'marriage bar', the requirement that a woman resign on marriage, persisted in several professions, including teaching, until the second World War. Legislation against sex discrimination came into force in the 1970s, but implementation has been difficult.

The Royal Society acknowledged the force of the 1919 Act in 1925, in reply to a question put to them by the Women's Engineering Society in 1922.19 No woman, however, was proposed for the Fellowship between 1902 and 1943. In April 1943 J. B. S. Haldane, in his column in the Daily Worker, noted that 'The Society has no colour bar', and declared 'it cannot exclude women indefinitely'. Quite soon Marjory Stephenson, biochemist, was proposed by Charles Harington, and Kathleen Lonsdale, crystallographer, by Lawrence Bragg. The President, Henry Dale, suggested a postal vote on amending the statutes to make it explicit that women could be candidates. Of those voting, 89% were in favour without reservation and the two women candidates were elected in 1945.19

THE FEMALE FELLOWSHIP OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY

The women who have been elected to the Royal Society during the 50 years from 1945 to 1994 are listed in Table 1 (on pages 130-1). Fifty-two women have been elected Fellows under the normal statutes, five as Foreign Members, and two under Statute 12, for service to the cause of science.

Of the 52 women Fellows, 43 have been biologists, with biochemists the largest single category, followed by botanists and geneticists. On the physical side are three crystallographers, two geologists, two mathematicians, an astronomer and an astrophysicist.

The first woman Council member was Mary Cartwright in 1955, and 11 women

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Joan Mason

in all have been members of the Council. Three have been Vice-Presidents (Patricia Clarke 1980-82, Brigitte Askonas 1989-90 and Anne McLaren 1991-present). The first and only woman Officer to date is Anne McLaren, elected Foreign Secretary in 1991.

The third woman medallist, 50 years on from Marie Curie and Hertha Ayrton, was Dorothy Hodgkin, a future Nobel prize-winner. Nine women Fellows have received Royal Society medals, and a small number have given named lectures, as shown in Table 1.

A third of the women Fellows have been from London, a quarter from Cambridge, 14% from overseas, 10% from Oxford, and 8% from Scotland. A significantly larger proportion of the female compared with the male Fellowship is from London or Cambridge, centres of scientific population in which both partners in a couple could more readily find a senior position. The proportion of women Fellows from abroad, overall, is smaller than for the men, but half of the women elected in the last five years work overseas. There are now only nine women Fellows in this country below the retiring age of 65.

The mean age on election, 54, is similar for the earlier and later women Fellows, and somewhat greater than the present figure for men, which is near 50. The youngest on election was Dorothy Hodgkin at 36, the oldest Janet Vaughan at 79. The average age of the living Fellows, 69, is somewhat greater than for men, 66, as might be expected from women's greater longevity.

Of the 26 women Fellows elected by 1972, 20 were childless and 16 unmarried. Of the 26 elected since 1972, 11 have been childless and seven unmarried. The average number of children of all the married women Fellows is 1.6. All surveys of women scientists, such as those conducted by the Institute of Physics20 and the Royal Society of Chemistry,21 show the women to have a significantly lower marriage rate and fewer children than their male colleagues. A remarkable proportion of the women Fellows, 11 out of 52, are, or were, married to Fellows. Again, it is common for scientists to marry scientists they meet in college or at work,22 and 'nepotism rules' preventing spouses working in the same department are now uncommon.

When Joseph and Dorothy Needham were hailed in 1948 as the first husband- and-wife Fellows, they were heard to demur that priority should go to Victoria and Albert. Victoria, like most of her royal predecessors, became Patron of the Royal Society on her accession, and is listed among the Fellows.23 William and Mary were not invited, and Anne 'was not remarkable for her patronage of literature and science'.24 Princess Elizabeth became a Royal Fellow in 1948, as heir to the throne, and Patron on her accession. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was elected a Royal Fellow in 1956.

The first dinner of the Royal Society Club attended by a woman was in 1972, when Dorothy Hodgkin was invited as Bakerian lecturer. Fifty years earlier, in 1923, the Bakerian lecturers G. I. Taylor and C. F. Elam were invited to dine before

128




it was discovered that the second lecturer was in fact Constance Elam.25 Rutherford suggested that she 'be sent a good box of chocolates', and Constance Elam replied, graciously, declining the invitation. The rules of this dining club were changed in 1923 to specify that if a Bakerian or Croonian lecturer 'should happen to be a lady' she should be invited to dine. In 1974 it was resolved that women Fellows of the Royal Society could be proposed and admitted to the Club.26

EARLY WOMEN FELLOWS

Many of the early women Fellows were pioneers in new and expanding sub- jects in which they were able to make their own space, as in biochemistry in earlier decades, and more recently, in molecular biology and biotechnology. No woman has been elected from the 'traditional' fields of mainstream chemistry or physics. Women have more readily found employment in areas where there was tedious and painstaking work to be done, as in earlier days of astronomy and crystallography, and some managed to seize an opportunity to move to more interesting work. Clearly the early women Fellows needed to have out- standing personal qualities, as well as to be brilliant scientists.

Kathleen Lonsdale, youngest of a poor family with ten children, four of whom died in infancy, came top in physics in London University at the age of 19, with the highest marks for ten years, and was invited by her examiner William Bragg to join his research group, in 1922. She received her first tenured job in 1946 after her election to the Royal Society. Christopher Ingold asked her to set up a Department of Chemical Crystallography at University College London, and she became its first woman Professor in 1949.27

Marjory Stephenson pioneered her own field of chemical microbiology. Her textbook Bacterial Metabolism became a standard work, and she inspired research students who later became the first professors of microbiology at Cambridge, Oxford and Sheffield. She was a key founder of the Society of General Microbiology, and second President after Alexander Fleming. Again, preferment followed her election to the Royal Society. She was given her own MRC Unit in 1945, and a Readership in 1947, a year before her death.28

Agnes Arber was truly a natural philosopher, as well as botanist and historian, in her integration of theory with observation of plant morphology, from Aristotle to Goethe, Darwin, and to modern times. Her first book, on Herbals (1912), is a classic text, as is one of her last books, The Mind and the Eye: a study of the biologist's standpoint (1954). She received the Gold Medal of the Linnean Society in 1948. Her place of work, given as 'Cambridge' in Table 1, conceals her status as 'private student'. She gave up an academic career at University College London when she married at the age of 30, and did her research in Newnham's Balfour Laboratory until this passed into university hands after women were admitted to university practical classes. From 1927

129



TABLE 1. Women Fellows of the Royal Society, 1945-1994

year name (as given by the elected Fellow in the Year Book)

1 1945 Kathleen Lonsdale (b. Yardley)

Marjory Stephenson Agnes Arber (b. Robertson) Mary L. Cartwright Dorothy M. Crowfoot Hodgkin

6 1947 Muriel Robertson 7 1948 Sidnie M. Manton (m. Harding)

8 1948 Dorothy M. Moyle Needham 9 1952 Honor B. Fell

Marthe L. Vogt Rosalind V. Pitt-Rivers Helen K. Porter (b. Archbold) Charlotte Auerbach Edith Bulbring Ann Bishop Sylvia A. S. Tait Irene Manton Sheina M. Marshall E. Margaret Burbidge Dorothy Hill L. Mary Pickford E. Jean Hanson Winifred M. Watkins F. Gwendolen Rees Mary Parke Ruth A. Sanger (m. Race) Brigitte A. Askonas Mary F. Lyon Anne L. McLaren

30 1976 Patricia H. Clarke

born died field

28/1/03 1/4/71 physical crystallography

24/1/85 23/2/79 17/12/00 12/5/10

12/12/48 22/3/60

3/8/94

microbial biochemistry evolution of plant morphology mathematical analysis chemical crystallography

8/4/83 14/6/73 bacteriology, protozoology 4/5/02 2/1/79 invertebrate embryology

22/9/96 22/12/87 biochemistry of muscle 22/5/00 22/4/86 organ culture

8/9/03 4/3/07 10/11/99 14/5/99 27/12/03 19/12/99 8/1/17 17/4/4 20/4/96 12/8/19 10/9/07 14/8/02 14/11/19 6/8/24 3/7/06 23/3/08 6/6/18 1/4/23 15/5/25 26/4/27

29/7/19

neuropharmacology 14/1/90 thyroid hormones 7/12/87 plant physiology 21/3/94 mutation genetics 5/7/90 muscle physiology 7/5/90 chemotherapy

endocrinology 31/5/88 botany, cytology 7/4/77 marine biology

astronomy geology, palaeontology endocrinology

10/8/73 biophysics of muscle immunochemical genetics

4/10/94 parasitology 17/7/89 phycology

immunogenetics immunology genetics reproductive biology

biochemistry, biotechnology

main place of work

RI, Univ. College London

Cambridge Cambridge Cambridge Oxford

Lister Institute, London Cambridge/Queen Mary College

London Cambridge Strangeways Laboratory,

Cambridge ARC, Cambridge Univ. College London, NIMR Imperial College London Edinburgh Oxford MRC, Cambridge Middlesex Hospital, London Leeds Cumbrae, Scotland Univ. of California San Diego, USA Queensland, Australia Edinburgh MRC, King's College London MRC Clin. Research Centre, London Aberystwyth Marine Biol. Laboratory, Plymouth MRC, London Natl. Inst. of Med. Research, London MRC Radiobiology, Chilton MRC, London Wellcome/CRC Institute, Cambridge University College London

medals, lectures, honours

DBE 1956 Davy 1957

Sylvester 1964, DBE 1969, Royal 1956, Tercentenary 1960, Nobel 1964, OM 1965, Bakerian 1972, Copley 1976

DBE 1963

Royal 1981

Darwin 1976

Royal 1988

Royal 1984 Royal 1990, DBE 1993 Leeuwenhoek 1979

2 3 4 5

1945 1946 1947 1947

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

1952 1954 1956 1957 1958 1959 1959 1961 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1969 1971 1972 1972 1973 1973 1975



31 1976 Elsie M. Widdowson 32 1977 I. Helen M. Muir 33 1979 Brenda A. Milner 34 1979 Winifred A. Tutin 35 1979 Janet M. Vaughan 36 1979 Janet V. Watson (m. Sutton) 37 1982 Noreen E. Murray 38 1985 Naomi Datta

39 1985 Miriam L. Rothschild 40 1985 Anne E. Warner 41 1986 Jean O. Thomas 42 1986 Elizabeth K. Warrington 43 1987 Olga Kennard 44 1988 Barbara M. F. Pearse 45 1989 Anne M. Treisman 46 1990 Carole Jordan 47 1990 Louise N. Johnson 48 1991 Enid A.C. MacRobbie 49 1992 Elizabeth Helen Blackburn 50 1992 Suzanne Cory 51 1993 Patricia Ann Jacobs

52 1994 Dusa McDuff

21/10/06 20/8/20 15/7/18 8/10/15 18/10/99 1/9/23 26/2/35 17/9/22

5/8/08 25/8/40 1/10/42 14/9/31 23/3/24 24/3/48 27/2/35 19/7/41 26/9/40 5/12/31 26/11/48 11/3/42 8/10/34

18/11/45

physiology of nutrition biochemistry, arthrology neuropsychology botany

9/1/93 radiobiology, haematology 29/3/85 geology

molecular genetics microbial genetics

entomology developmental biology biochemistry neuropsychology crystallography molecular biology psychology of attention astrophysics molecular biophysics plant biophysics microbial immunology molecular cell biology cytogenetics

mathematics

Cambridge CH 1993 Kennedy Institute, London CBE 1981 McGill University, Canada Humphry Davy 1989 Reading MRC, Oxford DBE 1957 Imperial College London Edinburgh Gabor 1989 Roy. Postgraduate Med. School,

London Ashton Wold, Peterborough CBE 1982 University College London Cambridge Natl. Neurological Hospital, London Cambridge MRC, Cambridge Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA Oxford Oxford Cambridge Univ. of California, San Francisco, USA Melbourne, Australia Wessex Regional Genetics

Laboratory, Salisbury State Univ. of New York, Stony

Brook, USA

Elected under Statute 12 1 1983 Margaret H. Thatcher 2 1988 Margaret M. Gowing

Foreign members 1 1955 Lise Meitner 2 1969 Inge Lehmann 3 1989 Nicole M. Le Douarin 4 1989 Barbara McClintock 5 1990 Christiane Nisslein-Volhard

13/10/25 26/4/21

7/11/78 13/5/88 20/8/30 19/6/02 20/10/42

politician historian of science

27/10/68 21/2/93

2/9/92

nuclear physics geophysics embryology plant genetics developmental genetics

Oxford Wilkins 1976

Berlin, Stockholm Copenhagen College de France Cold Spring, Long Island, USA Max-Planck-Institut, Tubingen

Humphry Davy 1987 Nobel 1983

As the names are those given by the Fellow in the Year Book, consistency as to married and single names has not been possible.



Joan Mason

until her death in 1960 she worked at her home in Huntingdon Road, as there was no room for her in the Botany School nor in any university laboratory.29

Mary Cartwright was recognized from her middle thirties as one of the leading analysts in this country. The creative and critical qualities of her remarkable mind have gained her a unique position in the mathematical world at large. She was awarded the Sylvester medal for mathematical research in 1964.

Dorothy Hodgkin was one of the most gifted scientists of this century. At each of the stages in her career, elucidating the structures of steroids, peni- cillin, vitamin B12, and insulin, she broke through the boundaries of the chemical crystallography of the time, and of its contribution to medical knowledge. Max Perutz confessed himself embarrassed to receive the Nobel prize before she did.30

Muriel Robertson was 'protozoologist and parasitologist, ... one of the great ladies of the pioneering days of the Lister Institute',working mainly on the life

cycle of trichonomads, as they infect cattle, with excursions into bacteriology (gas gangrene) and immunopathology.31

Dorothy Needham was the leading authority in this country on the biochemistry of muscle contraction. She discovered independently the coupling of

phosphoric ester synthesis with oxidation processes, so revealing the means by which energy is made available for muscular work.

Honor Fell not only pioneered her own field of organ culture but also built

up her own unique and independent institution, the Strangeways Laboratory, from a tiny research hospital into one of international renown, after Thomas

Strangeways's sudden death in 1926.32 It is not easy, 50 and more years on, to comprehend the magnitude of the

barriers, both institutional and social, that faced earlier women following a scientific profession. Many barriers are lower now, thanks to them.

WOMEN IN THE WORLD'S ACADEMIES OF SCIENCE

The Royal Society was not alone in its slow acceptance of women, and very few indeed figure in the history of the world's academies of science. The Princess Catherine Dashkov33 was appointed by Catherine the Great to be Director of the Imperial Academy of Science at St Petersburg in 1782. She reorganized and enlarged the Academy of Science, setting up the Russian Academy on the literary side. She was elected to membership of the Prussian and the Swedish Academies, and of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, which also elected a handful of women, including Mary Somerville, in the later 19th century. The Swedish Academy elected Eva Ekeblad in 1748, who seems to have disappeared from the history books, and two centuries later, Lise Meitner, in 1951.

Most learned societies were open to women within a few years of the first

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% women

5-

4-

3-

RS -3 / NAS

2-

1-

0 / 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1994

FIGURE 1. Percentages of women among Fellows of the Royal Society of London and Members of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. (1925-1994).

World War, but most Academies of Science waited another generation. The pioneer was the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which elected its first woman member, Florence Sabin, in 1925.34 But only three more women were elected by 1948, and two of them won Nobel Prizes, Gerty Cori and Barbara McClintock. The Royal Society admitted eight women in the four years 1945-48, overtaking the NAS, as shown in figure 1. In the 1940s the NAS was significantly smaller than the Royal Society, and overtook it in size only after 1960 (figures 2 and 3). The 1994 proportion of 2.9% women in the Fellowship is less than the peak of 3.35% reached in 1979, a year in which, unusually, 4 women and 36 men were elected.

The National Academy of the USSR, founded in 1925, did not exclude women, but admitted its first woman full member in 1939, the second in 1953. After the Royal Society in 1945 came Canada in 1946, Italy in 1947, Sweden in 1951, India in 1952, China in 1955, and Australia in 1956.

The French Academie des Sciences elected its first woman full member in 1967, Marguerite Perey, from Marie Curie's laboratory. Marie Curie's candidature for the Academie des Sciences was lost by a whisker in 1911, the year of her second Nobel prize. She was made a foreign member of many national academies, though not the

133



134 Joan Mason

1000-

500-

-- women

-- men

0 - -moc L t S U

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1994

FIGURE 2. Numbers of women and men Fellows of the Royal Society, 1945-1994.

1500- -- women

--- men

1000-

500-

O , 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1994

FIGURE 3. Numbers of women and men Members of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 1925-1994.




Royal Society, nor the NAS. Nor was Irene Joliot-Curie elected to the French

Academy, despite the Joliot-Curies' Nobel prize in 1935. Frederic Joliot-Curie alone was awarded the Royal Society's Hughes medal in 1947.

The Royal Society's record in electing women is not particularly good: figure 1 shows that the proportion of female Fellows has hovered near the 3% mark for 30

years. But it is not particularly bad in the context of other Academies of Science, for 3% is a global average.35 The academies vary, some including social sciences, with a higher female population than in the natural sciences or engineering. Some, as in France, elect rather few members, and the keener competition raises the bar- rier for women relative to men. Some countries have more women in the pools from which academicians are drawn, in the universities and research institutes, as fields such as business or politics attract more men. The Communist countries and some others laid great stress on the importance of science and engineering for women, as well as for men. Many countries, as in France or Scandinavia, have better childcare provision than ours, and a greater expectation that women will follow a profession. But even in countries with a high proportion of women in science and engineering, very few reach or approach the top of their profession.36

EnLgneerEI r" contract researcher

Engineering and technology * professor

* senior lecturer

Physics lecturer

.*....:.....X.:: .>?'?.-:: ?? . ...:. .j:.:.. - 2 H postgraduate

^- ' : . Hj undergraduate Math. and Computer studies

Chemistry .

Biology ......

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 % women

FIGURE 4. Percentages of women in science and engineering in the British Universities, 1992-3, from the Universities' Statistical Record. These figures predate the designation of the

new universities, 1993-4.

135



.Joan Mason

Overall, progress has been uneven, and slow. A few academies of science, including the Japan Academy, are still wholly masculine. Two academies stand out, the NAS and the Royal Society of Canada, with a steady increase in female members in recent years. Suddenly, and remarkably, three academies now have women Presidents. Kerstin Fredga, astrophysicist, is the first woman President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; Ayhan O 1avdar, medical scientist, is the first President of the newly created Turkish Academy of Science; and Marianne Grunberg-Manago, biochemist, is the first woman President of the French Academy of Sciences.

Academies of science constitute the 'establishment' which promotes science and advises government, as well as rewarding merit. It is now becoming recognized that such institutions are narrowing their own base by admitting so few women, and failing to promote science to the best of their ability, if they neglect women's talents. Women, too, are increasingly voicing their frustration at the difficulties they encounter in following their chosen professions, particularly during the crucial period when there are young children needing care.

DILEMMAS - AND SOME PROGRESS - FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE

Figure 4, which gives percentages of women in science in the universities, offers clues to the small proportion of women Fellows. It shows the low survival rate of women into the professoriate, with only 5% of women among professors of biology, even though women outnumber men among the students. On the other hand, 40% of researchers on temporary contracts in biology are women, 50% at the more junior levels. In the physical sciences and engineering the number of women professors is minute, but women are 11-18% of those on temporary contracts. The Royal Academy (formerly the Fellowship) of Engineering elected its first woman in 1982, and now has 3 women out of 960 British Fellows (0.3%).

In industrial work the proportions are not very different. Women comprise 56% of laboratory technicians, 33% of biological scientists including biochemists, 25% of those in physical and geological science, 20% in chemistry, 11% in metallurgy or electronic engineering, and 7% or less of other engineers.7 Women are now 2% of directors of large holding companies, with a much smaller proportion of women among executive, compared with non- executive, directors.

The tiny proportion of women at senior levels in science, whether in the universities, research institutes or industry, is sometimes linked with small numbers of women scientists in earlier decades, but this is no longer a major fac- tor. In the universities there has been a contraction of opportunities for women, as senior positions reserved for them have disappeared with the mixing of the colleges. As women's colleges went mixed, senior positions were rapidly filled

136




by men, but very few women have been appointed to senior positions in the former men's colleges.2' 38

Science and engineering can offer significant obstacles to the advancement of women to senior positions, particularly women with family commitments. These fields tend to be fast-moving, and competitive. Opportunities for employment tend to be localized, raising the problem of the 'trailing spouse', as one partner moves to a better job, since it is often difficult to find two good jobs in the same place. Frequently there is mobility at the bottom or the top of a profession, but little in in the middle, when women emerge from caring for young children, for example. Science and engineering are quite strongly insti- tutionalized, their practices dating from the period when the members were all men, and this is part of the reason why women are so often 'invisible' to traditional processes of selection for preferment.

There is a circular problem, not confined to science, that the man's career takes precedence because he is expected to earn more as the woman takes care of the home; and she takes care of the home while he earns more. Kathleen Lonsdale is one of several paying tribute to a supportive husband:

It had been my intention to give up scientific research work and settle down to become a good wife and mother, but my husband would have none of it. He had not married to get a free housekeeper.39

... a woman, and especially a married woman with children, to become a first class scientist ... must first of all ... have chosen the right husband. He must recognise her problems and be willing to share them. If he is really domesticat- ed, so much the better.40

William Bragg raised money for domestic help so that Kathleen Lonsdale could continue her scientific work across the decade, from her 26th year, while she had a pre-school child at home. This is the period when the majority of women qualified in science either drop out, or else 'drop down' into work for which they are over- qualified, but which is more readily reconciled with family demands.

The small number of senior women in science is part of the broad picture of the segregation of women into lower-level jobs. After 25 years of equal pay legislation, women, on average, earn 20-25% less than men. Contract research is on the increase, and this is where women tend to be concentrated, often hav- ing to change field, doing work that will make other people's reputations.

On the other hand, science and engineering can act as an engine of progress for women, when there is a drive to make better use of national intellectual resources. The White Paper 'Realising our Potential - a Strategy for Science, Engineering and Technology' (1993) acknowledged that 'women are the country's most under- valued and under-used human resource'. 'The Rising Tide' sets out gender-equity measures in education and training, and equal opportunities and family-friendly policies in employment that would help more women to survive in science. The

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Joan Mason

government's response41 has been to set up a Development Unit in the Office of Science and Technology to contribute to this aim.

Industrial firms are gradually discovering that it is more cost-effective to help a woman employee to stay in post while she is raising a young family, rather than recruiting, training, and running in someone new to take her place. Family-friendly policies, which include help with childcare, flexible working, or keeping in touch over career breaks are being developed, if slowly. Research funding bodies, also, have been developing 'women-friendly' measures.

The Council of the Royal Society has been giving thought to this question, and the Society has announced 'New Measures to Promote Women in Science, Engineering and Technology'.42 These include ensuring the inclusion of women on decision-making bodies, supporting women research fellows and others with family commitments, and helping women returners to science, as through the Daphne Jackson scheme. The projected Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships Scheme will help young women in the early stages of their careers. The 'portable' and now 'flexible' fellowships of the Royal Society, the Research Councils and other funding bodies are particularly helpful.

Notable progress in the representation of women has been made in Canada and in the United States of America. In The Royal Society of Canada the proportion of women was increased from 2.8% in 1988 to 4.4% in 1994, in Academy III (Science), simply by drawing the Fellows' attention to the need for equity for women.43 In the USA the National Academy of Sciences has elected 10.7% of women among its new members in the last five years, compared with 3.5% at the Royal Society. The proportion of women in the NAS remained below 1% for 40 years until 1965. It then began to rise, with the raising of consciousness of the rights of minorities and of women,44 and has risen steadily ever since.

In Britain a new entrant to the scene is the Association for Women in Science and Engineering, now being formed, linking with other similar groups in the USA, Canada and elsewhere.

Progress has to be made on several fronts in science as in other fields.45 Crucial issues identified in 'Women at the Top' were: outmoded attitudes about the role of women; direct and indirect discrimination; the absence of proper childcare provision; and inflexible structures for work and careers. There are no easy answers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Sheila Edwards, Alan Clark and Claire Burden at the Royal Society for their help.

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NOTES

1 'The Rising Tide, a report on Women in Science, Engineering and Technology', produced by an independent group of women scientists and engineers (HMSO, February 1994).

2 'Women at the Top' (The Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, London, 1990). The Commission was chaired by Elspeth Howe.

3 History of the Royal Society of London, for improving of natural knowledge, from itsfirst rise (London: Millar, 1716), 2, 175-8.

4 Douglass Grant, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 1623-1673 (Toronto: University Press, and London: Hart-Davies, 1957); Virginia Woolf, 'The duchess of Newcastle' in The Common Reader (London: Hogarth Press, 1925).

5 Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Massuchusetts: MIT, 1986).

6 Wilhelm Totok, 'Leibniz - Founder of Scientific Academies', Interdisciplinary Sci. Rev. 15, 207-8 (199), and references therein.

7 Londa Schiebinger, The Mind has no Sex? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard, 1989). 8 James E. McClellan, Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century

(New York: Columbia, 1985), p. 297, note 13. 9 Lynn Bindman, Alison Brading and Tilli Tansey, ed., Women Physiologists (London:

Portland, 1992). 10 Joan Mason, 'A forty years war', Chemistry in Britain, 233 (1991). 11 Martha Somerville, ed., Personal Recollections, from early life to old age, of Mary

Somerville, by her daughter, Martha Somerville (London: John Murray, 1873), p. 175. 12 R. K. Bluhm, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 13, 61 (1958). 13 Sophie Forgan, 'Audience and Amanuensis: some reflections on the separate spheres in

Victorian Science', given at the Royal Institution on 22 September 1994. 14 Joan Mason, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 45, 201 (1991). 15 Roy. Soc. Minutes of Council 8, 131 (1898-1903), minute 19, May 10th 1900; 136,

minute 17; Royal Society Archives, NLB. 20.385. 16 The objectors to women attending the Society's meetings were in the minority, but the

idea 'of not upsetting more than a few Fellows' held until 1909, when women were finally admitted to 'full Fellowship'. According to the Society's archivist Gerard L'E. Turner, the admission of 'distant' ladies such as Marian Farquharson, who lived in Scotland, was acceptable as they were less likely to want to come to meetings.

17 The Countess of Aberdeen, ed., The International Congress of Women of 1899: Women in Professions (London, Fisher Unwin, 1900).

18 A. T. Gage, A History of the Linnean Society of London (London, Taylor and Francis, 1938). Gage records (p. 86ff.) that 'the Treasurer took his daughter to a Fellows' meeting in 1797 ... There is no recorded further profanation of the mysteries for nearly a hundred years.' Marian Farquharson and her friends fought a battle of attrition with the Linneans. They obtained a supplemental Charter in 1903 to enable them to elect Fellows 'without distinction of sex', and elected fifteen women in 1904, blackballing Mrs Farquharson. She was elected in 1908, but was then too ill to be admitted, dying in 1912.

19 Joan Mason, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 46 279 (1992). 20 The Institute of Physics, Surveys of Women Members, 1986 and 1992. 21 The Royal Society of Chemistry, 'Education, Employment and Attitudes of Men and

Women Members', 1989.

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22 M. Fehrs and R. Czujko, Physics Today, August p. 33 (1992): a survey of American physicists showed that 45% of women physicists were married to physicists.

23 Record of the Royal Society of London, fourth edition (London 1940). Victoria, however, was no supporter of women's rights. Theodore Martin, official biographer of Prince Albert, wrote in 'Queen Victoria as I knew Her', pp. 69-70, 'this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights" ... is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself...'.

24 Charles R. Weld, A History of the Royal Society (London: J. W. Parker, 1848), p. 388. 25 Constance Elam was supported in research by the Royal Society as an Armourers and

Brasiers' Fellow, 1924-29. She was appointed Lecturer in metallurgy at Cambridge in 1939 and Reader in 1949, very early for a woman.

26 T. E. Allibone, 'The Royal Society and its Dining Clubs'. 27 Dorothy M. C. Hodgkin, Biog. Mems. Fell. R. Soc. 21, 447 (1975). 28 M. Robertson, Obit. Notices of FFRS. 6, 563 (1949). 29 H. H. Thomas, Biog. Mems. Fell. R. Soc. 21, 447 (1975). 30 Max Perutz, 'Forty years' friendship with Dorothy', in Structural Studies on Molecules of

Biological Interest: A Volume in honour of Dorothy Hodgkin, G. Dodson, J. P. Glusker and D. Sayre, eds., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p. 10.

31 Ann Bishop and Ashley Miles, Biog. Mems. Fell. R. Soc. 20, 317 (1974). 32 Janet Vaughan, Biog. Mems. Fell. R. Soc. 33, 235 (1987) 33 The Memoirs of Princess Dashkov, translated and edited by Kyril Fitzlyon (London:

Calder, 1958). 34 Rexmond C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: the First Hundred Years

1863-1963 (Washington: The National Academy of Sciences, 1978). 35 Joan Mason, to be published. 36 Veronica Stolte-Heiskanen, ed., Women in Science: Token Women or Gender Equality

(Berg, Oxford, 1991). 37 Department of Employment statistics. 38 Joan Mason, 'Women in Cambridge: Some Quandaries', The Cambridge Review, June

1993. 39 'Reminiscences', in P. P. Ewald, ed., Fifty years of X-ray diffraction (Utrecht, N. V. A.

Oosthoek's Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1962), p. 595. 40 Kathleen Lonsdale, Lab. Equipment Digest, February 1971; 'Women in science:

Reminiscences and reflections', Impact of Science on Society 20, 45 (1970). 41 'Women in Science, Engineering and Technology' (HMSO, July 1994). 42 R. Soc. News 7 (10), 1 (1994). 43 The Royal Society of Canada, 'Plan for Advancement of Women in Scholarship 1989-94'

(1989). 44 Philip Boffey, The Brain Bank of America: An Inquiry into the Politics of Science, with

an introduction by Ralph Nader (McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 25, 251. 45 Science and Engineering Programs: On Target for Women?' (National Academy Press,

Washington DC, 1992); 'Women Scientists and Engineers Employed in Industry: Why So Few?' (National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1994).

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