The world of science has, for the longest time, been dominated by men. In previous decades, there were legal, academic, corporate, and government barriers enacted to prevent the involvement of women in various subjects. Today, most of these measures do not exist to allow for a smooth entry for all genders into the various scientific fields. Despite these efforts, “science has a very long way to go to be inclusive in terms of gender” (McClellan & Dorn, 2006, p. 423). Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge moments and people who devoted their lives to turning the tide against most of these primitive norms. One of these figureheads is Margaret Rossiter, a professor at Cornell University.
It was back in 1969 when Rossiter had the moment that would shape the rest of her life. As an enrolled member of the Yale program devoted to the history of science, she was eligible to attend the weekly camaraderie meetings between professors and students at the local den (Dominus, 2019). In one of these moments, she asked about the possibility of female scientists having made an impact in science. An emphatic negative answer was all she got before someone mentioned Marie Curie. Despite Curie having won the Nobel Prize, the group dismissed her by relegating her accomplishments to her husband’s.
Rossiter did not argue against their opinions, instead choosing to focus on the bigger picture: her life’s work. For the next decade after that, she brought female science accomplishments to the fore and got them the recognition they deserved (Dominus, 2019). She scoured and found records of women buried in history and excavated those records for the world to see. The impact of showing that women have made strides in science in the past means that the present and future female scientists have paved the way for them. It showed that progress for women in science was always happening despite the adversity of those eras, and the only thing preventing other accomplishments would be despair. There is even more acceptability for women’s participation in scientific research and achievements for society.
References
Dominus, S. (2019). Women scientists were written out of history. It’s Margaret Rossiter’s lifelong mission to fix that. Smithsonian Magazine. Web.
McClellan, J. E., & Dorn, H. (2006). Science and technology in world history: An introduction (2nd ed.). John Hopkins University Press.