The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made substantial contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments of women, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work peer-reviewed and accepted in major scientific journals and other publications. The historical, critical, and sociological study of these issues has become an academic discipline in its own right.
The involvement of women in medicine occurred in several early Western civilizations, and the study of natural philosophy in ancient Greece was open to women. Women contributed to the proto-science of alchemy in the first or second centuries CE. During the Middle Ages, religious convents were an important place of education for women, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. The 11th century saw the emergence of the first universities; women were, for the most part, excluded from university education.Whaley, Leigh Ann. Women's History as Scientists. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2003. Outside academia, botany was the science that benefitted most from women's contributions in early modern times. The attitude toward educating women in medical fields appears to have been more liberal in Italy than elsewhere. The first known woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field of study was eighteenth-century Italian scientist Laura Bassi.
Gender roles were largely deterministic in the eighteenth century and women made substantial advances in science. During the nineteenth century, women were excluded from most formal scientific education, but they began to be admitted into learned societies during this period. In the later nineteenth century, the rise of the women's college provided jobs for women scientists and opportunities for education. Marie Curie paved the way for scientists to study radioactive decay and discovered the elements radium and polonium.Rutherford. "Marie Skłodowska-Curie." The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 13, no. 39, 1935, pp. 673–676. . Working as a physicist and chemist, she conducted pioneering research on radioactive decay and was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Physics and the first person to receive a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sixty women have been awarded the Nobel Prize between 1901 and 2022. Twenty-four women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine.
Cross-cultural perspectives In the 1970s and 1980s, many books and articles about women scientists were appearing. Virtually all of the published sources ignored women of color and women outside of Europe and North America. The formation of the Kovalevskaia Fund in 1985 and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World in 1993 gave more visibility to previously marginalized women scientists, but even today there is a dearth of information about current and historical women in science in developing countries. According to academic Ann Hibner Koblitz:Ann Hibner Koblitz, "Gender and science where science is on the margins," Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 25, no 2 (2005), pp. 107–114.
Koblitz has said that these generalizations about women in science often do not hold up cross-culturally:Ann Hibner Koblitz, "Global perspectives," World Science Report 1996, UNESCO, p. 327.
Historical examples Ancient history The involvement of women in the field of medicine has been recorded in several early civilizations. An ancient Egyptian physician, Peseshet (), described in an inscription as "lady overseer of the female physicians",Plinio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine, Horatius Press 1996, p.334Lois N. Magner, A History of Medicine, Marcel Dekker 1992, p. 28 is the earliest known female physician named in the history of science. Agamede was cited by Homer as a healer in ancient Greece before the Trojan War (c. 1194–1184 BCE).Homer, Iliad 11.740Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. .
The study of natural philosophy in ancient Greece was open to women. Recorded examples include Aglaonike, who predicted eclipses; and Theano, mathematician and physician, who was a pupil (possibly also wife) of Pythagoras, and one of the school in Crotone founded by Pythagoras, which included many other women. A passage in Pollux speaks about those who invented the process of coining money, mentioning Pheidon and Demodike from Cyme, wife of the Phrygian king, Midas, and daughter of King Agamemnon of Cyme.Martin Nilsson, Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology, 1983, University of California Press, p. 48. A daughter of a certain Agamemnon, king of Aeolian Cyme, married a Phrygian king called Midas.Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos eds., Panhellenes at Methone: Graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2017, p. 154 This link may have facilitated the Greeks "borrowing" their alphabet from the Phrygians because the Phrygian letter shapes are closest to the inscriptions from Aeolis.
During the period of the Babylonian civilization, around 1200 BCE, two perfumeresses named Tapputi-Belatekallim and -ninu (first half of her name unknown) were able to obtain the essences from plants by using extraction and distillation procedures. During the Egyptian dynasty, women were involved in applied chemistry, such as the making of beer and the preparation of medicinal compounds. Women have been recorded to have made major contributions to alchemy. Many of whom lived in Alexandria around the 1st or 2nd centuries C.E., where the gnostic tradition led to female contributions being valued. The most famous of the women alchemists, Mary the Jewess, is credited with inventing several chemical instruments, including the double boiler (bain-marie); the improvement or creation of distillation equipment of that time. Such distillation equipment was called kerotakis (simple still) and the tribikos (a complex distillation device).
Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350–415 CE), daughter of Theon of Alexandria, was a philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. She is the earliest female mathematician about whom detailed information has survived. Hypatia is credited with writing several important commentaries on geometry, algebra, and astronomy. Hypatia was the head of a philosophical school and taught many students. In 415 CE, she became entangled in a political dispute between Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, and Orestes, the Roman governor, which resulted in a mob of Cyril's supporters stripping her, dismembering her, and burning the pieces of her body.
Medieval Europe
The early parts of the European Middle Ages, also known as the Dark Ages, were marked by the decline of the Roman Empire. The Latin West was left with great difficulties that dramatically affected the continent's intellectual production. Although nature was still seen as a system that could be comprehended through reason, there was little innovative scientific inquiry."The End of the Classical World", (Lecture 12), in Lawrence M. Principe (2002) History of Science: Antiquity to 1700. Teaching Company, Course No. 1200 The Arabic world deserves credit for preserving scientific advancements. Arabic scholars produced original scholarly work and generated copies of manuscripts from classical periods. During this period, Christianity underwent a period of resurgence, and Western civilization was bolstered as a result. This phenomenon was, in part, due to monasteries and nunneries that nurtured the skills of reading and writing, and the monks and nuns who collected and copied important writings by scholars of the past.
As it mentioned before, convents were an important place of education for women during this period, for the monasteries and nunneries encourage the skills of reading and writing, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. An example is the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179 A.D), a famous philosopher and botanist, whose prolific writings include treatments of various scientific subjects, including medicine, botany and natural history (c. 1151–58). Another famous German abbess was Hroswitha of Gandersheim (935–1000 A.D.) that also helped encourage women to be intellectual. However, with the growth in number and power of nunneries, the all-male clerical hierarchy was not welcomed toward it, and thus it stirred up conflict by having backlash against women's advancement. That impacted many religious orders closed on women and disbanded their nunneries, and overall excluding women from the ability to learn to read and write. With that, the world of science became closed off to women, limiting women's influence in science.
Entering the 11th century, the first universities emerged. Women were, for the most part, excluded from university education. However, there were some exceptions. The Italian University of Bologna allowed women to attend lectures from its inception, in 1088.
The attitude toward educating women in medical fields in Italy appears to have been more liberal than in other places. The physician Trotula di Ruggiero, is supposed to have held a chair at the Medical School of Salerno in the 11th century, where she taught many noble Italian women, a group sometimes referred to as the "ladies of Salerno". Several influential texts on women's medicine, dealing with obstetrics and gynecology, among other topics, are also often attributed to Trotula.
Dorotea Bucca was another distinguished Italian physician. She held a chair of philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna for over forty years, from 1390.Howard S. The Hidden Giants, p. 35, (Lulu.com; 2006) (Retrieved 22 August 2007)Brooklyn Museum: Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Dorotea Bucca (Retrieved 22 August 2007)Jex-Blake S (1873) The medical education of women, republished in The Education Papers: Women's Quest for Equality, 1850–1912 (Spender D, ed) p. 270] (Retrieved 22 August 2007) Other Italian women whose contributions in medicine have been recorded include Abella, Jacobina Félicie, Alessandra Giliani, Rebecca de Guarna, Margarita, Mercuriade (14th century), Constance Calenda, Calrice di Durisio (15th century), Constanza, Maria Incarnata and Thomasia de Mattio.Walsh, J. J. Medieval Women Physicians' in Old Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of the Students and Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages, ch. 8, (Fordham University Press; 1911)]
Despite the success of some women, cultural biases affecting their education and participation in science were prominent in the Middle Ages. For example, Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Christian scholar, wrote, referring to women, "She is mentally incapable of holding a position of authority."
Scientific Revolutions of 1600s and 1700s
Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century aristocrat, took part in some of the most important scientific debates of that time. She was, however, not inducted into the English Royal Society, although she was once allowed to attend a meeting. She wrote a number of works on scientific matters, including Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (1666) and Grounds of Natural Philosophy. In these works she was especially critical of the growing belief that humans, through science, were the masters of nature. The observations provided a critique of the experimental science of Bacon and criticized microscopes as imperfect machines.Whaley, Leigh Ann. Women's History as Scientists. (California: 2003), p. 114.