Women University Teachers Of Natural Science, UK 1971-2: An Empirical Survey
The story of how I became probably the first researcher in Britain to investigate ‘women scientists’ is perhaps a telling example of the confusions back then of higher education for first-generation female undergraduates like me. My initial degree studies in the late 1960s were in natural science, but I soon realised that the (then new and daring!) study of Sociology might be rather engaging. So I defected to the social sciences… and in 1971 got myself, as the only female student, onto a very-new-at-the-time Master’s course on the Sociology of Science and Technology.
So maybe now, half a century later, is a good time to share the overall results of my enquiries back in the early 1970s?
You can read this website in the language of your choice via Google Translate.
The whole subject still fascinates me, both the ‘science’ aspects themselves and the continuing issues, even half a century later, around ‘women scientists’. There are of course now many more redoubtable female scientists across the entire spectrum of research and application in every discipline from the study of micro-organisms to that of asteroids, but the issue of women’s engagement in STEM – Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering – continues to be topical. Why else was there such widely reported excitement when an ‘all women’ crew took a brief flight into space on 14 April this year (2025)?
It took a while to publish my research (guess what, I took time out for a family, and I had to train as a teacher and earn some money…) but I remain grateful to all those women who responded to my request for information, as I am to the then-editor of Social Studies of Science who waited so patiently for my report.
Women University Teachers of Natural Science, 1971-72: An Empirical Survey
Abstract:
A study of women university teachers of natural science in England and Wales was undertaken, by mail questionnaire, during the academic year 1971-72. It was designed to examine women scientists’ preference for the life sciences, and to test the hypothesis that they tend to have atypical family and educational backgrounds. The findings support the primary hypothesis that certain social and educational factors may pre-dispose women to become scientists, despite the wider consensus that science is a `masculine’ field. Respondents were often found to have those familial features generally associated with high-ranking men, to be related to other older scientists, and to have been to single-sex schools. One third were unmarried, and a further third had no children. A secondary hypothesis, in terms of nurturance and role-consonance, to explain women scientists’ preference for biological disciplines, was not confirmed. This Note presents the survey data. A bibliography is added to facilitate an understanding of the wider context and relevance of the data.
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The NOTES which follow this report, and an extensive Bibliography (over thirty years to 1980, with even a few references from the 1950s), can be found HERE.
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The constraints which applied to accessing eg national information pre-internet meant that little data was available on the subject cohort of scientists, male or female, beyond that gained from the research itself. (Details of individuals were gathered from the published paper subject calendars / prospectuses of the relevant universities.) Perhaps more information has become accessible in recent years?
Data were also collated on respondents’ career situations — for example, on their perceived scope for research, recognition and promotion (found to vary with academic discipline); on their views about why many girls do not pursue scientific careers, or tend to the biological sciences; and on the major practical difficulties and needs of women who do become academic scientists. The actual dissertation includes considerable discussion of the views of respondents as at half a century ago. It would be interesting to know to what extent the same perspectives are held now, or not.
Unfortunately there was no opportunity to explore the views of male scientists, as the research was self-funded and the costs of mailing further research questionnaires was prohibitive. This was a beginning, not an ‘end’.
And so the main question remains: why do women still not pursue STEM as often as men?
And do we understand all the reasons why, regardless of individuals’ entirely valid personal preferences, this is an important social issue?
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Your Comments on this topic are welcome.
Please post them in the Reply box which follows these announcements…..
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Books by Hilary Burrage on female genital mutilation
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6684-2740
A free internet version of the book Female Mutilation is available here. It is hoped that putting these many global narrations onto the internet will enable people to read them in whatever language they choose.
Hilary has published widely and has contributed two chapters to Routledge International Handbooks:
Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries: Chapter 33,
in Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2019),
eds Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz
and
FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Well-Being: Chapter 12,
in The Routledge International Handbook on Harmful Cultural Practices (2023),
eds Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Comfort Momoh
Hilary Burrage 
Hilary, Congratulations for exemplifying the importance of going back half a century. As a believer in learning from history, I’m aware of how much ‘reinventing the wheel’ now happens in our shared mutually-nurturing fields — FGM, education, medicine, science, and feminism. Thank you for this entry.
Thank you Tobe; and yes, there is a strange reluctance sometimes for people to look back and learn!
As anyone reflecting humbly will agree, just because something can’t be instantly retrieved on the internet, it doesn’t mean nothing happened.
I actually believe we would make better progress with current problems (FGM, gendered science, much else…) if more genuine effort was made to explore and interrogate what steps have been taken, successfully or otherwise, in past efforts to improve matters.