Skip to content

Women (Gender) & Science

Hilary Burrage was amongst the very first to research ‘women and science’.  Her M.Sc. research and dissertation (University of Salford, 1973) was on this subject.

This research was reported as a published paper ten years later, in 1983:

1983: ‘Women University Teachers of Natural Science, 1971-2: An Empirical Study‘, Social Studies of Science, vol.13, no.1, (February) (Report of M.Sc. research of same title, University of Salford, UK

Women University Teachers of Natural Science, 1971-72: An Empirical Survey

 Hilary F. Burrage

First Published February 1, 1983

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/030631283013001008
.
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.

*two-thirds in all

….   but the subsiduary conclusion of this paper,  the ‘secondary hypothesis’ above, that no difference between men’s and women’s preferences for the life sciences is proven, was inserted at the insistance of an anonymous reviewer, and makes sense only insofar as funding and other resources for the original research (none) did not extend to investigating men at the same time as the women. (Independent data which might have allowed gendered demographic comparisions to be made was very hard to find in that early 1970s, snail mail, pre-internet era).

%d bloggers like this: