Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980 9780773587953

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Editors’ Note
Foreword
Introduction: Shifting Lenses
1 A Complicated Life: My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment
2 New Horizons: Women and Science in Academe, 1880–1920
3 Academic Realities of Single Women, 1920–1980
4 Complicated Lives I: Family Life and Science, 1920–1950
5 Complicated Lives II: Family Life and Science after 1950
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
W
Z

Citation preview

Creating Complicated Lives

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McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

Creating Complicated Lives

Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880–1980 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley

Edited by Marelene Rayner-Canham and Geoff Rayner-Canham

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2012 ISBN 978-0-7735-4066-8 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-7735-4067-5 (paper) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2012 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Publications Subvention Program. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi, 1937–2008 Creating complicated lives : women and science at EnglishCanadian universities, 1880–1980 / Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley ; edited by Marelene Rayner-Canham and Geoff Rayner-Canham. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7735-4066-8 (bound). ISBN 978-0-7735-4067-5 (pbk.)

1. Women in science – Canada – History.  2. Women scientists – Canada – Biography.  3. Women in higher education – Canada – History.  4. Sex discrimination in science – Canada – History.  I. Rayner-Canham, Marelene F  II. Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey  III. Title.

hq1397.a 45 2012   500.820971   c2012-905253-1 Set in 10/13 Calluna with Calluna Sans and Sanchez Book design & typesetting by Garet Markvoort, zijn digital

Contents

Editors’ Note  vii Foreword by Alison Prentice  ix

Introduction: Shifting Lenses  3 1 A Complicated Life: My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment  9 2 New Horizons: Women and Science in Academe, 1880–1920  45 3 Academic Realities of Single Women, 1920–1980  62 4 Complicated Lives I: Family Life and Science, 1920–1950  90 5 Complicated Lives II: Family Life and Science after 1950  127

Notes  165 Bibliography  185 Index  193

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Editors’ Note

Marika (Marianne) Gosztonyi Ainley passed away on 26 September 2008.1 At that time, she had completed a second draft of the manuscript for Creating Complicated Lives. We were honoured to be asked by Jean Wilson, formerly of University of British Columbia Press, to bring the manuscript to a publishable state. Our participation in this project has been essentially to improve the flow and structure of Marianne’s important contribution to the study of women in Canadian science. In doing so, we have not changed the content of the manuscript, and we have been careful not to amend Marianne’s voice or narrative in any way. By taking on this project, we have reversed roles with the author. In the late 1980s, it was she who advised us on the reworking of our first biography, Harriet Brooks, resulting in its publication and our continuing work on the history of women in science. The publication of the current manuscript would not have been possible without the strong support of McGill-Queen’s University Press and particularly Philip Cercone and Mark Abley. We wish to express sincere thanks to David, Mark, and Vicky Ainley for their support and encouragement.

Marelene Rayner-Canham and Geoff Rayner-Canham Grenfell Campus, Memorial University Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador



1 For one of the many tributes to the life and work of Ainley, we refer the reader to Mary E. Baldwin, “Eloge: Marianne (Marika) Gosztonyi Ainley, 1937–2008,” Isis, 100 no. 4 (2009), 852–5.

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Foreword Alison Prentice

Marianne Ainley’s Creating Complicated Lives is a brilliant exploration of the lives of Canadian women working in the sciences. Drawing on university archival records, oral histories, and both Canadian and international research literature, her study argues that these lives need to be understood in two primary contexts: the more general history of science and higher education; and Canadian gender and women’s history, in the years between 1880 and 1980. As science professionalized during this period, employment in the field became stratified and hierarchical. For women, who were gradually moving into both higher education and professional employment, this provided opportunities to study and work in science. But it also presented problems, chiefly of mobility, as reaching the higher echelons and public recognition in science proved difficult. Exploring these opportunities and restraints, by examining the experiences of many individual women accomplishes the major goal of Ainley’s study: making visible the work and achievements of hundreds of women scientists who have been largely ignored in the history of Canadian science. Ainley approached her research convinced of the validity of two arguments that have had a significant impact on women’s studies and women’s history. The first is the value of a “personal experience method,” as expounded by D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly in their eponymous 1994 article. Looking through the prism of her experience as a chemist, then as a student of the history of science, and finally as a historian of women and science, Ainley traces her own trajectory as a scholar: from an immigrant technician in a particular scientific field to a committed feminist historian, who learned much along the way from a history of science that was not informed by gender perspectives. Her own scientific knowledge and her studies of men in science are, as we see below, crucial to the balanced story she tells.

x  Foreword

Second, Ainley believes in the strength and value of life histories. Drawing on the widely acclaimed Composing a Life, by Mary Catherine Bateson, and Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course, edited by Cindy Katz and Janice Monk, she looks at women scientists from the perspective not just of their achievements but, more significant, of what their work in science meant to them, and the frustration and/or fulfilment they experienced as they travelled their individual life journeys. She celebrates nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian women composing or creating their lives, with practical good sense and meanings that perhaps differed from those that men might have searched for or found during the same period. Feminist historians have argued against unduly celebratory approaches to women’s history and equally against histories that focus on women’s victimization. Ainley’s work emphasizes neither, achieving a fine balance by exploring, from a feminist perspective, lives that exemplified much more than the dichotomy between these two extremes. This has involved the author’s taking a stand for complexity. Eschewing a “simplistic view of what happened in complex scientific communities” and the habit of looking at supposedly typical “male-stream” careers as the ideal model for everyone working in science, Ainley shows that women’s lives in science were complicated by three major factors. First, many women scientists wished to marry and have children and/or to combine marriage and child-rearing with their scientific work. They were inevitably, to varying degrees, affected by the ideologies of appropriate family life that swirled around them. Women who chose to remain single also faced stereotypes widely applied to their gender. Second, another significant factor was the discipline a woman scientist chose. In fields such as geology, many men found it problematic to have a woman working in the field – particularly when she might be alone in a group of men. Third and finally, hierarchical and lateral segregation in the academic workplace led to further complexity in a world where, as science gradually became more professional, many people believed that women belonged and were useful only in the lower echelons. Often, their male mentors visualized women scientists as long-term research and teaching assistants or laboratory demonstrators – or, even more typically, as temporary employees before marriage and family. Marianne Ainley’s goal has been to seek a balance among all the forces and circumstances that affected women’s lives in science. It is sad that she did not live to see this book appear in print. Fortunately for us, however, her friends Geoffrey and Marelene Rayner-Canham were willing to

Foreword  xi

step into the breach and prepare the manuscript for publication. They have done a very fine job. Thanks to them, readers now have access here to Ainley’s exploration, both of cases in which women were exploited or insufficiently encouraged and of cases in which women were able to achieve renown in their fields, along with all the varying situations in between. The result is a stunning work, which justifies its title. The women studied here did indeed create complicated, as well as fascinating and satisfying, lives.

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Creating Complicated Lives

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Introduction

Shifting Lenses

Rediscovering Women’s Contributions During the past decades, an increasing number of historical studies rediscovered women’s contributions to science. This was a major departure from conventional studies of science, where scientists, sociologists, and male historians highlighted and praised men’s heroic work and unparalleled discoveries.1 Robert Merton proposed the term “Matthew effect” for those individuals lost from narratives on the history of science.2 Margaret Rossiter responded that the elimination of women from accounts of science is a far more fundamental problem and suggested the “Matilda effect”3 vis-à-vis women. Rossiter eloquently makes the case for the Matilda effect: Recent work has brought to light so many cases, historical and contemporary, of women scientists who have been ignored, denied credit or otherwise dropped from sight that a sex-linked phenomenon seems to exist, as has been documented to be the case in other fields, such as medicine, art history and literary criticism. Since this systematic bias in scientific information and recognition practices fits the second half of Matthew 13:12 in the Bible, which refers to the under-recognition accorded to those who have little to start with, it is suggested that sociologists of science and knowledge can add to the “Matthew effect,” made famous by Robert K. Merton in 1968, the “Matilda effect,” named for the American suffragist and feminist critic Matilda J. Gage of New York, who in the late nineteenth century both experienced and articulated this phenomenon. Calling attention to her and this age-old tendency may prod future scholars to include other such “Matildas” and thus to write a better, because more comprehensive, history and sociology of science.4

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In women’s history, as in all feminist studies, we women shifted from studying mostly men to studying mostly women. We changed lenses to highlight women’s lives and activities against historical backdrops consisting of both women and men. This methodological change was the result of a revolution in our thinking. For this change, we must thank the feminist academics and community activists who, following the second women’s movement in the late 1960s, initiated a trend that has led to a paradigm shift from male- to female-centred research. To me, as a historian of science, this change in perspective is comparable to the so-called First Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when a paradigm shift occurred from an earth- to a sun-centred universe. Now we know that the sun is part of a much larger system – the solar system has been placed into context. Similarly, female/ women-centred research is in the process of being put in the larger historical and geopolitical contexts of gender and other power relations. There are numerous ways to approach women-centred research projects, depending on the focus, the theoretical framework, and the methods. Like many other feminist scholars, I too shifted the lens of my historical research on Canadian women and science. Women’s seeming invisibility in science has been due to their exclusion from science textbooks, reference books, and male-stream histories of science. This male-focused perspective has long created the impression that there have been only a handful of women scientists in the Western world and that the few who managed to do scientific work rarely found suitable positions. This is a simplistic view of what has happened in complex scientific communities. More detailed women-centred research has revealed that, in fact, many women studied and worked in science and achieved recognition, although their professional lives followed different paths both from their male peers and even from each other.5 Until recently, most research on women scientists, including my own, focused on comparative studies with their male colleagues. Such work in the 1970s and 1980s began from the premise that women’s careers suffered when compared to men’s.6 While this approach has been a valuable way to study women’s status in science, it is not the only method, and possibly not the best, because if we compare women’s professional opportunities to men’s, we perpetuate the male career as the norm and the one to aim for. In the Western world, the notion of a successful career has been based on privileged men’s expectations, experiences, and achievements in the church, the army, the civil service, and in the various male professions,

Introduction  5

such as medicine, law, and engineering. This does not account for men’s varied experiences as university, government, or industrial scientists, nor for the struggles experienced by men from less privileged backgrounds. Biographical research has already revealed that not all male, and even fewer female, scientists have had straightforward careers.7 Although it has been difficult for historians of science to obtain detailed biographical information on the working lives of many women scientists, careful reading of available archival documents and secondary sources reveals the variety of ways scientists experienced their careers. Finely nuanced investigations highlight issues that involve taking decisions, constructing lives (to use Mary Catherine Bateson’s phrase),8 and changing life-course. It is hard, however, for us to transform our thinking about careers and, in particular, to stop considering “the male career” as the norm. Although some of the early feminist literature from the 1970s discussed alternative career models that would reflect the reality of women’s lives, these models were confined to married women professionals who were mothers rather than to single, success-oriented women, and thus cannot be used as a general model.9 Unfortunately, I too have been unable to either find another term or construct a model that would be applicable to the working lives of all women, and many men, who were scientists during the years from 1880 to 1980. We can, however, broaden our view of what constitutes a career. Historically, not all scientists achieved the ideal of a male-stream career, that is, straightforward, unimpeded advancement to higher-level, betterpaid positions enabling them to conduct well-funded scientific research and to achieve rewards and recognition in the scientific community. Using the terms “career,” “working life,” or “life in science” interchangeably will allow us to consider the variety of women’s and men’s experiences in science and make useful gender-specific, disciplinary, and institutional comparisons. Clearly, the new feminist historical scholarship has given us a much richer fabric of history, more carefully detailed stories of the past, and more complete accounts of gender relations. It has made us realize that history of science written from the perspective of the “great names/ geniuses of science” is partial, biased history. Histories of women in general, and of women scientists in particular, can be studied, evaluated, and written in a variety of ways. I have worked on aspects of a feminist history of Canadian science for more than twenty years, and my own work has gone through various transformations. Initially, I too compared women’s careers with those of their male

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colleagues, but over the years I shifted my focus to track women’s lifecourse changes in order to emphasize their agency – the “ability or power to make decisions based on one’s own needs and desires in matters that primarily affect oneself.”10 When I looked at women’s experiences in science using the perspective of the 1970s and 1980s, I concentrated on their limited opportunities. This way of viewing their lives focused both on gender-specific obstacles and on achievements despite the odds. I documented how even single women who had seemingly male-stream careers – that is, women who were visible in the scientific community and well-known for their accomplishments in Canada and beyond – faced difficulties because of their gender. There is no doubt that both single women and women who married and continued to work in science experienced numerous challenges. It was widely believed that marriage and motherhood were more important to women than paid work outside the home. The resulting assumption – that women would leave paid employment when they married – was a real obstacle to women’s professional lives. Most women who managed to retain their positions after marriage had to contend with heavy workloads, slow advancement, and low pay. Other promising women scientists left their academic posts when they married. In Creating Complicated Lives, I deal with all these issues.

A New Lens: Life-Course Change In addition, I also use a different perspective, a new lens – life-course change – through which I examine and interpret the rich and complex lives of women scientists at Canadian universities. Some years ago, I realized that I needed alternative ways of studying women’s lives in science. Like some feminist geographers, historians, and sociologists, I found that both my overall and my biographical research benefited from my looking at life-course change – a biographical/geographical approach that follows women’s lives across space and time.11 Life-course changes depend on access to resources and interactions with family, friends, and colleagues. Feminist scholars have argued that all women have agency to make changes about their lives – they are able to assess situations and make choices. Some women facilitate change – they are catalysts, and they “make things happen.”12 As always, the historian has to make choices: who and what to include or exclude. In this book, I write about the life and work of women scientists at English-Canadian universities. Because of the different educa-

Introduction  7

tional histories of English- and French-speaking Canadian women, there were relatively few French-Canadian women scientists during the period I studied. I included information about them in a chapter: “Les femmes dans les science au Canada: y-a-t-il une division sexuelle du travail?” in Femmes et science: Au coeur des débats institutionnels et épistémologiques.13 As a result of the imbalance of information, I was unable to make useful comparisons between English- and French-Canadian women’s professional lives. Therefore in this book I concentrate on women who worked at English-speaking institutions. Studying the life-course changes of Canadian women scientists has been a challenge because of the unevenness of available information. There is ample documentation on a few women, but most women scientists did not leave personal papers; for those who did, their families tended not to save them, and/or librarians and archivists did not attempt to claim them as part of the scientific historical record. How then do we track women scientists’ life-course changes – how do we evaluate their adjustments to changing social, political, and economic circumstances, study their influence on others, and write and interpret their lives? One way is to learn about the larger context, by examining the history of Canadian science and higher education from a feminist perspective. My readings in the histories of science and education and my research on the life and work of the eminent zoologist William Rowan (1891–1957) helped me understand the academic experiences of single and married women scientists. Research on Rowan has shown the numerous difficulties that all scientists experienced at Canadian universities. These included onerous teaching loads, low pay, lack of teaching materials and research equipment, limited access to research grants, and lack of recognition by university administrators.14 Women, of course, faced situations most men did not encounter, such as systemic discrimination, lack of a social support network, the absence of good and affordable daycare, and the necessity to juggle family and professional commitments. As the examples in Creating Complicated Lives demonstrate, women’s experiences varied from one university to another, between disciplines, and over time. The women in this book were intelligent, pragmatic, and able to change. We can consider them “reagents” – “reactive substance[s] of force”15 – who, instead of complying with society’s expectations of women within a certain social class and historical period, resisted and reacted to oppressive situations. From my research on Canadian women in science, it is clear that finely nuanced investigations can lead us to varied interpretations of our history. Different approaches to the study of women scientists complement

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rather than displace each other. I am not suggesting that we abandon comparative studies of men’s and women’s careers, but I think that we should problematize the notion of a career.

Conclusion: A More Complex, Realistic History While I am not maintaining that the biographical/life-course-change approach is the best or only way to study people’s lives, I do think that it is a useful and interesting approach that allows us to examine people’s experiences in particular contexts through their life course. Because of this, it is eminently suitable for feminist historical research. I believe that using different perspectives, theories, and methods and periodically shifting the lens of our feminist research enables us as researchers to write a more complex and realistic history of Canadian science. The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1, “A Complicated Life: My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment,” incorporates my own background, interest, and experiences in science and details my development as a feminist historian of science. Chapter 2, “New Horizons: Women and Science in Academe, 1880–1920,” looks at Canadian women’s science education and opportunities for scientific work before 1930. Chapter 3, “Academic Realities of Single Women, 1920–1980,” examines the larger context of women scientists’ lives at Canadian universities after 1920 and looks at the realities of pursuing and combining in various ways three professional paths: teaching, research, and administration. Chapter 4, “Complicated Lives I: Family Life and Science, 1920–1950,” explores the lives of women who chose to marry, have children, and maintain some involvement in professional work, contrary to society’s expectations that they stay out of the workforce. Chapter 5, “Complicated Lives II: Family Life and Science after 1950,” discusses both external and internal factors that influenced married women scientists’ academic experiences after the Second World War.

1 A Complicated Life: My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment Researcher voice and signature are now recognized terms in personal experience method. Who the researchers are makes a difference at all levels of the research and the signature they put on their work comes out of the stories they tell.1

Rediscovering Invisible Women Women’s contribution to, and lives in, science have long constituted an overlooked dimension in the history of Canadian science. I first recognized this reality in the early 1980s. I was a middle-aged graduate student, as well as a wife, mother, and environmental activist. I was also a former “invisible” chemist who knew from first-hand experience that women worked in science in academic, industrial, and medical settings. I saw them, talked to them, and observed them in these institutions. I was one of them. Women did most of the routine work in the laboratories where I had been employed. Many of the ones I encountered there were present one year but not the next. I had no theoretical framework to explain why this occurred because I had never heard of hierarchical and lateral segregation, “women’s work” in science, or patriarchy. Yet, I have lived all of these categories, even though my own early experiences in science were entirely positive.

Growing up in Hungary (1937–1956) My research has been inevitably influenced by my own experiences and upbringing in Budapest, Hungary. This was mainly because my mother, though not a professional woman, was by choice a wage-earner. Although she had to leave school at age sixteen, she swore that she would have financial independence and a life of her own, unlike her own financially

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dependent mother, whose life unfolded in relation to her family and who lived it vicariously through her children. My own observations of my mother’s working life were coloured by a middle-class central European way of life that included hiring household help. Having someone to take care of the details of everyday life at home enabled my mother to work six days a week, first as a secretary and later, during my teen years, as a member of a chemical co-operative. By necessity, she also spent countless hours lining up for extra food and clothing, items that remained scarce in Hungary throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Her circle of female friends included a lawyer, an architect, and a pharmacist (whose daughter also became a pharmacist); they had similar household arrangements. During the postwar reconstruction of Hungary, no one talked about work-related stress or limited horizons. Women worked in all occupations and professions, and we, as children, never questioned whether or not they earned as much as men or received equal treatment, because equal opportunity was the official policy. In elementary school, most of my science teachers were women, and the enhanced, science-oriented high school I attended had slightly more women science teachers than men. Some of these women remained single; others had married and had children. Given the generation gap between our parents’ and grandparents’ contemporaries and ourselves, as well as the distance that our teachers maintained from us pupils, we had no way of learning about their domestic and professional arrangements. We knew nothing of their difficulties, frustrations, joys, and achievements. As a young child in postwar Hungary, I was encouraged by my parents and teachers to study science. Beginning in grade six, women taught me algebra, biology, chemistry, geography, and physics. I subscribed to the popular scientific journal Élet és Tudomány (Life and Science), and I read books about Maria Skłodowska (Curie), the Polish-born winner of two Nobel Prizes, and the Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaia. I too wanted to become a scientist. In those pre-television days, I saw every nature film that was shown in the cinema, but biology, as it was taught, did not interest me. Although I liked learning about living organisms and seeing their natural environment, I did not want to cut up and deal with dead animals. Chemistry was a better bet – the atoms and molecules, colourful solutions and chemical reactions, even the theories, were fascinating. In grade eight, I joined the chemistry club. My parents

My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment  11

and teachers encouraged my interest, and no one told me that as a girl I could not and should not do science. For high school, after discussing my options with my parents, I applied to enter a course of study leading to a diploma of industrial chemistry at Petrik Lajos Polytechnical College in Budapest. I would have preferred to attend a regular high school, study languages and literature, and enter university to study theoretical chemistry. But my middle-class background was a handicap during the Communist regime. My father, an eminently practical man, pointed out that having a diploma would not prevent me from entering university, but that, should I not be accepted, I could always find a job. He was correct: after completing my polytechnic studies I was always able to find a job, in a variety of quality-control or research laboratories. The jobs were poorly paid and boring. My parents’ generation, living through two world wars, the Depression, and the postwar Communist era, did not have the luxury of considering job satisfaction, and it never occurred to any of us to discuss it. How was I to realize that working in an industrial laboratory was unlikely to provide the kind of excitement experienced by Skłodowska-Curie and the other scientists whose biographies I had read? In 1956, I graduated from the polytechnical college with a diploma in industrial chemistry and began working in a quality-control laboratory. Because of the prevailing political and economic system, I would probably have stayed in that position, because no one moved from one job to another. The revolution in October of that year prompted us Hungarians to dream of freedom of expression, travel, and further study. When it was suppressed, many of us escaped.

A New Life in Canada (1956–1977 ) I was just nineteen when I walked across the border to Austria and a new life. Within a few weeks, I was on my way to Sweden, where I had relatives. There, I worked briefly in the quality-control laboratory of L.M. Ericsson, the telephone company, before immigrating to Canada in 1957 and settling in Montreal. I spent the next twenty years taking night courses (completing my BA at McGill in 1964), working full time in a variety of laboratory settings, giving birth to and raising my two children, and working part time as someone’s research assistant. During those decades, I came to love the

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outdoors on family camping trips across North America and, as a result, became active in the conservation movement. Like many other women, I came to feminism through both my pacifism and my environmentalism. Because of the encouragement that I received in postwar Hungary to study and work in science, I found my encounters with the gendered expectations in Canadian science quite peculiar. I lacked the analytical framework to understand why two young women colleagues who dropped out of McGill University’s chemistry program would ever have considered that the only important things in life were marriage and a house in the suburbs. I saw, but did not quite understand, why all the laboratory technicians at Imperial Tobacco and Queen Mary Veterans’ Hospital were women but most, if not all, the managers were men. Later, after graduation, and while working in medicinal chemistry research at Loyola College between 1966 and 1969 and again between 1973 and 1977, I encountered systemic discrimination. Despite what my friend Mary Pitman Baldwin (whose feminist awareness of gender issues was far in advance of mine) told me, I found it hard to comprehend that certain things occurred to me because I was a woman. Systemic sexism was not yet part of my conceptual framework or even my vocabulary. Three examples stayed in my mind. First, the professor of chemistry for whom I worked as a research assistant showed a visiting male Hungarian chemist around the laboratory where I was conducting an experiment but did not bother to introduce me. An oversight? Even then I doubted it – but I did not quite understand when and why I became part of the furniture. Second, I worked side by side with another research assistant for the same professor. But while I received only an acknowledgment on the scientific papers that resulted from my work, my West Indian male colleague appeared as a junior author on all the papers resulting from his research. Third, the only two people excluded from a “lab-warming” party organized by a new colleague were my friend Mary Pitman Baldwin, who was a laboratory instructor, and I. The secretaries and the stockroom keeper were invited. It took me a while to recognize that they were necessary to the young chemist’s career, while we were not. These three experiences raised my feminist consciousness. I realized that without a PhD in science, I would be doomed to doing repetitious, boring jobs in a variety of laboratories. I contextualize my experiences of employment in chemistry below in the subsection “My Own Experience” in chapter 5.

My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment  13

MSc at Montréal (1978–1980): History of Ornithology Discovering the “Margins”

During the 1970s, I met many ornithologists, field naturalists, and conservationists and learned that one can do scientific research outside the laboratory. Twenty years after I left Hungary, and a dozen years after I obtained my BA , I was ready to go to graduate school. I was, however, unsure of how I could combine my various interests and perhaps professionalize my hobby in natural history/ornithology. On the advice of Michael Hogben, I visited a new graduate program at the Université de Montréal in late 1976, to inquire whether I could pursue graduate studies on the topic of the history of ornithology. It was in 1978 that I was admitted as a part-time student in the MS c program at the university’s Institut d’histoire et de sociopolitique des sciences (IHSPS). Doing a graduate degree in a third language while teaching two laboratory courses and running a household was a challenge, but the ‘méthode des petits pas’ (one step at a time) served me well. I am not a quitter, and my research into the history of ornithology kept me interested. When I had applied to the program, I did not know that the IHSPS was considered avant garde among North American history of science units. Unlike the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) at the University of Toronto, the IHSPS taught and used an externalist approach to the history of scientific ideas, theories, and experiments. Externalism “sees science as part of culture … It stresses the ways in which political, technical, economic and military interests affect science.” By contrast, internalism is “the view that science is primarily an abstract intellectual enterprise insulated from social, political, and economic circumstances.”2 Little did I realize that, despite my institute’s approach, neither its faculty nor its graduate students used or even discussed feminist analyses. Postcolonial and feminist science studies, the history of Canadian science, and women’s history were still in their infancy. We studied scientific institutions, but not gendered institutional environments (or landscapes). The scientific community under study was definitely male, white, and of European extraction. There was little interest in the average scientist or the impact of science on peoples’ lives. Although the socio-economic

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background of scientists was discussed, as were economic influences, funding practices, rewards systems, and “gate-keeping,” there was no mention of agency, choice, gender, and gender relations either in the laboratory or in the field. Thus I have to admit (although I dislike doing so) that, while I knew about many women ornithologists, I did no gender analysis in my MS c thesis, “The Professionalisation of North American Ornithology.” I did deal there, however, with power relations in a field-oriented and incompletely professionalized science at a time when this was not an area of interest for most historians of science.3 Fortunately, my professors were enthusiastic about my thesis topic, although a few graduate students steeped in Western scientific philosophy thought that field ornithology was neither timely nor very interesting as a research topic. This thesis became my first foray into writing about a seemingly marginal segment of the scientific community. My dissenting voice, based on both my own experiences as a field ornithologist and my acquaintance with many other women and men who had contributed to science as “amateurs,” questioned the model of scientific developments discussed in graduate seminars. That linear model viewed the maturity of a scientific field as a function of the extent of its professionalization. My familiarity with contemporary US and Canadian ornithology alerted me to the fact that this model was not general. My graduate research showed that American ornithology presented an alternative model to most scientific disciplines because it was (and still is) incompletely professionalized. Several scholars had investigated other sciences – for example, John Lankford and Ricky Slavings4 worked on amateurs in astronomy, and Robert Stebbins5 on amateurs in sociology and archaeology. These were all sciences that did not fit the mainstream model because amateurs continued to contribute to these disciplines. Even without an awareness of feminist research or women’s history, I did acquire a background in alternative storytelling in the history of science. Formal discussions of feminist approaches to research6 were missing from my MS c training, and we had no informal discussions on the subject with either the professors or the other graduate students. Nevertheless, Camille Limoges, a historian of biology and former head of our institute, invited Donna Haraway to give lectures in a graduate course during the 1979 winter term. Haraway was part of the exchange of faculty members and graduate students between the history of science units at Johns Hopkins Univer-

My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment  15

sity and Montréal and was beginning her path-breaking work on women primatologists, which she discussed with us in detail. She also introduced the somewhat sceptical graduate students to issues of gender, science, and technology in feminist science fiction. Her work on women scientists was two-fold. She brought a new perspective to behavioural studies and also examined how science treats women. Her lectures and our subsequent discussions contributed to my interest in “different” sciences and scientists. It did not prompt me, however, to even consider women’s experiences in my MS c thesis. Nonetheless my work on people whom many historians and sociologists of science considered marginal figures in a marginal science prepared me well for investigating later the institutionalization and professionalization of science, women in science, colonialism and science, and the transformation of scientific knowledge. It enabled me to look at the composition of scientific communities, which efforts led to my investigations of gender and other power relations in science.

PhD at McGill (1980–1984): History of Canadian Ornithology Discovering the Sociology of Science

After completing my MS c, I commenced a PhD in 1980 at McGill. At Montréal I had been one of about twenty graduate students; at McGill I was on my own. I was an independent graduate student because McGill had no graduate program in the history and philosophy of science. My most useful graduate courses there were in sociology: “Sociology of Science,” with visiting British scholar Steve Woolgar, and “Qualitative Methods in Sociology,” with Prudence Rains. The first made me think about how knowledge is constructed, and I wrote a research paper about the Eskimo Curlew and its social reconstruction by scientists. This onceabundant North American species was on the brink of extinction and had already been “written out” of bird field guides when in the 1970s a few well documented sightings in northern Canada led scientists to reevaluate its status. Subsequently, illustrations and descriptions of the bird were once again included in the popular bird-identification guides. The process of the rediscovery and restoration of the species into the scientific and historical literature, and my later interpretation of this process, opened the way for my historical work on women and science.

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Discovering Women and Science

My dissertation was on the transformation of “Natural History to Avian Biology: Canadian Ornithology, 1860 to 1950.” It dealt with natural history explorations, government science, changing trends in science, tensions between field and laboratory sciences, the contribution of nonprofessionals to an increasingly professionalized and institutionalized field, and issues of environments – both natural and institutional – as well as research funding, government priorities, and scientific careers. Most of the people I discussed were men. My personal interests in women, peace, and the environment had not entered my MS c research: perhaps my graduate training did not prepare me to deal with gender issues. I was unaware that Canadian women scientists, including Maggie Benston, Hilda Ching, Ursula Franklin, Karen Messing, Roberta Mura, Joan Scott, and Rose Sheinin, were already addressing women’s status in science. All this changed suddenly for me during my first semester of doctoral studies. I read an article on women and science in the autumn 1980 issue of Isis, the history of science journal to which I have subscribed since 1977. The cover picture showed an old photograph of three women and one man in a laboratory, and it alerted me to Margaret Rossiter’s article, “Women’s Work in Science, 1880–1910.”7 The topic provided me with a new research direction in the history of science. I realized that I too could work on women scientists and, sometime in the future, investigate their situation working in natural history museums and the field. I already knew that women ornithologists had contributed significantly to the science. In the United States, Margaret Morse Nice8 was famous for her work on the life history of the song sparrow; women were among members of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and some of them had received prestigious awards for their scientific research. Rossiter’s article, and my follow-up discussion with her at a conference in Toronto later that autumn, certainly influenced my future research: her scholarship pointed the way for me to historical research on women’s work in science. It was attractive: the subject matter – women – was new, but the methods were not. I see now that, while this research model departed from mainstream historical research by focusing on women, it continued to rely on conventional historical sources. Rossiter cited recent works by women historians and historians of science and quoted extensively from late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sources

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by women, but she ignored the social science and socialist/labour history literature on women and work. In contrast, my own conference paper, “American Ornithology at Present: A New Model for the Functioning of a Scientific Discipline,” offered a new way of looking at science but lacked a gender dimension. As a middle-aged, insecure graduate student embarking on a second area of research (in addition to the history of ornithology), I followed Rossiter’s example. This single- rather than multi- or inter-disciplinary approach by an emerging scholar already departing from the norm in the history of science was later criticized by referees of my early applications for research grants. It is easy for reviewers to see others’ research as a seamless whole, but it is the very nature of research that it has pitfalls, stumbling blocks, and dead-end lines of inquiry. When I began my work on women ornithologists in 1981, and later when I embarked on a pilot project on Canadian women naturalists in 1984, there was no definitive method to investigate the history and contemporary situation of women in science. But women scientists, educators, and policy makers, including the Science Council of Canada, wanted to increase women’s participation in science. This desire led to the First National Conference for Women in Science and Engineering held in Vancouver in May 1983. During the same period, an international group of feminist historians of science held a conference in Veszprém, Hungary, on women in science, technology, and medicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of my preliminary research on North American women ornithologists, and with the help of a travel grant from McGill, I gave my first paper on women scientists at this conference. Discovering Canadian Women Scientists

The positive reactions to the paper, together with my discussions with other historians there, were stimulating and encouraging. I was the only Canadian delegate, and, because no one seemed to be doing historical research on Canadian women scientists, I contemplated the subject as a possible research area for my postdoctoral year and beyond. At the conference I realized how scholars approached the topic from vastly different perspectives, and that the field was most advanced in the United States. After the conference I corresponded with, and received support from, a number of scholars whom I met there. From my undergraduate literature courses, I knew that writing is a political act: poets, novelists, and playwrights have used their writing to

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challenge political systems for many hundreds of years. However, I did not quite realize that my work on a history of women scientists would eventually lead to a new storytelling in the history of Canadian science, one that would question male-stream, mainstream histories. But to deviate from orthodox research/writing, one needs to ask different questions. In retrospect, I see how my insights, questions, and interpretations of data have changed over the years. New ways of looking at what was happening in Canadian science have led me, in turn, to a new set of questions. And writing, as Laurel Richardson maintains, is a “form of inquiry.”9 Moreover, life experience – my own as an “invisible” chemist and much more visible field ornithologist – provided me with partial-insider views. As a trained historian of science and emerging interdisciplinary feminist scholar, I brought insider/outsider views and perspectives to the subject matter. I know what it is to be, act, and think like a naturalist as well as how to do research, evaluate, analyse, and interpret the material like a historian of science. My approach to a history of women and science has metamorphosed over twenty years due both to the broadening of the field and to my use of a feminist interpretive lens. My own PhD research included some of the elements of scholarship on women, gender, and science, which, according to Sharon Traweek, has five subdivisions: “The first studies the usually forgotten women who have made important contributions to scientific and technological knowledge in the past. A second approach examines the processes for excluding women from scientific, medical and engineering practice. A third sub-field focuses on the effects of gender bias in scientific, medical and technological research.”10 The fourth studies social, cultural, and political issues in Western reproductive technologies, and the fifth considers gender assumptions even in those sciences that seem gender neutral: “The research goal here is to identify how the various sciences can be practiced in ways which are not based on sexist assumptions.” I began my research with an extended “recovery” phase, gathering evidence of women scientists’ existence and activities. This stage included both “compensatory” and “contributory” history.11 I studied the history of exceptional women scientists who were to provide role models for later aspiring women scientists. I found that their very existence helped point to the distortions of mainstream history. In the light of my childhood readings on notable women scientists, I always considered women’s contributions to the various scientific fields

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important. Coming from both historical and sociological perspectives on the history of Western science and its reward system, I looked for tangible recognitions of women’s scientific work. It took me a while to realize that, like women’s contributions in general, these were judged by standards established by men for men and internalized and accepted by women. New publications, and editorial comments on my work and conference sessions on women scientists, influenced me to aim for an inclusive or balanced history of Canadian science while continuing with the recovery stage. I realized, as did members of my feminist network in the history of science, that a balanced history makes women scientists more visible in appropriate historical contexts.12 More recently, I strove to work towards an integrated history of Canadian science. Such a history would not only include, but also integrate, marginal individuals and groups into the historical analysis. I now see that these stages continued to exist side by side, but sometimes I gave more emphasis to one type of history, and at other times to others. Because of the overwhelming amount of work to do, my research/ writing on the history of Canadian women and science has been slow, labour intensive, and expensive. Although I started my thesis research with a marginal group in a seemingly marginal field – women in natural history/ornithology – by 1984 I was expanding my research to other field-oriented sciences, such as botany, geology, and zoology. There had been well-known Canadian women in these sciences who published widely and received honours and recognition from their peers. Regardless of their contributions, many did not appear in the histories of their fields, or in textbooks and reference books on science. For me, working in this way, on a seemingly elitist (or topdown) history, was necessary for methodological reasons, not because I thought that only the exceptional women were worth writing about. The scarcity of women’s archival material contrasted with the availability of documentation on men. This was particularly frustrating because my concurrent work on a scientific biography of Canadian zoologist William Rowan13 clearly indicated the relative ease with which historians can track the life and work of many male scientists. In contrast, my readings in women’s history and discussions with other historians and archivists told me that, except for some women novelists, relatively little documentation existed on Canadian women. Canadian women had been socialized to be modest, so neither the majority of women scientists nor their relatives, friends, and colleagues sought to preserve their papers.

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Furthermore, archival policy in Canada varied from one institution to another, and most were underfunded and administered by men who, trained in conventional history, preserved documents relating to men rather than to women. The second wave of feminism, while prompting women scientists to aspire for challenging, well-paid, interesting positions in science, did not immediately make them realize the importance of saving their papers for future research. The AOU Centennial Project

Although I wrote about women ornithologists in my PhD thesis, I did not focus on women in my more general research until the Centennial History project (for 1983) of the American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU). Canadian historians were not studying women and science, but an increasing number of American scholars, including Margaret Rossiter14 and Ann Hibner Koblitz,15 offered models of statistical and biographical approaches to research on women and science. My first attempt to write about women scientists was actually prompted by an elderly male ornithologist. In the late 1970s, the AOU established a committee to work on a history of the AOU for its centennial, and Keir B. Sterling became the centennial historian. As his other commitments kept him too busy to deal alone with a complex history, he approached me in the autumn of 1981, after having read my first major publication, “The Contributions of the Amateur to North American Ornithology: A Historical Perspective.”16 Flattered by the request that I, a mere graduate student, contribute to this volume, I agreed, subject to further discussions. I was to write one chapter on the amateurs and the AOU, but soon another was added on the involvement of Canadians. Finally committee member Charles Blake suggested that “Mrs Ainley” might like to prepare a chapter on women and the AOU. I was happy to oblige because I would get my expenses paid plus a small stipend. Moreover, the research would enable me to meet ornithologists and have access to hard-to-find archival documentation, which would be useful for my doctoral research. I felt prepared for this task. I had already done an MS c thesis on the professionalization of North American ornithology, was researching the history of Canadian ornithology, and for Nature Canada had reviewed the autobiography of Margaret Morse Nice and was preparing a review of To Whom the Wilderness Speaks, by the Canadian ornithologist and nature writer Louise de Kiriline Lawrence.

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My graduate research and the books I reviewed raised my awareness of research by “marginal” US scientists. I soon learned that their biographies did not provide me with an appropriate research blueprint. So I searched the scientific and historical literature, collected archival information, and conducted interviews with women scientists who were at the time in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.7 The overwhelming amount of work made it difficult for me to follow a single plan or method. Changing tracks, improvising, and rising to the occasion (although I was often illprepared to do so) became very much part of my research process. Playing “by the Rules”?

This means not that I lost sight of the whole, but simply that my historical research was complex and (in the period before the Internet) labour intensive. Because of the availability of documentation, I followed some leads, but had to abandon others for lack of material, time, or money. I continually asked myself how my findings fit into the whole of my research project. How do things connect? How does an individual’s experience fit (or not) into the complex web of institutional, disciplinary, class, gender, and (as my awareness of the issues changed) race relations? Largely unaware of feminist scholarship, I began my research by wanting to have my own say on the subject “independently and not by way of summing up what others have to say.”17 I was reluctant to simply repeat what other better-known researchers had to say on women and science. Many of them were concerned more about contemporary women’s status in science and the implications of reproductive technologies than with historical studies, and none had investigated the Canadian situation. In my stubbornness, or perhaps naïveté, I did not see why I had to constantly reference other researchers. This attitude was not appreciated by some members of the scholarly community. The reaction of readers to a paper that I had submitted to Hypatia, as well as to my grant applications to Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), eventually made me realize that playing by the rules of academe is vital, even if we set out to challenge and change those rules. It certainly made me feel that what I had to say, in my own voice, based on empirical research in a new, unexplored field, was not considered valid. It seemed that unless I quoted what other researchers said, even if they had no knowledge of the field of my investigation and knew nothing about the history of Canadian women and science, I could not add my own voice.

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Discovering Qualitative Research and “Recovery”

So, in order to reinvent myself as a historian of Canadian women and science, I needed to play by the rules, or at least judiciously observe some of them. In time, I became more interdisciplinary. I learned over the years that qualitative “research is an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and sometimes counterdisciplinary field. It crosses into the humanities, the social sciences and the physical sciences … [It] is many things at the same time.”18 I support the viewpoint of Karen Offen and her colleagues: “Indeed, the very process of recovery can yield important theoretical insights.”19 When I began working on women scientists in 1981, I had little awareness of lingering stereotypes of women and science and how these continued to influence women’s experiences in science. Works by Margaret Rossiter20 and Carolyn Merchant21 helped me understand what stereotypes mean and how language and metaphors shape our thinking about science and gender. Challenging Stereotypes

By the late 1980s, I realized that my historical research could help to eliminate some of these stereotypes.22 Stereotypes are oversimplified beliefs, and, according to the stereotypical view, Western science is “tough, rigorous, rational, impersonal, masculine, competitive, and unemotional,” and objective.23 In contrast, women are “soft, delicate, emotional, noncompetitive.”24 Like other feminist scholars, I found ways to challenge these stereotypes. Historical research is one of them, including detailed studies of peoples, disciplines, and institutions, as well as different perspectives on the origins, processes, and institutions of Western science. Questioning, finding new evidence, and creating theories are part of research. Feminist historians have documented the reality that asking different questions challenges generalizations and theories, both historical and feminist. As I learned to ask different questions, my work began to challenge andro- and Euro-centric histories of Canadian science, including the prevailing stereotypes of both women and science. Women and men have had different experiences throughout human history. Those of us working during the past three decades on histories of women and science learned that neither women’s experiences nor gender relations in science have been uniform and that the issues relating to their study are multi-layered.25 Indeed, women’s experiences and

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gender relations in science varied according to historical periods, geographical regions, institutional landscapes, disciplines, and being in and outside the professional structure of science. They were contingent on particular contexts, such as institutional practices, funding, and the existence of mentors.

Postdoctoral Work (1984–1988): Canadian Women and Science Reconstructing This Phase

During the summer of 2001, I began to reconstruct the history of my research on Canadian women and their scientific work. I reread my own research-grant applications, the comments of assessors, my responses to both favourable and unfavourable evaluations from 1984 to 1988, and some of my correspondence with scientists. All these serve as substitute “field texts” for this book, in lieu of the research journals that I now wish I had kept. These field texts reflect my thinking at particular times and my changing approaches, theories, and methods, as well as some of my reactions and feelings. I wish to include and integrate these into my writing for several reasons. First, conventional academic writing does not often allow for the writer’s voice and for the reader to learn about the process of research. Second, I learned that even the best memory can be unreliable. In what follows, I try to recapture my own historical voice, while weaving the voices of others (assessors, colleagues, administrators) into the fabric of my narrative. Competing Projects

Beginning in 1983, I continued research for my doctoral dissertation on the transformation of Canadian ornithology from natural history to avian biology. Then during the summer of 1984, as I was writing my dissertation, I began to think of future research programs, and I explored the possibility of two projects. The women scientists whom I met through my various projects encouraged me to apply for grants, as did other scientists and historians who found merit in my alternative project, a scientific biography of William Rowan. My preliminary literature search confirmed that no historian of science worked on Canadian women scientists, but that during Interna-

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tional Women’s Year, in 1975, there had been a travelling exhibition on Canadian women natural scientists, organized by Lorraine Smith for the National Museums of Canada. In 1984, a special issue of Canadian Woman Studies on women and science indicated the growing interest in the subject among women scientists. In contrast, the centennial celebrations of women at McGill University ignored women scientists. I became convinced that I should be undertaking a research program on a history of Canadian women and science. Applying for Research Grants

In order to pursue postdoctoral research, I needed research grants. While I knew little about the vagaries (complexities) of the relevant granting agencies, I prepared five applications. Three of them were on Canadian women and science. I submitted one for a pilot project to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) and two for postdoctoral fellowships to FCAC (Quebec) and SSHRC. I followed the example of Rossiter, who focused on strategies in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940.26 Accordingly, I proposed to investigate the life and contributions (and also the strategies) of outstanding women scientists in the fieldoriented rather than the laboratory-based sciences, including botany, geology, and zoology. Then, not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket, I submitted a general application for a research grant to SSHRC and applied for a Killam postdoctoral fellowship to the University of Alberta, both to write a scientific biography of William Rowan. In April 1985, the day after I defended my PhD dissertation at McGill, I received a letter from SSHRC advising me that I had been awarded a one-year research grant for the Rowan biography. It is hard to describe my excitement. As I began immediately to make plans for my research, I did not mind it when both FCAC and the Killam Fellowship Committee rejected my postdoctoral applications. I arranged a six-week research trip to western Canada for the Rowan biography project. Then, at the end of May 1985, I received a notice from SSHRC that I would be getting the postdoctoral fellowship. While this put me in an enviable situation, it also caused numerous headaches. In fact, receiving the fellowship so soon after the research grant considerably complicated my life. Because no one was allowed to hold two concurrent grants/ fellowships, I arranged with SSHRC to delay the start of my fellowship

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until October, at which time I would return the unused portion of my research grant to SSHRC. (I naïvely declined to have this returned portion put aside for me, a decision that I was to regret.) While I had no immediate prospects for a permanent academic position, I became aware of the shifting priorities of the granting agencies. Understandably, I wanted to ensure that at least one of my main research interests within the history of Canadian science would be funded each year. Karen Messing brought to my attention SSHRC’s strategic grant programs, and, persuaded by her, I applied as an independent scholar for a two-year grant to the Women and Work Strategic Grants Program. This program was particularly attractive, because it provided a research opportunity in an area that had interested me since reading Rossiter’s article on women’s work in science in 1980. I was also heartened by a statement in the program’s description: “The Council hopes that not only social scientists but also humanists, using an approach to the subject through critical studies of history, literature, philosophy or art will take advantage of the program.” This seemed tailored to my research interests. I based my application to SSHRC for a strategic grant on the state of the field in the United States and Canada and my own pilot project results. Again showing my naïveté, I thought that, because of the relatively few visible women scientists on whose life documentation was available, I would be able to do one year of full-time research, write up my results during the second, and then apply for further grants. I had hoped to convince the program committee that my study was important because it would “contribute to women’s history, Canadian history, histories of modern botany, geology, palaeontology, and zoology, and to Canadian educational history.” As I had already learned that women scientists have had varied experiences in different institutional settings, I hoped that my project would make an “important contribution to [about] the institutionalization of science in Canada during the first half of the twentieth century.” In the section in my proposal on research plans and methods, I discussed my previous interests, grants, and work on women scientists as well as my plans to visit several archives. I identified pioneer women scientists I hoped to interview. Throughout the proposal I stressed that this work was timely. I also made it clear that the study on women natural scientists was the first phase of a larger study. I learned about the success of this application two months after starting my postdoctoral fellowship.

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Adjunct Fellow (1986–1988): Simone de Beauvoir Institute

When I joined the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Montreal’s Concordia University as an adjunct fellow (independent scholar) in 1986, I immersed myself in feminist studies, different approaches to teaching and research, and new theories and methods. Feminist perspectives were to influence my research projects, including the scientific biography of William Rowan. During 1986, I did archival work in Halifax at Dalhousie University; in Montreal at McGill University; in Ottawa at the National Archives of Canada; in Toronto at the Archives of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the University of Toronto; in Sackville at Mount Allison University; in St Andrews at the Atlantic Biological Station; and in Wolfville at Acadia University. I also interviewed numerous scientists. My extensive background reading and numerous discussions with historian Andrée Lévesque, sociologists Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Isabelle Lasvergnas, and Peta Tancred, and women scientists, including Lesley Lee, Karen Messing, and Mary Pitman Baldwin, convinced me to enlarge my project to include women in both the exact and social sciences and extend the time frame from 1900–1950 to 1890–1960. In 1986 and 1987, I published papers in Cahiers de recherche sociologique (1986),27 Resources for Feminist Research (1986),28 and Bulletin d’association mathématique du Québec (1987).29 I also wrote a chapter, “Field Work and Family: North American Women Ornithologists, 1900–1950,” for Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1989.30 In addition, I was doing research for the Rowan biography and writing papers on both Rowan31 and the history of Canadian ornithology.32 Working simultaneously on the two seemingly different projects was extremely useful, though sometimes overwhelming. It was useful because the vast amount of archival material on Rowan, combined with my numerous interviews with his family, friends, and students, provided me with a valuable context for studying the lives of academic and government scientists from about the First World War to the end of the 1950s. From the Rowan research, I learned also about general and gender-specific problems and challenges facing Canadian scientists. I found correspondence regarding funding, rejection of applications, lack of academic advancement, and the despotism of university presidents. I read about difficulties in conducting innovative research, teaching large classes, and lack of teaching material. I realized that the shortage of research equipment and teaching materials affected most scientists, not just women. This under-

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standing led me to a more balanced evaluation of women’s experiences in science. By the later 1980s, the literature relevant to research on women scientists had increased considerably. The writers in this increasingly interdisciplinary field were women scientists (for example, Ann FaustoSterling, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Ruth Hubbard), philosophers (Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Elizabeth Potter, and Nancy Tuana), historians of science (Peggy Kidwell, Sally G. Kohlstedt, Carolyn Merchant, Margaret Rossiter, and Londa Schiebinger) and sociologists (Hilary Rose, Dorothy Smith, and Harriet Zuckerman). From them, I learned about new approaches in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science that were relevant to my study of women scientists. This included revealing biases in existing histories of science and providing alternative interpretations to the development of scientific professions. I also noted in my application that Richard Jarrell, editor of Scientia Canadensis (the only Canadian history of science journal), stressed the need, in 1985, to call historians’ attention to women as a “hitherto overlooked dimension of our scientific and technological past.”33 Although a few scholars were working on aspects of women’s work and education, as well as on women and technology and medicine, I remained the only trained Canadian historian of science doing research on women and scientific work. In my application to SSHRC for another strategic grant, in the spring of 1987, I proposed to continue my previous research by exploring both married and single women’s professional opportunities in a variety of scientific disciplines, studying their socio-economic background, tracking the life of dropouts – trained women scientists who, for a variety of reasons, left their paid positions – and analysing regional differences in access to scientific work. Because I had worked in different capacities in science, I also planned to investigate the availability of various levels of scientific activity for women, such as the posts of technician, research assistant, teacher, and/or research scientist. Finally, I hoped to highlight women’s contributions to, and importance in, the development of Canadian science. In contrast to my earlier grant applications, this proposal concentrated more on “women’s work” in science: that is, the undervalued, often repetitious, work women had so often performed in museums and laboratories. I referred to Rossiter’s hypothesis that “the status of women has not been uniform in all branches of science, but varied according to the extent of professionalisation of individual disciplines.”34 My progress re-

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port detailed my activities since October 1985. I asked for two years of support, including a research-time stipend. Unfortunately, while the application was recommended for support, it did not obtain “a ranking sufficient to receive funds with the limited budget available.”35 I was invited, however, to resubmit for the next round of competition. On perusing the comments of the five assessors, I realized that their evaluations and comments varied considerably both in length and in content and that once again they brought their own biases (now I would refer to it as “conceptual baggage”) with them to the evaluation process. Assessor B wrote the longest and most carefully developed evaluation. I was particularly interested in the following statements about theory in historical research, which capture some of the tensions inherent in feminist research and theorizing. After looking over the criticisms of her previous application, I’d like to add a rebuttal. There is a lot of ‘feminist theory’ nowadays, which is interesting to read and think about, but it often lacks basic facts, esp[ecially] about obscure and specialized people like women scientists of western or eastern Canada. To get the essential story straight, sooner or later someone has to do the hard spadework of visiting archives – where they exist, or digging in libraries where they don’t – or interviewing old persons and generally accumulating a data base from which the basic story and any future contributions to theory will arise. Canadian scientists are lucky that there is someone as energetic as Ainley willing to do this exhausting work. Some people may sit home and spin armchair feminist theory, but it would be good for it to be based on some facts, esp[ecially] if one suspects that the experiences of women scientists in Canada may differ from that of women elsewhere or men in Canada. The fact-collecting should not be mindless – no one suspects Ainley of that, I hope – but oftentimes out in the field one finds totally unexpected material that makes the trip fully worthwhile and turns the eventual publication in new directions. Some people seem to think one needs a theory first and then collect facts to either confirm it or discredit it; but in this underdeveloped area one should start by collecting facts and let the eventual theory come out in the final manuscript. And to get the facts one needs a grant.36

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These comments echoed my own approach to research, Rossiter’s in her Foreword to Women Scientists in America (Vol. I), and Abir-Am and Outram’s in their Introduction to Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives. The latter was published in 1987, just after I submitted my strategic grant application. Disregarding the positive comments, SSHRC’s selection committee recommended funding for one year only and because of “the limited budget available” placed my application “on a supplementary list.” In other words, I did not receive the research support I had applied for.37 The rejection seemed unfair because my work had been so positively received and appreciated by historians of science at the biennial Kingston Conference on the history of Canadian science, and I continued to receive positive comments on my publications. The immediate loss of research support was a blow to my self-esteem and, more important, jeopardized my proposed research. Without a grant, as assessor B pointed out, my time-consuming and labour-intensive work on Canadian women and science could not be accomplished. This was the beginning of a lean year. A small CRIAW grant that I applied for was also rejected. So I immediately rewrote my application and submitted it to SSHRC’s Standard Research Grants Committee, hoping for a more favourable result from a committee composed of historians and historians of science rather than social scientists unfamiliar with historical research. This time I asked for three years of support (including research-time stipends). Teaching Feminist History of Women and Science

While hoping for a positive outcome, I began preparing the first course on women and science in the women’s studies program at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. Teaching “Women, Science, and Technology: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” enabled me to develop an interdisciplinary approach and to use a feminist perspective on the subjects of women and science in general and the experiences of Canadian women in particular. In order to situate the course material in a broader context, I read the international feminist literature on women and science and discussed it with a few of my colleagues. This not only provided me with new perspectives for the course, but was to influence my future teaching and research. The historical literature on Canadian women in science then consisted mainly of conference papers by historians of medicine and

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technology, so I had to use my own archival and interview material. To balance historical examples with contemporary ones, I organized a panel discussion with women scientists from a number of institutional and disciplinary backgrounds, some of whom were well advanced in their profession, while others were not. Focus on All of Canada

Soon after the end of the academic term, a letter from SSHRC informed me that “the Council was unable to offer you the support you have requested.”38 There were only two assessors for the history committee, as opposed to the five for the interdisciplinary committee. The minutes stated: “While the [Selection] Committee was unable to recommend a grant for this project, it nevertheless urges the applicant to revise and resubmit the proposal at a later date. The Committee also wishes to draw the candidate’s attention to the remarks and suggestions of Assessor B.” While Assessor A had some reservations, especially about the theoretical framework (again – despite the lack of theoretical blueprints for the work I was doing!), s/he recommended three-year funding for this highpriority project.39 Assessor A wrote, “The methodology to be employed is that used widely in social history. The theoretical underpinnings of the project are not well set out … Nevertheless the applicant had developed an interesting hypothesis for testing. It is that women scientists, who remained outside the hierarchical male structure of professional science in Canada, defined their scientific professionalism to their satisfaction; whereas those women who competed with men for paid positions inside this structure were entirely marginalized, except for the exceptional few.” S/he added: “It is absolutely crucial that the data concerning women in science be collected and analyzed in depth; the findings will have major import for the development of science policy in Canada … [and] will help fill an enormous gap in the total history of women and science in Canada … It is very important that the applicant be encouraged to use … [the time] to obtain information, data and oral histories of women in Canadian science. This body of knowledge will serve as a building step for others.” In view of this, I found it particularly galling that assessor B suggested rejection.40 Although s/he rated as excellent both the importance and the social relevance of the project, s/he did not like the research plan. A careful reading of the comments explained why. “The project cannot be done because the proposed seventy year period (1890–1960) was too long, therefore it would be impossible to study women scientists in eight different disciplines. Moreover, [according to Assessor B] it was impossible

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for one researcher to study women scientists’ education, the appropriate labour market, and women’s strategies of resistance” (my translation from the original French). So assessor B suggested that I limit the time frame and geographical area of study, include francophone as well as anglophone institutions in Quebec, and develop in more detail my hypothesis as regards women’s science education and work opportunities. The comments reflected Quebec funding priorities, which privileged team over individual research projects. I was understandably upset both by assessor B’s comments and SSHRC’s decision not to fund my project despite assessor A’s very favourable evaluation. I was frustrated by the loss of research funds and time, particularly as I planned to interview elderly scientists as soon as possible. Indeed, by the time I received a grant, one of my planned interviewees had died: Allie Vibert Douglas, former dean of women and professor of astronomy at Queen’s University. So I fired off a letter to Marion P. King, director of SSHRC’s Research Grants Division, to “put on record a protest concerning the very biased and highly uninformed evaluation submitted by Assessor B.” My proposal was criticised because I proposed to study 8 disciplines over a 70 year period across all the provinces of Canada. But, in the first stage of the project I have already studied women botanists, geologists, geographers, marine biologists, fresh water biologists, mammalogists, ornithologists and entomologists (that is women in 8 disciplines) from 1890–1960, across Canada, so neither the time period nor the number of disciplines to be investigated can be considered excessive. Based on my own previous experience, and the groundwork done during the first stage of the project, the proposed investigation of Canadian women in the exact and social sciences is entirely feasible, with a lot of hard work, in a three-year period. I would also like to point out, that the American historian of science, Margaret W. Rossiter, whose Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 was published in 1982 … had investigated the entire United States, from 1820–1940, that is during 120 years. She studied nearly 700 women scientists in 33 disciplines.”41 I emphasized that the areas I proposed to study can be studied simultaneously and added, “Indeed, I cannot envisage studying these piecemeal.” I argued that there was “no reason to restrict the geographic area

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under investigation. I am doing historical research on Canadian science, not a sociological one on Quebec or any other province … For me Quebec is part of Canada, and Quebec women have been part of my investigation on women in the natural sciences … I had no intention, whatever, of excluding francophone Quebecers from my investigations.” Criticisms regarding lack of theory had long irritated me. So I added that “until one has collected sufficient data, it is not safe to construct speculative theories … until I have the time and funding to collect … [more] data … it is presumptuous and futile to try to create theories on women’s science education and le marché du travail.” I concluded: “I have already a slightly different proposal on file for the ‘Women and Work’ competition. As before, it includes a 70-year period, 8 disciplines, and the whole of Canada (both Anglophone and Francophone women scientists).” King’s response assured me that my “letter had been placed on file and will form part of the documentation sent to assessors and committee members should you wish to submit a new application in a future competition.”42 Focus on Feminism

My “slightly different proposal on file for the ‘Women and Work’ program” (see my letter to King) was an updated and improved version of my 1987 application for a strategic grant. This time, I included a table of contents for my proposed book and requested part-time research assistance for three years. I stressed, once again, the scarcity of secondary sources and the need to consult primary material and do interviews. I based my arguments on my preliminary research on women in the physical sciences, in which I found that “low-paying women’s work also existed in the exact sciences in Canada.”43 I cited my original hypothesis, a result of my earlier work on women ornithologists, that during the 1900–1950 period independent researchers had more access to scientific work, publication, and recognition by the scientific community than those women who competed with men for paid positions. In the new proposal, I used the term “feminist” for the first time and discussed in more detail my theoretical framework. This was a direct result of my increasing involvement with feminist scholars at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, my exposure to feminist research projects, and my teaching a course on women and science. Rereading these applications after more than a dozen years, I see a significant change in the language of my proposals. This reflects my own

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evolution as a feminist scholar and grant applicant. “Feminism,” while implicit, did not appear in my grant applications of 1984–87, and the theoretical framework was not explicit, partly because of my own lingering blind spot as to what was required and valued in grant proposals. While all along I used the externalist approach in the history of science, in which I had been trained at the Université de Montréal 1977–80, in retrospect it is evident that my doctoral work of 1984–88 was also an increasingly feminist history of science. The Importance of Institutional Environment

My own experience as well as that of my research subjects proved that institutional environments can foster or hinder one’s research. The History Department at McGill University, my academic home during the postdoctoral fellowship 1984–86, was an unfriendly environment for me – only Pierre Boule, Andrée Lévesque, and John Herd Thompson ever had any discussions with me. In many academic units, the departmental secretary is a crucial figure, and I found ours rude, dismissive, and uncooperative towards me. She did not want me to have a key to the coffee room and, in departmental meetings, even questioned the legitimacy of the letters I mailed out of the department’s office (one of the few privileges I obtained there, seeing that I had neither a desk nor access to a telephone “because of lack of space”). These letters of inquiry were sent to the home addresses of retired women scientists, but she apparently thought that I was using McGill funds for my private correspondence.44 In contrast, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, where I became an adjunct fellow in 1986, was a welcoming place for me. Principal Arpi Hamalian provided me with office space, telephone, supplies, and library privileges and suggested that (to smooth my research path) I order Concordia University business cards, which stated my affiliation as an adjunct fellow of the institute. Expanding Horizons 1986–1988

The encouraging research environment at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, together with the travel funds advanced by SSHRC, enabled me to enlarge the scope of investigations that I had begun in late 1985 as background research in Canadian educational history, women’s history, and the history of Canadian science. During the summer of 1986, I visited archives in Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritimes to acquire photo-

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graphs and biographical information and identify private collections. As I was unaware that many scientists who were born, or had worked, in the Maritimes later retired there, my interviews with them were accidental by-products of archival research. From my simultaneous project on the biography of William Rowan, I had already found that people of different genders, ages, and training were important for my research because they provided much-needed insights on a range of issues and events. With this background, I tried to interview everyone who could shed light on the lives and experiences of Canadian women scientists. I conducted some of the interviews by phone, and others in person, either by previous arrangement or as the opportunity arose at conferences. During this period, I also had numerous discussions with historians and sociologists about the situation of women academics and corresponded with American, British, and Canadian scholars working on similar issues. The discussions and correspondence gave me intellectual and emotional support, challenged my ideas, and provided new perspectives. In 1987, the second year of my strategic grant, I continued archival and field work on Canadian women natural scientists and “refined the theoretical framework of my research.” My interviews with women scientists and their colleagues and family members strengthened my belief that I must spend as much time as possible identifying and talking to women scientists. This was becoming increasingly important because many of the first generation of women scientists, specifically those who had obtained university education before 1920, were elderly, infirm, or dead. I should add here that the periodization of the “generations” is my own. Because formal higher education for women scientists began in the 1880s, I originally created loose divisions or “generations”: 1890–1920, 1920–45, and 1945–70. At about this time, I also learned that several Canadian universities have had projects to record oral history of women. These took place under the auspices of the status-of-women office or the dean of women’s office or as part of an early course in women’s studies. Unfortunately these interviews often did not cover areas that interested me, as inevitably the interviewers’ perspectives differed from my own. During these intensive months of research in 1987, I wrote articles and a book chapter on women scientists and continued my work on what increasingly became a feminist scientific biography of a male scientist. The biography of William Rowan was an exciting, complementary project and provided useful insights into the life of Canadian academics during the 1916–57 time-frame. The overwhelming amount of archival material

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highlighted, by contrast, the scarcity of holdings on women scientists, an issue I felt needed publicizing.45 It allowed me to identify widespread issues in Canadian science in academic and government institutions and isolate those that were gender specific. Rowan’s circle of friends included women and men, artists and scientists in Canada, the United States, and Britain, as well as ordinary Canadians, such as farmers, ranchers, and (mostly) indigenous trappers and hunters. He was a scientist who worked both in the field and in the laboratory. At a time when indigenous knowledge of the environment was often trivialized by Western science, he actively solicited and paid attention to information on environmental issues from his native acquaintances. In addition, his widespread and complex correspondence included many letters from women whose own correspondence has long since disappeared, as neither they nor their families or colleagues thought it worth preserving. Rowan’s association with people of different backgrounds illuminated gender and other power relations in science. After all the work I had done on these two major projects, I felt frustrated by a lack of future direction. How was I to continue my research program on women scientists? I had already invested considerable time, effort, and grant money in this topic. My work on papers and book chapters involved ongoing analysis of the data, but further research, particularly outside the Montreal region, was hindered by lack of funding. During the spring and summer of 1988, while waiting for the results of my resubmitted strategic-grant application to Women and Work, I had to look for alternative sources of funding. The Quebec government’s priorities included information kits on professional women for high school teachers, counsellors, and students. I obtained a contract to provide historical information on women scientists. I also received my first commission to write a paid article about women scientists for Bridges46 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of nuclear fission by Lise Meitner. This enabled me to deal with issues of stereotypes of women and science. These small projects helped me financially but did not allow me to pursue full-time research. So I applied to the History of Science Society’s Independent Scholars Committee for an emergency grant worth US $2,000. This request was rejected because of lack of funds. The kind letter encouraged me to reapply for the next round of competitions. I broke down and cried. This response was the turning point in a very lean year. Another relatively small project soon provided research funds, though no income. In the spring of 1988, Concordia University archivist Nancy Marrelli

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told me that the university had grants for oral history projects relating to Montreal. As an adjunct fellow (independent scholar) I could not apply for such a grant, but Elizabeth Henrik, a member of the Psychology Department and a fellow of our institute, was eligible and willing to apply on my behalf. After some discussion, we submitted an application for an oral history project of Montreal women scientists, 1920–60. Because of the scarcity of primary material, our aim was to interview twenty-five visible scientists who “constitute an elite among women involved in scientific work in Montreal.” While interviewing an elite may seem strange for feminist scholars, it resulted in contacts with less-visible women in science. From my previous research, I knew that several of these women had left the Montreal region, and the funds enabled me to interview them in Toronto and the Maritimes.

Picking Up the Pieces (1988–1992) My confidence was returning during 1988, as my multifaceted research continued, albeit on a smaller scale. I received an invitation to give a talk under the auspices of the Forum for Independent Research in Science and Technology Studies (FIRSTS) sponsored by the History of Science Society and relevant institutions in the Cambridge/Boston area. This invitation, courtesy of Pnina Abir-Am, a former fellow graduate student at the Université de Montréal and an affiliate with the Department of History of Science at Harvard University, was most welcome. In the meantime, frustrated by the lack of sufficient teaching material on Canadian women scientists, I decided to edit a book on the subject. I still regret that I did not keep a journal during this period. I clearly recall, however, a Saturday afternoon in Montreal, in June 1988, when, feeling discouraged by my situation, I discussed an American essay collection on women and science with my friend Mary Pitman Baldwin. She suggested that since I was so critical about this collection, and since there was nothing available on Canadian women, perhaps it was time I prepared something. We then talked about the process of producing such a volume, soliciting conference papers, reprinting articles from obscure journals, and commissioning a few chapters. I was interested in writing the introduction and a chapter on women naturalists and in creating an up-to-date bibliography, in addition to the editorial work. Baldwin, in her role as my unofficial adviser, reminded me that Concordia archivist Nancy Marrelli

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was one half of the publishing team at Véhicule Press and suggested that I contact her. I followed her advice. My meeting with the Véhicule publishing team (Nancy Marrelli and Simon Dardick) was very positive, so I submitted a preliminary book proposal to them. They encouraged me to approach potential authors and then have further discussions with their house. My prospects were becoming more promising. After my return from the oral history trip to the Maritimes, I submitted a grant proposal to the History of Science Society for an emergency grant, conducted interviews, approached prospective book contributors, and continued my writing projects. Then, in quick succession, I received good news from two sources. SSHRC’s Women and Work accepted my proposal for a history of Canadian “Women and Scientific Work II: The Exact and Social Sciences.” The History of Science Society offered me emergency funds to interview women in the physical and social sciences. According to SSHRC policy, one could not “hold other grants for the same project, or even parts of the same project.” I had to decline the society’s grant with thanks. I was able to continue with interviews for the Concordia oral history project because there, technically, I was not the grant holder. The SSHRC grant covered research time for three years and research assistants, in addition to supplies, computer equipment, and travel. I was delighted with the grant and the uniformly positive evaluations. With three years of research funding, I could immerse myself in the material, but not full time yet. In addition to my manifold activities that I listed above, I became advisory editor for Scientia Canadensis, organized a history of biology session for the sixth Kingston Conference on the History of Canadian Science in 1989, and wrote book reviews for publications such as the American Scientist, the Canadian Journal of Sociology, Isis, the Journal of Higher Education, and Technology and Culture. The reviews enabled me to read books just off the press and thus keep up to date on aspects of the history of science, including women and science. I felt a more-than-usual sense of urgency to complete some of these projects, because in April 1989 I was to begin the second stage of my research on women and scientific work in Canada. With funds for travel, I planned to visit university archives in western Canada. Editing was complete on all but one of the chapters for the Véhicule book Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science,47 and I had completed my own chapter, together with the preface, the

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introduction, and an up-to-date bibliography. In June 1989, I presented an early version of my research at the annual conference of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association during the Learned Societies meeting in Quebec City. With all this behind me, I embarked on another long car trip with my husband, David, as my unpaid driver, companion, occasional assistant, and permanent sounding board for my ideas. I undertook research at archives that I had visited during the Rowan project in 1985 and made exploratory trips to other archives. Having made my initial contact with archivists for the earlier project, I was assured of their help. Indeed, without the enthusiasm, cooperation, and knowledge of archivists, my research would have been much more difficult. My ongoing concern about the availability of documentation for women scientists was based on my preliminary research in 1984–85, and, while this concern remained, I learned how to obtain information from a range of sources. For instance, while there was a dearth of archival material on individual women scientists, I searched for women’s letters to both their male colleagues and university administrations. In addition, I also checked university brochures and calendars, individual science department and university presidents’ files, and board of governors’ minutes. While occasionally I found a rich deposit of material, in most cases documentation was sporadic. I soon learned that Canadian university archives did not have uniform acquisition policies, so it was difficult to compare information from various archives. Nevertheless, the visits enabled me to learn something about women’s science education and much more about their varying involvement in the scientific workforce. Visiting universities also allowed me to meet, interview, and chat informally with and about numerous scientists. This trip forced me to revise my opinion about the scope of the project. It had become, indeed, what assessor A referred to as an exhaustive and exhausting project. Until I worked on this topic for a few years, no one knew the extent of women’s involvement in Canadian science from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s, so my original research plans proved undeniably ambitious. As I found, women have studied and worked in science at English-Canadian universities, but most of their activities had remained undocumented, therefore invisible, because the emerging history of Canadian science concentrated on the male scientific heroes. At each stage of the research process, I asked new questions, and these pointed the way to further research. In the autumn of 1989, I revisited

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Queen’s University Archives, where archivist Paul Banfield and his team provided wonderful help. The visit coincided with the sixth Kingston Conference on the History of Canadian Science and the session on history of biology I had organized. Back in Montreal, I read page proofs, indexed Despite the Odds, and prepared for my by now radically different course on women and science. One day I received an invitation from the chair of women’s studies at Carleton University to teach an advanced undergraduate seminar on women in science during autumn 1990. At about the same time, I learned that SSHRC was eliminating research-time stipends for independent scholars. The future, so rosy a few weeks earlier, suddenly seemed less promising. Persuaded by two friends, I started to rethink my professional options and look for a permanent academic position. I applied to York University for one in the history of science with special interest in women and gender, before I travelled to the Maritimes to do research at Dalhousie University, St Mary’s University, the University of Prince Edward Island, and the University of New Brunswick and present a paper on Canadian women chemists at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) at Dalhousie University in Halifax. I was particularly looking forward to the conference in July 1990: during my twenty years of work as an invisible chemist no one ever encouraged me to attend a chemistry conference. Moreover, my latest Women and Work strategic grant allowed me to do research on Canadian women chemists.48 I was looking forward to sharing the results of my research, meeting future interview subjects, and, I hoped, interviewing women scientists or their family members and friends. Chemists as Historians or Historians of Chemistry?

The presentations on the history of chemistry highlighted the obvious tension between chemists who thought that they were the best people to write about the history of their discipline and historians of science, who felt that their own professional training was necessary for writing about the subject. In a symposium on combining chemical education and research, a panel discussion about scientific research and teaching at small universities highlighted how the issues of race and gender influence access to funds and equipment. During the same symposium Janet Halliwell, from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of

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Canada (NSERC), talked about recent changes to doctoral/postdoctoral fellowships. Women and men who, for some reason, interrupted their graduate studies and/or research careers (for child and elder care, industrial work, and so on ) would receive special consideration in applying for funds to return to scientific research. The policy changes were the result in part of comments from women graduate students and scientists. They strengthened my belief that qualitative research on women scientists’ experiences is necessary to document gender differences in access, options, and experiences. For instance, some women graduate students who were mothers have had difficulties in completing their degrees within the time frames – mostly set up by men for men – of universities and funding agencies. Clearly, actionoriented qualitative research on women scientists would lead to further policy changes. My research changed gears somewhat during the autumn of 1990. As a visiting professor, I spent part of each week at Carleton University in Ottawa and also worked in the National Research Council (NRC) and university archives. I interviewed retired scientists as well as some who were still working. The results of this research were published in Scientia Canadensis in 1992.49 During this busy semester, I gave public lectures in Ottawa and was persuaded by Jill Vickers and others to apply for the position of joint chair of women’s studies at Ottawa and Carleton universities, one of such five endowed chairs in Canada. I was short-listed, and I was interviewed in February 1991, but I did not receive the position, whose focus was to be “women and science.” While waiting for the outcome of the search, I also applied for three positions at Concordia University: the principalships of the Science College and of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute and a tenure-track position in women’s studies. I soon learned that the Science College position went to the incumbent, but I was short-listed for the other two. Kaarina Kailo was hired as assistant professor of women’s studies, and I was offered a half-time administrative position as principal of the institute and director of women’s studies at the rank of associate professor. I was assured of a better income, but my full-time activities as a researcher came to an end. I asked SSHRC to extend the third year of my Women and Work strategic grant for an additional eighteen months to complete the research. At the end of 1992, I became a full-time untenured faculty member, and while I intended to continue my investigations of women in anthropol-

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ogy, astronomy, and chemistry, I could not complete the work within the original time period. Being used to doing full-time research/part-time teaching and practically no administrative duties, I now had to adjust to different priorities. My Christmas letter of 1991 serves me as an aide mémoire. “This is a half time post, the other half of my time is supposedly for research and writing. [But] Administration has taken over much of my free time.”50 In reality, the half-time position took far more than the official 17.5 hours a week and left me little time for my ongoing and interconnected projects.

Putting It Together As one learns in a life of scholarly research, projects can rarely be completed during the short period for which funding is available. Research projects, as parts of larger ongoing programs, have numerous interconnecting strands. My work on the history of Canadian science, beginning in the late 1970s, meant that whatever aspect I worked on had implications for other parts of my research. My work on amateurs in ornithology led to an interest in women scientists and other marginalized people, including indigenous women in Canada and Australia. The context of William Rowan’s life and work heightened my original interest in biography and provided a useful backdrop for further investigations of the twentieth-century Canadian scientific community. I was continually reminded from my archival and interview work that the Canadian scientific community had been, and still was, relatively small. Although many scientists dealt with similar issues, there were regional, institutional, and disciplinary differences. Scientists often knew each other through family, local-regional, disciplinary, institutional, and even religious connections. In 1991, the multiple strands of my ongoing research meant that, in addition to my administrative duties as principal, I worked on a chapter about Canadian scientific couples for a book on Creative Couples in the Sciences51 and conducted interviews with several scientists. I did additional archival research in Toronto, Kingston, and Ottawa on women in anthropology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, psychology, and sociology. I prepared other aspects of my research for conference presentation and publication. I organized the history of ornithology session for the 1991 meeting of the American Ornithologists Union in Montreal and presented a paper on “William Rowan and the Transformation of Canadian Ornithology.” I

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wrote a preface for Ornithology in Ontario as well as a short biography of ornithologist Margaret K. Mitchell.52 In my work on women chemists, I discovered that Clara Benson of the University of Toronto changed fields from physical to food chemistry. Later, Mary Pitman Baldwin and I recommended to Peter Tremaine, chair of the Canadian Council of University Chemistry Chairs of the CSC, a new award named after Benson. As a result, in 1992 the CSC set up the annual Clara Benson Award for an outstanding Canadian woman chemist. What Does It All Mean?

During this period, I was re-evaluating and organizing the large, indeed overwhelming, amount of data that I had already collected. This task enabled me to ask new questions, collect yet more data, and expand the time period of my research. I consulted the new literature in feminist and postcolonial science studies. All of these endeavours influenced my thinking, informed my teaching. and inevitably led to yet another set of questions. Based on my readings and my original research data, I asked myself: What can I say about who really were the contributors to seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century natural history studies in what is now Canada? What can we say about the roles and experiences of white women “colonizers” in Canadian science? To what extent and for what reasons did women’s entrance into higher education and paid scientific work change gender relations in science? What have I learned about the gender implications of different scientific fields (in teaching and research) in different historical periods? What were the career differences between women and men with the same educational background? From my archival and interview research, it also became clear that family life influenced women’s experiences in science. I wondered if we should generalize from individual experiences. Did women find ways to circumvent the system? What about women’s ethnic and class backgrounds? How did these, in addition to their gender, influence their studies and professional opportunities? Although I found that most of the early trained women scientists came from the dominant English-Canadian culture, I wanted to learn about the study/work opportunities available for First Nations, French, immigrant, and/or first-generation non-AngloCeltic Canadian women. The documentation that I acquired after several years of research enabled me to see historical trends as well as individual, disciplinary, and

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institutional differences. My graduate research provided me with information on mostly male scientists and an andro- and Eurocentric context. The women-and-science research program provided me with new information and new insights, challenged male-stream research on the history of Canadian science, and led me to still further research. Ultimately, this resulted in a new feminist storytelling in the history of Canadian science, which relied on the collection and evaluation of new qualitative information and new interpretations of the context. Telling a New Story

In retrospect, it is evident that women-centered qualitative rather than quantitative research has been central to, and essential for, my project. Although statistics can be useful in documenting the extent of a problem, when researching women’s history it is hard to create meaningful statistics, precisely because of the lack of adequate documentation. Concentrating on numbers obscures the important questions that need asking and answering about women and gender relations in science. These questions include why there were few women in science relative to men, why their numbers varied among institutional settings and historical periods, and, more important, why there were so few women in positions of power in the Western scientific community. Clearly, making women a focus of our historical storytelling about science leads to a different view of our scientific past and a more integrated history of Canadian science. Qualitative information on women scientists during different historical periods, at various institutions, and in different disciplines demonstrates that the phases in the history of Canadian science were not as clear-cut as previously believed and that not all the practitioners were of the dominant Western culture or of the dominant gender. This history is still only partially written, but this book includes a large part of the story. It deals with a number of scientific disciplines and academic institutions but cannot in one volume do more than create interest in the subject and lead to further investigations. For instance, my research on Canadian women scientists at universities resulted in such an overwhelming amount of data that it is impossible to include all of it in one single volume. Much of the research material will be deposited at the University of Victoria archives and be available to other researchers. By contrast, my attempts to do more detailed research on women scientists in industrial and hospital settings produced very few data. The

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main reasons were the human-resources policies of the industries and hospitals that I initially investigated. For example, Alcan and Imperial Tobacco did not keep personal information for more than seven years, while Montreal-area hospitals kept their data for only fifteen. During my investigations of many issues and topics, I came to see that my “issue-oriented” research could be enriched by more detailed biographical studies. Research on white English-Canadian women needs to be balanced by research on immigrant and second-generation central and eastern and southern European, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American women scientists. Sexism in science cannot be separated from racism and classism and from gender and other power relations in the Western scientific community. We, as researchers, need to acknowledge the changing faces of Canadian science, and this requires more inclusive and integrated histories. The multiple connections in my feminist research on women and science have branched out and moved in new, yet related, directions, such as biographical research and investigations of First Nations women and environmental knowledge, first in eastern North America, and more recently in the rest of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Research on these subjects came to influence my teaching, while perspectives gained from discussions with my students, friends, colleagues, and participants at international conferences continued to challenge my thinking and lead me to ask new questions and engage in both new analysis and in constant reinterpretation of the data. When I began thinking about a book on Canadian women and scientific work, I referred to it as “The Overlooked Dimension.” Now it is evident that there are many overlooked dimensions regarding women, gender, local knowledge, and Western science. Because of this, there can be no definitive work on the subject. The now-renamed book, Creating Complicated Lives: Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880–1980, includes many aspects of my interdisciplinary research; it examines obstacles to women and scientific work in academe; and, most important, it celebrates women scientists’ lives and work.

2 New Horizons: Women and Science in Academe, 1880–1920 A research account looks for the patterns, narrative, threads, tensions and themes either within or across individuals’ personal experience.1

Introduction 1984 was a year for celebrating the centenary of women both at McGill University and at the University of Toronto. I participated in events organized by the Women’s Centennial Committee of McGill University. I enjoyed listening to panellists and speakers such as politicians Monique Begin and Lynn MacDonald and to Margaret Gillett of McGill’s Faculty of Education. From Gillett’s book, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill, I had already learned that the physicist Harriet Brooks Pitcher earned an MA there in 1901 under the direction of Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize winner for chemistry in 1908) and was credited with the discovery of the recoil of the radioactive atom2 and that Carrie Derick, MA , was the first woman to hold an academic appointment at McGill.3 According to my own preliminary research, other well-known women scientists had also worked at McGill, but, to my surprise, the celebrations did not mention any of them. When I finally mustered the courage to ask one of the organizers why women scientists were not part of the program, I met a blank stare. As my research progressed, I hit a stumbling block during 1985–86, when I learned that Quebec had included universities in its new information act (Bill 65) – the only province to do so.4 The act prohibits access to nominative information – that is, personal data, salary information, letters of references, or rejections – all of them crucial for my research on women scientists.

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The fact that I, a novice researcher, was unaware of the bill in September 1984, when I applied for my postdoctoral fellowship, is understandable. Did anyone on the adjudicating committee of the Fellowship Division at the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) know about it? As they did not provide applicants with copies of the assessment, I simply do not know. It is very likely, however, that members of the committee were from other provinces and were unaware of this new impediment to historical research in Quebec. Not gaining access to crucial information certainly changed the way I approached my research. First, I had to request permission to consult archival documents relevant to the working lives of women scientists. At McGill, archivist Marcel Caya suggested that I write to him listing the files I needed to consult and enclose a copy of my original fellowship application and a proof of fellowship from the SSHRC. So I wrote, “In order to do a reliable and thorough study on the historical importance of Canadian women natural scientists, it is necessary that I study the life and career of the following persons: Carrie Derick, Muriel Roscoe, Kathleen Pinhey Terroux … [among others]. A study of the office files of these scientists will provide valuable information on the career of women scientists at McGill … I would wish to publish salary information on the above mentioned scientists if such information can be found in the files which I requested.”5 My letter was forwarded to Sheila Sheldon-Collier, then secretary of the McGill Senate. After several weeks, I was granted permission to consult the files containing nominative information on women scientists.6 Up to that point I could study only published material about and by McGill such as the university’s history7 and its calendars, brochures, alumni records, student yearbooks, and newspapers. Once I had access to the requested files, including the correspondence of McGill scientists and administrators, I copied and photocopied everything that was made available to me, including personal and departmental files and the board of governors’ minutes. Follow-up research at twenty Canadian university archives, 1986–89, produced a vast amount of information. Because my funded research dealt with women’s work in Canadian science, most of my investigations focused on Canadian women scientists who conducted scientific investigations either within or outside of the institutional framework of science. And although their science education formed only a small part of my research, I collected information on curriculum, courses, laboratory, and field work.8

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The following section focuses on academic women’s professional experiences at Canadian universities and only to a lesser extent on their education. Because most women science students 1890–1980 experienced much less hostility from their fellow students than did early medical students, it is through their professional experiences that I draw attention to gender and other power relations in science.9

New Horizons, 1880–1920 What was the larger context of the lives of women scientists at EnglishCanadian universities during the years from 1880 to 1920? Women’s opportunities for higher education and paid work stemmed from two late-nineteenth-century trends – access to higher education and changes in the organization and functioning of Western science. Improved economic conditions in the second half of the century resulted in access to higher education for more Canadians. After much heated debate among male educators,10 women were finally admitted to previously male institutions of higher learning in the 1880s. Although many of the female students were from farming families in the Maritime provinces, Quebec, and Ontario, most of those who were able to complete their studies came from middle- and upper-class English-Canadian (not French-Canadian, indigenous, or immigrant) families. Science was taught mostly in the arts faculties, and, because it was neither as lucrative nor as powerful as medicine, no particular attempts were made to prevent women from studying it. Moreover, ongoing changes in Western science, including the trends towards specialization, institutionalization, and professionalization, opened up new vistas for women who dreamed of doing interesting scientific work. Prior to that time, scientists were mostly self-trained men who studied and worked on a variety of subjects in museums, observatories, or the field. By the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists were conducting narrower, more specialized investigations of nature in laboratories attached to government institutions and universities.11 In many disciplines, laboratory research began to supplant field work, while in others, scientists combined field and laboratory research. Science became one of many areas that enabled women to step out of their conventional roles of wife, mother, homemaker, nurse, or school teacher. Working in science was simply one of several ways to remain single, become financially independent, and have an interesting life.12 Thus between 1890 and 1980, considerable numbers of women worked at Can-

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adian universities in a variety of roles. As scientific work became more complicated and more stratified, many of these women were “invisible scientists” – that is, unacknowledged technicians and assistants. In the second half of the nineteenth century, formal science education with advanced degrees became increasingly necessary in Canada for interesting and relatively well-paid jobs. In Canada, as elsewhere, scientists formed professional associations, attended conferences, and published articles in scientific journals. In the first volume of her Women Scientists in America,13 Margaret W. Rossiter maintained that the professionalization of science in the United States led to the exclusion of women. I would contend that in Canada, in contrast, the institutionalization and professionalization of science initially opened new avenues for women. The stratification of science and institutionalization of scientific work led to more levels of activity, and, in a world where scientists earned no more than other government employees or academics, there was relatively little competition for scientific academic posts.14 Science Studies and Scientific Work

During the second half of the nineteenth century, quite a few EnglishCanadian women attended collegiate institutes or private schools, while French-Canadian women studied in convents. Science was part of the general curriculum at some of the English-Canadian institutions. By 1890, women studied science at the older universities, such as Mount Allison, Acadia, Dalhousie, New Brunswick, McGill, Queen’s, and Toronto. Many of the women students obtained entrance scholarships and won prestigious awards and medals: at Dalhousie, Lilian Calkin, the university’s first woman student, won the University Prize for mathematics in 1883; at McGill, Carrie Derick took prizes in chemistry and zoology and won the Logan Gold Medal in natural science in 1890; and at Queen’s, Vera Norris won the Prince of Wales Prize in chemistry and physics in 1907. In that era, most undergraduate science students obtained BA degrees, because many universities did not yet grant BS c degrees. Canada’s pioneering woman chemist Clara Benson graduated from Toronto in 1899 with an honours BA in physics and chemistry.15 At Acadia, the first woman scientists to graduate with BA s in the sciences were the mathematician Adella G. Jackson in 1890 and the sociologist Annie M. MacLean in 1893.16 At McGill, the botanist Carrie Derick (already a school

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teacher) graduated with a BA in 1890, while Harriet Brooks, later a promising physicist, entered with a scholarship in 1894 and obtained an honours BA in mathematics and natural philosophy four years later.17 Harriet Starr Stewart of Mount Allison became, in 1882, the first woman BS c in Canada.18 The oldest Canadian universities, such as New Brunswick and McGill, did not accept women until later in the nineteenth century, long after they first enrolled men. In contrast, the somewhat-later western Canadian universities, such as Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, offered women opportunities for higher education in general, and the study of science in particular, at about the same time as men. In 1917, Annie Norrington was the first woman to graduate with a BS c from Manitoba, although from the 1890s on women had taken science courses as part of their BA degree.19 At Saskatchewan, Frances Schiltz obtained an honours BA in mathematics and chemistry in 1914, and Harriet Johnston and Elizabeth C. Ferguson the first BS cs in 1918. Winnifred Hughes (later a zoologist at Alberta) entered Saskatchewan with a scholarship in 1919 and obtained a BS c in 1923.20 At Alberta, the botanist Gwyneth Tuttle and the geologist Anna Grace Stewart received BA s in 1915 and 1918, respectively.21 At British Columbia, women studied science and obtained BA degrees beginning in 1915. Among them were the botanist Irene Mounce, a gold medallist in 1918; the mathematician May Barclay (BA 1919); and Rona Hatt who, in 1922, became the first Canadian woman to graduate with an engineering degree.22 In French-speaking parts of the country (most of Quebec, Moncton in New Brunswick, and St Boniface in Manitoba), Catholic nuns had taught some science in convents and contributed to natural history collections throughout the nineteenth century, but women did not enter the Université de Montréal until the 1920s. Graduate training leading to the master’s degree could be obtained at almost all Canadian universities by the 1920s. Master of science degrees were practically non-existent, however, and graduate students obtained master of arts degrees in both sciences and arts. In the early twentieth century, the PhD was not yet a requirement in most sciences, not all universities had doctoral programs, and those that did, only in certain fields. As a result, students often travelled to the United States, Britain, or continental Europe for doctoral studies. The list of postgraduate degrees in Canada before the Depression includes Carrie Derick (MA botany 1896, McGill), Clara Benson (PhD chemistry 1903, Toronto), Madeleine A. Fritz (PhD geology 1926, Toronto),

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Matti Levi (married name Rotenberg) (PhD physics 1926, Toronto), and Helen Battle (PhD marine biology 1928, Toronto). Undertaking US graduate studies were the botanists Margaret Newton (PhD 1922, Minnesota), Muriel Roscoe (PhD 1926, Harvard) and Lulu Odell Gaiser (PhD 1927, Columbia), as well as Dixie Pelluet (PhD 1927, Bryn Mawr), who specialized in biology. Scientific Work for Students and Graduates

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, English-Canadian academic institutions offered a wide variety of part-time and full-time work opportunities in science for promising students and recent graduates. From about 1890 to the early 1930s, both undergraduate and graduate students found part-time paid positions as assistants, demonstrators, and instructors. Most of them worked only during the academic year, for anywhere between one term and several undergraduate and graduate semesters. Some women obtained part- or full-time academic posts after graduation and remained in science, while many others left for conventional family life or entered other professional fields. In fact, most promising women science graduates were unable to use their training because of society’s expectations that women marry and raise children. Although universities kept some information on their graduates, student assistants, and demonstrators, there is little or none about them once they left university. More detective work is needed to ascertain what happened to Toronto class assistants Jennie McFarlane (botany 1913–14) and Grace Martin (physics 1914), Saskatchewan instructor Rosalie Acason (chemistry 1921–23), Manitoba student demonstrator Ruby Bere (zoology 1922–25, botany 1925–26), and Dalhousie laboratory assistant Mabel Borden (zoology 1926–28). Time constraints and the mandate of my strategic grants prevented me from exploring these women’s later lives. In alumni records, I found information concerning other women science students who left academe. For instance, Alberta Jamieson, an honours graduate in experimental physics and chemistry at New Brunswick, 1904, became a teacher and newspaper correspondent in Victoria, BC; Dalhousie student assistants Elizabeth Torrey (physics 1929–30) and J. Aileen Macauley (married name Freeman Smith) (zoology 1929–30) moved to Ontario, where they worked for social services in Hamilton and the R. Simpson company in Toronto, respectively. Alice Turner (BA

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McGill; PhD mathematics 1932, Toronto) became a statistician with Wood Gundy Company. I uncovered information about several graduates at Saskatchewan. Frances Schiltz, who had been a student assistant in chemistry (1917–19) while pursuing her master’s degree, studied medicine at McGill and practised in the United States. Margaret Newton worked as an instructor (1921–23) and assistant professor (1923–25) in botany at Saskatchewan while studying for her doctorate at the University of Minnesota. In 1925, she left the university for federal research in agriculture, and she became one of the best-known plant pathologists in Canada. Another Saskatchewan graduate, Margaret Shiel (married name Cameron) (BA 1921, MA chemistry 1923), worked at the university as a student demonstrator and in 1922 became president of its Chemical Society. After her marriage, she worked as a laboratory technician at the Saskatoon Sanatorium. A generation later, Sylvia Fedoruk (MS c physics 1951, Saskatchewan) had a satisfying professional life in radiation physics at the Saskatchewan Cancer Commission, where she became the chief physics director in 1965. In 1972, she was appointed to the Science Council of Canada, and the following year she became the first woman member of the Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada. The recipient of the Order of Canada in 1987, she was named Saskatchewan’s first female lieutenant-governor in 1988. We also have evidence that some promising Canadian women science graduates abandoned science to raise a family. An outstanding example is Harriet Brooks, who in 1898 became Ernest Rutherford’s first graduate student at McGill. While pursuing her master’s degree in physics (MA 1901), with research that led to the identification of radon, she held a part-time position as mathematics tutor at McGill’s Royal Victoria College. Later, she taught at Barnard College in New York, worked with Maria Skłodowska-Curie at the Sorbonne, and received the John Harling Fellowship at Manchester. Instead of taking up this research fellowship, and completing her PhD, she married in 1907 and no longer pursued science.23 A generation later, marine biologist Alfreda Berkeley Needler (PhD 1930, Toronto) found herself in a different situation. The daughter of marine biologist Edith Berkeley, she was among the first group of graduate

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students in her discipline at Toronto who were encouraged and mentored by Archibald G. Huntsman. She graduated at the beginning of the Depression and married fellow marine biologist W.A.H. Needler. Although she never found paid employment, she did not give up science. The family lived at various biological stations, and Alfreda conducted pioneering investigations on sex reversal in oysters and shrimp and studied “red tide” – minute marine organisms that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning – while bringing up three children.24

Women Science Educators When I began my research in 1985, we knew very little about Canadian women scientists, including those who were employed at academic institutions. Since then, feminist research in women’s history and the history of education by Alison Prentice, Judith Fingard, and Mary Kinnear, among others, and my own and Prentice’s work on Canadian women scientists have brought to the fore qualitative information about women’s varied experiences at our universities.25 We now know that women have taught science at Canadian universities since the 1890s but had fewer professional opportunities than their male colleagues. Women faced a range of gender-specific obstacles for two main reasons. One was the development of a complex and stratified scientific community that, while providing a variety of work opportunities, also led to hierarchical and lateral segregation at the scientific workplace. The other was the lingering stereotype of women as homemakers, which led to expectations that women should quit paid work when they married.26 Women’s seeming invisibility in science, due mainly to their exclusion from science textbooks, reference books, and male-stream histories of science, has long created the impression that there have been very few women scientists in the Western world, and that they rarely achieved recognition or even a decent position. This is a simplistic view of what happened in complex scientific communities. More finely nuanced research has revealed that many women studied and worked in science,27 although their professional lives followed different paths both from their male peers and even each other. Until recently, most accounts of the life and work of women scientists, including my own, focused on comparative studies with their male colleagues. Those conducted in the 1970s and 1980s began from the premise that women’s careers suffered when compared to men’s.28 While this has

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been a useful way to study women’s status in science, it is not the only approach and possibly not the best, because, if we compare women’s professional opportunities with men’s, we perpetuate the male career as the norm. Rethinking “Careers”

In the Western world, the notion of a successful career has been based on privileged men’s expectations, experiences, and achievements in the church, the army, the civil service, and the male professions, such as medicine and engineering. This does not account for men’s varying experiences as university, government, or industrial scientists, or for the struggles experienced by men from less privileged backgrounds. Biographical research has already revealed that not all male, and even fewer female, scientists have had straightforward careers.29 Although it is difficult to obtain detailed biographical information on the working lives of many women scientists, a careful reading of available archival documents and secondary sources will permit historians of science to see the range of ways scientists experienced their careers. Detailed historical investigations highlight complexities in their taking decisions, composing lives (to use Mary Catherine Bateson’s phrase), and changing life-courses.30 It is hard, however, to reshape our thinking about careers and stop considering the male career as the standard. Although some of the early feminist literature from the 1970s discussed alternative career models that would reflect the reality of women’s lives, these writings referred to married women professionals who were mothers rather than to single, success-oriented women.31 Unfortunately, I too have been unable to either find another term for “career” or construct a model that would be applicable to the working lives of all women, and many men, who worked as scientists during the 1890–1980 period. I suggest, however, that we can broaden our view of what constitutes a career if we understand that historically not all scientists achieved the ideal of a “male-stream career” – relatively straightforward advancement to higher-level, better-paid positions that enabled well-funded scientific research and rewards and recognition. Using alternative terms, such as “life in science,” “professional path,” or “working life,” will allow us to consider the spectrum of women’s and men’s experiences in the workplace and make useful gender-specific, disciplinary, and institutional comparisons.

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Rethinking “Science”

As someone trained in Western science, I used to think that only the natural and exact sciences (astronomy, botany, chemistry, geology, physics, and zoology) constituted “Science.” My graduate studies in the history and sociopolitics of science at the Université de Montréal broadened my view, and interdisciplinary feminist scholarship further altered my perspective on science. Thus in 1987, when I applied for the second stage of my research program on women and scientific work in Canada, I broadened the scope of my research by including the social sciences. The women scientists in my final data pool worked in anthropology, astronomy, biology, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, economics, geology, palaeontology, physics, psychology, and sociology. Because my graduate research on the history of Canadian science and my biographical work on William Rowan produced additional information on hundreds of male scientists, I was able to compare the professional paths of a large sample of Canadian scientists and examine gender-specific, disciplinary, and institutional issues as well as historical change. Grouping Women Scientists

In order to study the qualitative experiences of Canadian women scientists in general, and those working at universities in particular, I first grouped the more than 200 women scientists on whom reasonably detailed biographical information was available into three time-frames – 1890–1920, 1920–50, and 1950–80 – depending on when they entered the scientific workforce. I then isolated certain significant factors in their lives and compared these to similar or equivalent factors in the lives of their male peers. Comparable factors included family background, initial encouragement, school environment, the existence or absence of mentors, the availability of scholarships and bursaries, having an advanced degree and/or a postdoctoral fellowship, and the scientist’s age when hired into first and second positions. Gender-specific factors that influenced scientific lives were the effects of marriage or alternative life partnership, slower advancement within academe, remuneration, availability of research grants, peer recognition, and the opportunity to participate in collegial networks.

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My own archival and oral history research, as well as that of other scholars, such as Judith Fingard, Margaret Gillett, Mary Kinnear, and Alison Prentice, makes it clear that the most important internal circumstances that influenced women’s academic lives included heavy teaching workloads, the attitude of administrators, interpretations of nepotism/ anti-nepotism, and the existence or lack of mentoring.32 Other, more general, external reasons included society’s expectations that women would marry, bear children, and stay home, as well as the lack of a social support network for married women who wanted to engage in timeconsuming scientific research. Beginning in the mid- to late nineteenth century, research in addition to teaching became a requirement for university scientists, but professional opportunities in Canada, as elsewhere, have not been uniform across gender, class, and ethnic backgrounds. They have also varied among institutions and disciplines and over time. For instance, well into the twentieth century, some of the smaller institutions, such as Mount Allison University, stressed teaching rather than research.33 By contrast, at larger universities, such as McGill and Toronto, from their inception, faculty members were expected to pursue research in addition to teaching. As a result, their work became both more complex and more stratified. The teaching loads were heavy and university classes large, particularly after each of the two world wars, and the pay was relatively small. This meant that scientists had little time during the academic year to conduct labour-intensive and time-consuming scientific research. Scientific experiments in the laboratory, or observations in the field, do not conform to regular working days. In fact, the specific nature of scientific research requires many long hours of work. Experiments in the laboratory do not happen exclusively between nine o’clock and five o’clock from Monday to Friday. Zoological field work may be seasonal or conducted early in the morning or at night. All this interferes with rigid teaching schedules and the daily rhythms of family life, which in turn has had implications for which gender was better able to do science. In the era from 1880 to 1920, most university science teachers were men. Because of the heavy teaching loads, people wishing to pursue a research program needed teaching and research assistants, and, if possible, they hired good students to fill such roles. It is clear that soon after women’s admission to Canadian universities began, many of them obtained paid positions as part-time or full-time assistants, demonstra-

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tors, and/or instructors. These women students therefore became the “invisible” scientists without whom science could not be done.34 Female students began such part-time work at McGill in the early 1890s and at Toronto about 1900. At Dalhousie and in the west, women were first employed in these positions during the First World War, but for reasons that are unclear other universities, such as New Brunswick, lagged behind. Throughout the twentieth century, most Canadian universities employed hundreds of women and men in temporary positions as student and/or graduate assistants or demonstrators.

Full-Time Work: Two Pioneers University of Toronto geologist Madeleine Fritz believed that “a woman could only have one career” – marriage or a paid profession.35 In the early decades of the twentieth century, this view echoed the sentiment of society at large as well as many women’s beliefs. While this stance can be seen as a result of women’s socialization and can make them seem victims, it can also be regarded as a choice, with women dedicating their lives to a profession rather than conventional marriage. Certainly, there is evidence that all first-generation and many secondgeneration women scientists chose to remain single in order to pursue their profession. We know little about their private lives, emotional attachments, and liaisons with men or women. The lack of available archival documentation means that it is difficult to assess the complexities of their lives. Without diaries and private correspondence, we can gain only a partial view of their lives, and we cannot know their attitudes towards marriage and their own sexuality.36 During the years 1890–1920, relatively few women scientists had fulltime university positions, and most of them worked for one or two semesters as part-time class or teaching assistants or as demonstrators. There are, however, two major figures who began their scientific lives in the 1890s as students and part-time assistants/demonstrators and then had life-long, full-time involvement with teaching and research. Unfortunately, the surviving archival material documents only their professional lives, and this would not be enough for full-scale biographies. Fortunately, it is sufficient to deal with their professional lives in some detail, which I do in this chapter. Carrie Derick at McGill and Clara Benson at Toronto were the first two women scientists who had professional lives as full-time faculty members at Canadian universities. Their accomplishments were achieved by

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intelligence, determination, hard work, and the existence of mentors. They took advantage of expanding areas of science, and they remained single to accomplish their goals. Nevertheless they too had to deal with gender-specific issues and stresses. Carrie Derick

Carrie Derick (1862–1941) was hired in 1891 at McGill to “give assistance to the Professor of Botany [David Penhallow] in Botanical Excursions and Practical Work in Botany.”37 Derick was paid $200 a year from the Donalda Endowment, established by Sir Donald Smith.38 The following year, she “continued as Demonstrator in Botany with a salary of $250 out of the Donalda Fund.”39 Her pay was so low that she, while reappointed annually as a part-time demonstrator, continued teaching science at the Trafalgar Institute, a private girls’ school in Montreal. Although Penhallow, chair of the department and Derick’s teacher and mentor, recommended her for full-time lecturer, the board offered her only a demonstrator’s post with an annual salary of $750.40 Finally, after much discussion and correspondence, she was appointed full-time lecturer. According to an entry in the board’s minutes for 23 May 1896, “The Principal reported that Miss Derick who is at present in receipt of considerable emoluments from the Trafalgar Institute could not undertake to give her whole time to the University for the remuneration offered by the Governors at the last meeting. He had, however, been authorized by Sir Donald Smith to supplement the $750 by $250 making $1,000 in all, in order to retain Miss Derick’s services for another year … It was accordingly agreed to appoint Miss Derick Lecturer in Botany and Demonstrator in the Botanical Laboratory till 1st May 1897 at the above mentioned salary, she is to give her whole time to teaching in McGill and to perform such duties in the teaching of Natural Science as may be assigned to her by the Professor of Botany and the Principal.”41 Derick’s own curriculum vitae gives her as part-time demonstrator 1891–95 (while teaching full time at Trafalgar) and lecturer 1895–1904. Whatever the discrepancy, in May 1896 thirty-four-year-old Derick, now an MA in botany, became the first Canadian woman scientist to obtain a full-time university position. She used her summers to study and conduct research outside Canada. According to her hand-written c.v., she spent “3 Summer terms at Harvard, 7 summers at the marine biological laboratory at Woods Holl [sic] Mass. 1 term at the Royal College of Science, London, England, 2 Semes-

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ters at the University of Bonn, Germany were not intended to lead to a higher degree. No Ph.D. degrees were granted to women at Bonn at the time. The research work was done.”42 Derick published her research in journals such as Education in Canada, Heredity and Environment, Nature Study, Record of Science, and Science. She was also active in community affairs and a member of the Canadian Public Health Association, the Federation of University Women of Canada, the Local Council of Women, and the Montreal Women’s Liberal Club. She participated in many aspects of science and had a reputation of excellence in teaching and research, yet she was not promoted to assistant professor until 1904. While still holding that rank, she took charge of the Botany Department both during Penhallow’s illness and after his death in 1910. Having served as temporary chair 1909–12, first with an extra $500 per year and as of 1911 with a salary of $2,000 a year (considerably less than other McGill department chairs), Derick was a strong candidate for professor. Despite powerful backers, including Sir William Van Horne, she lost out to Francis E. Lloyd from Alabama, who was hired at $3,000 a year. The board then appointed Derick professor of morphological botany – in reality, a tactical move to appease her. As historian Margaret Gillett pointed out, this was a “courtesy title,” and Principal William Peterson told her that “she was not in fact a ‘professor,’ nor was it intended that she should teach only morphological botany.”43 In fact, Derick was a pioneer of plant genetics and not a morphological botanist. She was a member of numerous Canadian and American scientific societies and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. During the rest of her career, Derick obtained minor salary adjustments from McGill, but the injustice of being called a professor of morphological botany stayed with her. In 1928, suffering from ill health that forced her retirement the following year, she wrote to F.E. Lloyd, “As you know, I have always thought that the title ‘Professor of Morphological Botany’ does not represent the variety and extent of my work. Even before my appointment as a professor, I did more work in other fields of botany than in morphology. Now I have specialized to such an extent in genetics, and have met, I think with such success in my classes and with a few graduate students, as to consider myself justified in asking that I be in the future styled ‘Professor of Comparative Morphology and Genetics.’ I am sure that you will agree with me that this change would give recog-

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nition which I have earned.”44 McGill approved her request in 1929, and on her retirement she became Canada’s first professor emerita. Clara Benson

Clara Cynthia Benson (1875–1964) had a junior teaching position at a Toronto high school before receiving a graduate fellowship in 1899. Her graduate research at the University of Toronto was in physical chemistry, with a thesis, “Rate of Reactions in Solutions Containing Ferrous Sulphate and Potassium Iodide and Chromic Acid,” but, after graduating, she found no appropriate position in her area of expertise. Chemistry was still a relatively new academic discipline in Canada (it was first taught in the early 1840s), and the chemical industry was also in its infancy. As a result, professional opportunities were restricted even for men. Physiological (now bio-) chemistry was, however, a rapidly growing research field, and so was household science, which included food chemistry. Unfortunately, we have no private papers by Benson to reveal her thoughts and feelings about changing fields. We know that there were better professional opportunities for women in these new sub-fields of chemistry, which had few male experts and were considered suitable for women. In the United States, many women had good professional lives in household science, which we now may consider a segregated women’s area.45 Benson was twenty-eight in 1903 when she earned Toronto’s first PhD in chemistry. An independent single woman, she planned a life in science. Since we do not know what made her choose a graduate research topic in physical chemistry, it is hard to assess her investment in this field. As a pragmatic young woman, she no doubt considered her options carefully. As positions in physical chemistry were scarce, she accepted a post as Edith May Curzon’s assistant at the university’s Lillian Massey School of Household Science. In 1903, both household science and food chemistry were growing professional fields. Curzon taught food science, a subject she introduced to Canada. After her untimely death in 1903, Benson was promoted to instructor in physiological chemistry and taught a variety of Curzon’s former classes. Mentored by Archibald B. MacCallum, a pioneer of Canadian biochemistry, she also became a lecturer in physiological chemistry two years later. In 1906, the new Faculty of Household Science hired her as its

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first secretary and associate professor of household science. In 1926, when food chemistry became an independent department, she was appointed professor and head of department.46 Although Benson’s change of research fields can be considered lateral segregation, for her it was a good professional move. She became wellknown in the Canadian scientific community for her work in food chemistry and, during the First World War, on explosives. It was reported that after “she discovered that food chemistry methods could be applied to the chemistry of explosives … [she] set up the accepted technique for analysis in munitions laboratories, and trained women to carry them out.”47 Benson was concerned about her students’ work opportunities, as she wrote in a report for 1918–19: “The better students should have a good chemical foundation for their dietetic or Household Science work or should make good chemists if young women are needed in this way … Other opportunities for work have opened this year. Some of our graduates are assisting in the care of diabetic patients, making necessary chemical analysis, using their training in both Household Science and Food Chemistry. Such work is increasing in importance and our students should be particularly valuable in this way.”48 Perhaps these outside positions were more lucrative than low-level university work: “It is increasingly difficult to expect satisfactory assistants [in household science] to come to us at the present low salaries.”49 A similar report for 1920–21 concludes: “Several other of this year’s graduates are already engaged elsewhere for work. Opportunities are still available for scientific work where they are able to make good use of the training they received in this department.”50 While the reports were intended to show the university administration the department’s success and ask for more funds, they reveal that there were new opportunities for women science graduates outside academe. Many of these were in emerging medical research and health laboratories. In addition to her teaching, Clara Benson was highly regarded as a scientist. She was a member of the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Biochemistry and in 1920 became the only woman founder-member of the Chemical Institute of Canada.51

Reflections It is clear that the two best-known academic women scientists during the 1890–1920 period – Carrie Derick in genetics and Clara Benson in food

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science – had reasonably good professional advancement and conducted valuable research in new fields of science. They published prestigious work, belonged to a number of scientific and community associations, and influenced their colleagues, students, and the general public. The same pattern seems to have occurred in the United States and in the British dominions. As there were so few women academic scientists in Canada, they presented no competition for senior men, many of whom mentored them. These women in turn mentored their own students. Although we do not know details of their private lives, we do know that they, like most of their counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, chose to remain single.52 For Derick and Benson, as for the succeeding generations of women scientists in academe, the sociocultural contexts of academic institutions played both “constraining and enabling roles.”53

3 Academic Realities of Single Women, 1920—1980 Opportunities for scientific work and for having a satisfying career varied widely, even for single women. Some advanced relatively rapidly while others did not, depending on the university, the existence of mentors, the particular scientific field, and a host of other as yet unknown factors.1

Introduction: Three Paths for Single Women It is surprising to discover the variety of research and teaching demands placed on faculty members by different universities. Indeed, what we considered crucial for academic advancement in 2000 was not a uniform requirement a century or even half a century earlier. The information that I had collected from biographical sources, university archives, and discussions with numerous scientists served as constant reminders to me to look at the realities rather than at the ideals of academic lives. By the early twentieth century, many North American academic scientists planned to combine teaching with research. The complex fabric of their professional lives was woven from many competing demands. On the one hand, original research became more important than ever, and the basis for both academic advancement and recognition by the scientific community. On the other hand, faculty members at most Canadian universities continued to teach large numbers of undergraduates. The growing demand for research was a result of the influence of American graduate schools, which emerged in the late nineteenth century by emulating the research orientation of German universities.2 Hand in hand with this trend, most scientific fields became more specialized. The sciences were transformed either by developments within particular fields or because of deliberate efforts to encourage research due to its usefulness to government and/or industry. The widely perceived need during the First World War for Canadians to become competitive in

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science and technology fuelled much of Canadian research.3 The federal government in 1916 set up the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Its peacetime successor, the National Research Council (NRC), began providing grants to institutions, individual scientists, and graduate students in certain scientific fields. As granting bodies considered some sciences more useful than others, they placed new and different demands on student training and faculty research. By the 1920s, academic scientists were struggling to fulfil the oftencompeting roles of researcher and teacher. When universities expanded to accommodate returning soldiers, many faculty members taught large numbers of undergraduates often in overcrowded classrooms, supervised graduate students sometimes in inadequate laboratories, and attempted to conduct their own investigations. Many of them also had to construct teaching materials and apparatus not only for classroom and laboratory but also for their own research.4 These activities further increased their workload, and most Canadian university scientists found that they had little time or even access to instruments and materials for research. In addition, some university presidents supported research in certain areas they favoured. Availability of resources depended on a number of factors, such as the university and the scientific field, access to grants, equipment, and time, the support of a department head, the dean, or the president, and the gender of the scientist. For example, during the 1920s and 1930s, the zoologist William Rowan and the biochemist George Hunter at Alberta obtained little administrative support for their scientific investigations, while the marine biologists Archibald G. Huntsman at Toronto and Helen Battle at Western Ontario, in London, had an easier time. Women Graduate Students

After the First World War, more Canadian women aspired to a life in science than ever before. Many of them enrolled in graduate programs to train as researchers. Male mentors such as J.H. Faull, A.G. Huntsman, and H.S. Jackson at Toronto, Reginald Buller at Manitoba, and A.E. Cameron at Saskatchewan during the 1920s and 1930s, and A.N. Campbell at Manitoba in the 1940s and 1950s, ensured that the path of their female graduate students was relatively smooth. What prompted more women to enter science in the 1920s? Science was simply one of many options available to university graduates and not

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yet as lucrative or powerful as it became during the Second World War.5 Women proved that they were capable of fulfilling many jobs, including academic ones, that men had vacated during the Great War. As a result, many women decided to work and not to spend their entire lives on family and service commitments. Although the first, pre-1920 generation of women academics remained single, women of the following generation, who studied science and entered the workforce after 1920, perceived that they had more choices. Some women still refused to marry, while others decided to have both a professional life and a family. I discuss the varied situation of married women scientists in other chapters; suffice it to say here that by 1930, the Depression was further complicating women’s options for meaningful professional lives in a variety of areas, including science. In this chapter, I examine the lives of sixteen single women scientists who began science teaching and/or research after 1920. Unfortunately, few of them left any private correspondence. Others may have agreed with Muriel V. Roscoe, who, in response to my query about her private papers, wrote: “My personal correspondence – I would never have left any record of this. It would seem unimportant.”6 Thus we have few written records that document women’s decisions either to marry and attempt to combine science and family life or to remain single or engage in alternative partnerships. Oral history interviews with older women scientists have provided me with valuable insights into their motivations and professional opportunities, but even those women scientists who freely discussed their professional lives or disclosed their reasons for remaining single never mentioned their sexuality and/or relationships. Incomplete as they are, what do the records tell us? How do we interpret what happened to women scientists at Canadian academic institutions? Where official documentation exists, including material on male scientists, it is possible to track and compare some professional trajectories. However, because the available documentation on private lives is scarce, it is hard to compare one woman’s personal choice with the choices of other women and with those of their male colleagues. Although conversations and interviews with some women scientists illuminated their motivations, the lack of personal correspondence by others makes it impossible to make comparisons between individuals in different scientific fields, institutions, and historical periods. Nevertheless information that I gathered from written sources and from careful perusal between the lines of official papers and entries in biographical sources, such as the Canadian Who’s Who and American Men

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[and Women] of Science, shows that women scientists rarely had straightforward academic lives. Of those who found academic employment during the 1920s and 1930s, some worked for a short period and left for a variety of reasons, including marriage and motherhood. Others secured long-term academic appointments. Their career paths differed. Despite heavy teaching loads, many women scientists combined research with teaching (see the first section), and even with chairing a department. Others (in the second section) found that they preferred teaching to research or were forced by circumstances into largely teaching-oriented professional paths. Yet others (in the third) took advantage of the few available academic administrative positions, such as those of warden or dean of women, and also maintained their teaching, though rarely their research activities.

Research and Teaching While Carrie Derick at McGill and Clara Benson at Toronto continued their research, teaching, and mentoring activities in the 1920s, a new generation of women scientists began finding academic positions involving both research and teaching, as we see in this chapter. We look in this section at a number of them: in the 1920s, Lulu Odell Gaiser (botany) and Helen Battle (marine biology); a bit later, in physics, Elizabeth Allin (and others); and still later, in other sciences, Mabel Timlin (economics), Aileen Ross (sociology), Nancy Henderson (biology) and Jean Briggs (anthropology). Lulu Odell Gaiser

The botanist Lulu Odell Gaiser (1896–1965) was the first of these women to find a full-time position, when in 1925 McMaster University in Toronto appointed her “lecturer in Biology for the session 1925–26 at a [yearly] salary of $2 000.”7 Born and educated in Ontario, Gaiser (BA 1916, Western), taught school for two years before going to graduate school at Columbia University in New York, where she obtained an AM in 1921. After graduation, she worked as an assistant in bacteriology at Barnard College (Columbia’s women’s college affiliate) and spent a year in Washington, DC, as a plant pathologist with the US Department of Agriculture. Gaiser was the first woman scientist to become a permanent faculty member at a Canadian university after 1920. She was also the first ever at McMaster, although there were four women “professor’s assistants.”8

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While teaching at McMaster, she continued her graduate studies on cytotaxonomy at Columbia, receiving a PhD in 1927. Her book Chromosome Numbers and Species Characters in “Anthurium”, based on her doctoral dissertation, was the first cytotaxonomic work published by a Canadian.9 Gaiser’s professional path appeared smooth. She was promoted to assistant professor in 1928,10 associate professor in 1930 (the year McMaster moved to its new campus in Hamilton),11 and full professor and acting head of the department in 1937.12 When Biology was divided into two departments, Botany and Zoology, in 1942, she became the first head of Botany, and she held this position for four years. Unfortunately, no trace of Gaiser’s personal letters could be found. William F. Grant, a former student, confirmed that she was an excellent teacher who inspired many of her students to become botanists. Despite her onerous teaching schedule in classroom and laboratory, she wrote to other scientists on her students’ behalf and carried on a lively exchange in seeds and plants with other botanists.13 It seems that she was a feminist or was at least perceived to be one by her colleagues. In 1930, when the university moved to Hamilton, “Professor Gaiser especially wanted the greenhouse to help her develop a program in natural history, as a means … of preparing women graduates for the nature study courses then sprouting in the local schools.”14 Gaiser was in favour of women studying science and was concerned about their diminished chances during the Depression. In a 1937 report, McMaster physicist H.F. Dawes noted the “particularly noticeable diminution of the number of women students in science courses. I feel any campaign to divert [those] with an aptitude for Mathematics or the Sciences is a mistake.”15 According to university historian Charles M. Johnston, “The prospects for female scientists must not have pleased the vociferous botanist and feminist Lulu Gaiser.” Louise Barber also commented that she “seemed to regard men as equal colleagues but was fully aware that they did not share the view.”16 Gaiser advanced well professionally (though, like other women academics, underpaid), but according to William Grant she was always busy and did not seem to have a private life.17 During the years 1946–49, she was senior professor of botanical research. Her studies of the cytotaxonomy of the genus Liatris, which she had pursued despite a heavy teaching load, were published during her final years at McMaster and later at Harvard.18 In 1949, at age fifty-four, she requested early retirement. The university gave its official reason as freeing her from burdensome administra-

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tive duties, but it is not clear what these were.19 In a letter of 27 January 1949 with a “Request for Early Retirement” effective 31 August 1949, she refers to a prior “understanding arrived at with the Chancellor” that she would be relieved of all instructional duties as of the date of her letter, granted a leave of absence beginning 1 February 1950, and be entitled to all benefits up to August 1949.20 Gaiser spent the next five years at Harvard University. In 1954, she returned to Canada to look after her father. As she had no access to a university laboratory, she switched to research in the field, working in several Ontario locations, including Lambton County. Apparently she “never liked collecting alone so she nearly always got someone to accompany her.”21 She collected on various “Indian reservations,” including Squirrel Island and Kettle Point, and welcomed the company and knowledge of First Nations women. F.H. Montgomery, a university-trained white male scientist, wrote to B. Boivin that a “Mrs Pennance – an Indian lady, native to and familiar with Squirrel Island and its environs guided Dr. Gaiser on her collecting trip to the Island (it is an Indian Reserve). I believe that her only interest was the traditional plants useful to Indians. She certainly is not a botanist.”22 Yet Gaiser clearly valued Pennance’s knowledge and her generosity in sharing it with a newcomer to field research and the region. Helen Battle

During the 1920s, disciplines such as marine biology and plant pathology became areas of increased economic value to the Canadian government. They were relatively new fields without a surfeit of male experts, and male professors in these areas encouraged their female students to obtain higher degrees. As research positions without teaching commitments became available, Margaret Newton (1887–1971), later one of Canada’s best-known plant pathologists, gave up her teaching position at the University of Saskatchewan for research with the federal government.23 In contrast, Helen Battle (1901–1994), Canada’s first woman PhD in marine biology, spent her professional life teaching and conducting research at the University of Western Ontario. In an in-house interview for Western’s Alumni Gazette in 1990, Battle recalled that while an undergraduate student there she had a professor “who was working in Prince Edward Island on the development of fish and oysters … so I got the chance to go there for the summer.”24 This was in 1921, and it was her introduction to zoology field work.

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She completed her BA at Western in 1923 and her MA there in 1926, and she then studied marine biology at Toronto under A.G. Huntsman. After obtaining her PhD in 1928, she had no trouble finding an academic position at Western, where she subsequently taught zoology and carried out research in embryology and histology. She was appointed assistant professor in 1929, associate professor in 1933, and full professor in 1947. She retired in 1967. When I interviewed her in 1985, she recalled that she had lots of support for her research and never faced discrimination.25 Apparently she actively mentored female students, encouraging some to take up science and others “to go to graduate school and would often put in a good word for them.”26 The scientific community honoured Battle’s work. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, became the second president of the Canadian Society of Zoologists (1962), and received the Canada Centennial Medal (1967), the Fry medal of the Canadian Society of Zoologists, and the J.C.B. Grant Award of the Canadian Association of Anatomists (1971), as well as honorary doctorates from Western and from Carleton University. As a pioneer in laboratory investigation of marine biological problems, Battle had a satisfying life in science. Friendly, attractive, and energetic, she never married. Elizabeth Allin

While there were few women chemists, economists, geologists, psychologists, and sociologists working at Canadian universities until after 1945, the 1920s saw a relatively high number of women in physics. Yves Gingras has traced the development of physics in Canada, including its growth and institutionalization, the establishment of professional identity and community, educational changes, and research funding.27 Apparently physics is an atypical science in many ways. Graduate students rarely do independent research until the postdoctoral level.28 Called “natural philosophy” until well into the nineteenth century, physics was by 1900 a rapidly growing area of research, particularly in the sub-fields of nuclear science and spectroscopy. These areas, not having many male experts, were open to women. Indeed as Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham have documented in Devotion to Their Science, in the early twentieth century many European and American women worked in atomic physics (what we would now

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call “nuclear science”).29 By contrast, few Canadian women did graduate research in physics between Harriet Brooks Pitcher at McGill about 1900 and later women physics students at Canadian universities such as Dalhousie, Manitoba, McGill, and Toronto. According to Alison Prentice, Toronto had more women studying physics during the 1920s than ever before or since.30 Of the women physical science students at McGill in the 1920s, several worked as demonstrators or lecturers, some on a regular basis, others sporadically. None had research-oriented professional lives. Physics demonstrator Alice (Allie) Vibert Douglas (see the third section of this chapter) changed her field to astronomy, Laura Chalk Rowles (see chapter 4) married and taught at Macdonald College, and Anna McPherson (see the next section) did not obtain a teaching position until the Second World War.31 At Toronto, only Elizabeth Allin (1905–1993) of the women graduate students had a university career in physics similar to the careers of male colleagues in her field.32 Allin wrote a brief history of physics at Toronto, and her official papers are in the university’s archives. Unfortunately, in the late 1980s, when I was doing my research on the subject, I was unable to connect with her. However, I did obtain a copy of a 1993 interview with Karen Fejer. Prentice also talked with Allin and later wrote articles about her professional life. These two sources complemented archival material.33 Elizabeth Allin (BA 1926, MA 1927, PhD 1931), born and educated in Ontario, was in the first cohort of women graduate students in physics under J.C. McLennan at Toronto. She received several National Research Council scholarships, bursaries, and fellowships (1926–30), worked as an assistant demonstrator, and did a year (1933) of postgraduate research at Cambridge with a Royal Society Fellowship. On her return to Toronto, she worked as a demonstrator and lecturer in physics, being promoted to assistant professor in 1941, associate professor in 1957, and full professor in 1964. She retired in 1972. From the oral history interviews and other sources, it is evident that Allin enjoyed her student years, teaching, scientific research, and the collegiality at Toronto’s Physics Department. She admitted that women assistant professors earned less than males but accepted this as a fact of the times. Although as a single woman she did not suffer from the same gender-specific challenges as her married women peers, she understood

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the issues and knew about pressure on married women to resign. Perhaps this understanding contributed to this talented, attractive woman’s choice to remain single. Mabel Timlin

In other areas of science besides physics, the economist Mabel Timlin, the sociologist Aileen Ross, the biologist Nancy Henderson, and the anthropologist Jean Briggs also chose to remain single. They all had interesting and satisfying scientific lives, which combined teaching and research. As we saw above, research on women scientists in Canada, as on women in general, has been hampered by lack of documentation. Fortunately, I found plenty of archival material at the University of Saskatchewan Archives, particularly on the well-known economist Mabel Timlin (1891–1976). I also gleaned information by interview or letter from a few of her former students, including economists Isabel Anderson, Ken Rea, T.K. Rymes, and Shirley and Duff Spofford. Timlin, who spent her professional life at Saskatchewan, was born in Wisconsin and educated as a teacher. She moved to Canada in 1916 to teach at a rural school in Saskatchewan but soon decided that her goals included neither marriage nor a life as an elementary school teacher.34 After taking a business course in Saskatoon, in 1921, she became secretary to the Department of Agricultural Extension at the University of Saskatchewan. While working full time, she completed her BA in English and, in 1929 at age thirty-eight, graduated with distinction. The following year, in addition to her full-time job as secretary, she became a “reader” in the Economics Department – reading papers or assignments.35 Thus she joined the biologist Myrtle Melburn and the historian Hilda Neatby as the third woman in a permanent faculty position at the university. Unlike them, Timlin continued with her already onerous administrative work. Nonetheless she enrolled in the University of Washington’s economics graduate program. At the time, the majority of Canadian economists belonged to the so-called Toronto School of economic history, influenced by Harold Innis and W.A. Macintosh, originators of the staple theory.36 Timlin, however, had a different focus. She had been conscious since childhood of the importance of money and, as a parttime graduate student, studied the theories of John Maynard Keynes. She became well known for her doctoral dissertation, “Keynesian Economics: A Synthesis,” which she published as Keynesian Economics in 1942.37 Subsequently her research focused on theories of employment, welfare economics, and immigration policy.38

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After securing an academic position as a middle-aged single woman during the Depression, she had a seemingly male-stream career. During the 1930s and early 1940s, when good positions were rare for women in general, she advanced rapidly – assistant professor in 1941, associate professor in 1946, and full professor in 1950, and she retired as professor emerita in 1959. Even so, her salary remained below the norm. Yet in the 1950s she turned down a move to the University of Toronto to remain at a small, congenial, provincial university. Though forever cash-poor, Timlin was known locally as a lively, colourful person who loved parties and had many friends.39 She was much liked and respected by her students – one of whom, Jack McLeod, even included her in Zinger and Me, a novel whose characters were based on members of the faculty and staff at the university.40 Timlin’s peers valued her professional accomplishments: for example, in 1951, she became the first woman social scientist elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC). She served as consultant to the federal Royal Commission on Prices (1950–51) and to the Royal Commission for the Saskatchewan River Development (1952) and became vice-president (1953–55) and president (1959–60) of the Canadian Political Science Association. In 1967, she was awarded Canada’s Centennial Medal. In 1969, the University of Saskatchewan conferred on her an honorary doctorate of laws. In 1976, she was named to the Order of Canada. Aileen Ross

Aileen Dansken Ross (1902–1995), a well-known social scientist, came from a privileged Montreal family, but her school environment did not encourage women to pursue postsecondary education: “Like other girls of her class, she expected to grow up, marry, and have children.”41 Instead, she became active in the Girl Guide movement, travelled widely, and during the Depression, with the encouragement of her bettereducated friends, studied economics at the London School of Economics. Impressed by Karl Mannheim’s lectures, she changed her focus to sociology and pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago (MS c 1941, PhD 1951). She taught at Toronto 1942–45 and moved to McGill in 1945 as lecturer in sociology (in the joint Department of Sociology and Anthropology). The only woman in the department, she became assistant professor in 1949, associate professor in 1961, and full professor in 1964, after having spent a year as acting chair. Ross’s main interests were in race and ethnic studies, social stratification, nurses, and homeless women. Her first book was on the Hindu

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family,42 and her second on nursing students at McGill,43 while her major contribution to the community was The Lost and the Lonely: Homeless Women in Montreal.44 During an interview with Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, she recalled that she preferred working at McGill both because of her own family’s connection to the university and because of the supportive atmosphere. Her rise from assistant to associate professor took twelve years, but she never felt “sexual discrimination at McGill” and thought her pay “on par with her male colleagues.”45 Bill 65 keeps that information inaccessible, but oral history sources and casual conversations suggest women at McGill were comparatively underpaid. Ross’s affluent background perhaps made her unaware of, or even uninterested in, her own academic income. Nancy Henderson

Nancy Henderson (1931–1996) was well aware of differential treatment of the genders at the university and, indeed, in society at large. Although I was unable to meet her, New Brunswick oral historian Janet Toole generously provided me with a copy of her oral history interview with Henderson in 1991.46 Later, I also obtained valuable information from Henderson’s sister, Margaret Crickard. Henderson was born in Halifax and educated at Halifax Ladies College and the Queen Elizabeth High School. She had an early interest in the natural world around her, encouraged by her father, G.H. Henderson, who was a physicist at Dalhousie. Although she enjoyed biology in grade twelve, she was not sure what path to follow, and she was an indifferent student during her first two years at Dalhousie. A course in genetics by Dixie Pelluet sparked her interest in that subject, as did a course in physiology taught by Ronald Hayes. After completing her BS c in 1951, she stayed on as a “very menial research assistant” in the Biology Department and then worked on an MS c under Pelluet’s supervision. Following completion of the MS c, she spent a year as research associate at Queen’s. Although she had been secretly engaged in Halifax, she decided to pursue further studies instead of marrying. She studied environmental physiology at Toronto under F.E.J. Fry and, as his first female graduate student, completed her PhD in 1960. Henderson received four National Research Council scholarships (1955–59) and then spent two years in Britain with a NATO Science Fellowship. In 1962 she was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Calgary – “probably … one of the most hand-

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somely endowed universities in Canada, for undergraduates.” She taught undergraduate and graduate courses in endocrinology, environmental physiology, genetics, and zoology and was a productive researcher. She became associate professor in 1966 and full professor in 1973. Her research fields were the thyroid metabolism in hibernators (such as ground squirrels) and the thyroid-gonadal relations in trout. She wrote or co-wrote more than forty scientific articles and served on the Council of Canadian Zoologists (1965–68), as associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Zoology (1971–75), and as president of the Canadian Society of Zoologists (1976–77). In her 1991 interview with Janet Toole, Henderson recalled that, despite remaining single, she had lots of boyfriends both in Canada and in England, and she had good relations with her colleagues and students. She served as a role model to countless graduate students and had good relations with them. Her sister recalled that “she was aware of the preferential treatment of males.”47 However, she was not particularly interested in “promoting the interests of women in science … I never had any time.” In 1972, she became a director of Atomic Energy Canada Limited – the first Canadian woman to sit on the board of a crown corporation – and remarked, “It is a good time to be a woman.” A serious stroke in her mid-fifties ended her scientific research and teaching, but, though confined to a wheelchair, she retained her interest in science until her death at age 65. Jean Briggs

American-born anthropologist Jean Briggs (b. 1929) had an enjoyable research-centred professional life at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Like Mabel Timlin, Briggs enjoyed working in a congenial department at what some scholars would consider an academic outpost. St John’s seemed ideal for someone with Briggs’s background, personality, and interests. According to archival documentation, her rise through the academic ranks was straightforward. She was hired as assistant professor of sociology in 1966. The following year, with a PhD from Harvard, she became assistant professor of anthropology. She was promoted to associate professor of sociology and anthropology in 1971 and to full professor and chair in 1977. Compared to other women scientists in my sample, her advancement seemed painless and rapid. Was I missing something? Although a research assistant had already done archival work for me at Memorial, it

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became evident that I needed to do more research. I was hopeful that Briggs would grant me an interview to clarify certain issues about her academic life. There were other reasons why I wished to obtain Briggs’s own perspective on her professional moves. I too was working at a geographically remote university (in my case, the avant-garde University of Northern British Columbia). This sensitized me to some of the perceptions that academics in more central institutions have of people “stuck on the margins.” In particular, there is a spoken or unspoken viewpoint that they are not “good enough” to obtain positions in a metropolis. Contrary to the early sociological work by Edward Shils on centre and periphery and the large history of science literature on the centres and margins of the Western scientific enterprise,48 it has become evident that being on the margins confers freedom and that “centre” and “margin” involve simply matters of perspective.49 A good friend of mine – a faculty member at a large department of a multicultural urban Canadian university – asked me why an eminent anthropologist with a seemingly straightforward male-stream “career,” such as Briggs, stayed at Memorial. Why did she not move to McGill, Toronto, Harvard, or another major university? My biographical work on both Mabel Timlin at Saskatchewan and William Rowan at Alberta indicated that they remained at their institutions because of a combination of congenial colleagues and the opportunity to pursue a certain type of research. I became convinced that only a conversation with Briggs would provide the answers. After a preliminary correspondence and telephone conversation, in April 2002 I tape-recorded our discussion on her professional life.50 I, facing retirement at the end of that year, had a lively discussion with Professor Emerita Briggs, who at age seventy-three remained active in research and writing. As I had hoped, her recollections and analyses provided me with her own perspectives on her life and work. Born and raised in New England, Briggs enjoyed the outdoors but chafed against the restrictions inherent in school and university life. After high school, she studied at Vassar College, both because she obtained a scholarship and because her own mother had studied astronomy there. Though interested in anthropology since early childhood, she obtained a BA in Russian rather than in anthropology and sociology (“a bore”) or economics (“terrifying”). After working for several years as a researcher for various institutions, including the Russian Research Centre at Harvard, she studied for an MA in African Studies at Boston University and later for her PhD in the

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Department of Anthropology and Social Relations at Harvard. Unlike other graduate students, she did not “attach [herself] to somebody who had a project.” While searching for a topic, she began working with Cora DuBois, who became her mentor and friend. For her field research, Briggs “chose an area where there have never been anthropologists before … [except] Rasmussen for three days in 1924.” This was the Back River district of the Northwest Territories, where she conducted field work from August 1963 to March 1965. It was while writing up her dissertation at Harvard, in 1966, that she met Robert Paine, head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Memorial, who was looking for new faculty members. This was a period of expansion, when Canadian universities were actively recruiting American academics and graduate students, many of them disillusioned with US foreign policy. When Paine offered her a position, Briggs accepted it with alacrity. She valued the opportunity to work at a small university away from large centres and institutions, such as McGill, which also offered her a faculty appointment. She found St John’s “a friendly city, where you can live and not feel overwhelmed … I liked being at the edge of the world. And a northern edge furthermore. But I also liked Paine’s mind very much … To lure people to come to this remote place where they imagined nobody in their right mind would want to go … they made some of the introductory appointments half-time research and half-time teaching.” Briggs preferred research to teaching, so the offer “was very attractive.” Paine encouraged her investigations, and she had like-minded colleagues, including Paine, who pursued northern research. Her teaching load was minimal (one course to start with, and two courses afterwards), and she could spend her summers and research leaves in the north. Later, she obtained a research professorship, which reduced her teaching load once more, and a Henrietta Harvey Professorship, which “eliminated teaching altogether.” Briggs’s answers confirmed my suspicion that she chose to remain at Memorial because of the stimulating and congenial academic environment. She recalled, “I had enormous opportunities to do exactly what I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it” and was sure that this would not have been possible at “mainline” universities. Because of this, she turned down offers from prestigious institutions. Compared to other women scientists, Briggs had an unusually privileged academic life. She entered anthropology at a time when professional opportunities began to expand for women and when she had a choice of academic employment. Her research was innovative and recognized by

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her peers with research professorships and fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada, she had no wish to marry, she enjoyed the companionship of supportive colleagues and friends, and her income allowed her to live the life that she chose for herself.

The Teaching Track When in the 1980s and 1990s I was researching women scientists’ professional options and choices, it was sometimes hard for me to remember that universities have a mandate to educate undergraduates; that most universities have relatively low numbers of graduate students compared to undergraduates; and that, despite the German-American model of the research university, not all academics favour research over teaching. Research requires more time and more expensive instrumentation in some scientific fields than in others. For example, although botany was a low-tech field during the first half of the twentieth century, McGill could not provide an appropriate microscope for Muriel Roscoe’s research;51 as we see below (in the next section), her administrative and teaching duties reduced her research output. But compared to zoology and botany, research in many sub-fields within astronomy, chemistry, and physics had come to require increasingly sophisticated and expensive instrumentation. Possibly because of lack of access, some women in those subfields chose to concentrate on teaching, while others may have been prevented from pursuing original scientific investigations by heavy teaching loads and lack of institutional support for research. Contact with students and spending time teaching and mentoring them and ensuring their success have been the hallmarks of excellent teachers. Unfortunately, the teaching commitment cannot be quantified in the same manner as research, where research grants and publication record are easy to total. Throughout the twentieth century, most Canadian universities increasingly emphasized research over teaching, although many academics continued to value or even privilege their teaching duties. Therefore, as historians we have to be careful not to impose our contemporary perceptions onto the people whose lives we are interpreting. We may consider that the professional lives of many women stagnated because they focused on teaching rather than on research, but their own perceptions of their work opportunities and options may have been quite different. This section documents the professional lives of five Canadian women scientists – May Barclay, Anna McPherson, Winnifred Hughes, Edna

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Eastcott, and Margaret Benston – who chose to concentrate on teaching rather than research. As above, the documentation for this section (and the next, on women who combined teaching, research, and administration) tends to be fragmentary: in some cases, only official papers are available, and in others, letters and/or interviews with the women scientists or with their families and friends provided additional data and insights. May Barclay

I base my outline of the professional life of May Barclay (1897–1962) (BA 1919, MA 1920?) on barebones material in the University of British Columbia (UBC) Archives. She studied mathematics at UBC and on completing her MA was promptly hired by the Department of Mathematics as an assistant for $600 a year. In 1935, she was promoted to instructor. Even in mid-Depression, her annual $1,600 stipend was exceptionally low. It took her another eleven years to become assistant professor, and, perhaps because she did not have a doctorate or conduct further research, she remained at this level until she retired in 1961, earning only $7,000 for her final year.52 Anna McPherson

Anna McPherson (1901–1979), an honours graduate in mathematics and physics from McGill and recipient of the Anne Molson Gold Medal for excellence, also concentrated on teaching. After obtaining her master’s degree in 1923, she worked part time in industry and taught in private schools before completing her doctorate in 1933 at the University of Chicago. She then applied to McGill for a teaching position. Her application was repeatedly rejected, but she was finally hired in 1940 as a part-time demonstrator. She was promoted to lecturer in 1944, assistant professor in 1947, and associate professor in 1954. According to her former student and friend Edith Engleberg, she was an excellent teacher, but her heavy teaching load left little time for research.53 Winnifred Hughes

Winnifred Hughes at Alberta and Edna Eastcott at Toronto were contemporaries and both had initial success as researchers but, like Barclay at UBC, remained in low-level teaching positions.

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Hughes (1900?–1967) emigrated to Canada from Wales as a teenager and studied zoology under A.E. Cameron at Saskatchewan, where she obtained an MA in zoology in 1924. Cameron then recommended her for the new position of instructor at Alberta in the Zoology Department, where her initial salary was $1,500 per year.54 Hughes was both a good scientist and an artist, which ability proved useful. Since teaching material was practically non-existent at Alberta, she helped the department chair, William Rowan, produce wall charts, and she also acted as a technician in the student laboratory. Between 1927 and 1929, she conducted embryology research for her doctorate (1929) at Chicago, and she was promoted to assistant professor at Alberta at an annual salary of $2,500. Because of both the Depression and lack of opportunity for further research, her advancement stalled for a dozen years. Rowan wrote numerous letters on her behalf, beginning in the mid-1930s, suggesting that she be promoted to full professor, but the administration did not consider her teaching worthy of this step. She was finally promoted to associate professor in 1946, with an annual salary of $3,500, only $100 more than that of her younger male colleague R.B. Miller. For private reasons, including personality clashes in the department, she left the university three years later.55 Edna Eastcott

Eastcott (1888–1963) was born and educated in Ontario, obtained a “Senior Teacher’s Certificate” in 1907, and taught in public schools before entering the University of Toronto in 1915. She worked for the British Cordite Company and the Ontario Agricultural College during the First World War and graduated from Toronto in 1920 with first-class honours in chemistry and mineralogy.56 She then became one of several women graduate students mentored by the well-known chemist Lash Miller, obtaining her MA in 1923. Beginning in 1922, she worked as a sessional assistant in the department. Concurrently, she expanded her master’s research towards a doctorate in biochemistry. According to the Toronto Daily Star in 1934: “After four years intensive work, [she] isolated the first element of Bios [chemical substances found in blood and fruit juices] in 1928 and has now collaborated in identification of the second[,] found to be hydroxy-aminobutyric acid.”57 At the 1934 meeting of the Royal Society of Canada, Lash Miller “reviewed” her research contribution, together with that of Helen Stantial, another graduate student. According to the same Toronto Daily Star

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article, “Bios discovery called triumph for two girls [my emphasis]. Dr. Eastcott and Dr. Stantial are searching for chemical substances not for husbands.” Girls? Eastcott was forty-six! Eastcott’s income, originally $800 per year as sessional assistant, had risen to $900 in 1923–24 with funds from “Special Research.” The report of the board of governors shows that the fund paid part of her salary until 1935.58 Why, with an excellent early research record, did she remain a poorly paid assistant for such a long time? In the absence of private letters, one can only speculate that she had chosen to work with Lash Miller because he had mentored her. Why then had he not promoted her after her hiring? Perhaps she was not particularly ambitious; perhaps she had few other professional options during the Depression. After Lash Miller retired in 1937, Frank Kenrick became department head, and Eastcott continued as an assistant. Later a succession of male department heads ignored her, possibly because she was a woman.59 Finally, in 1944 at age fifty-seven, she became a sessional lecturer, at a very low $2,000 per year. Her pay as (possibly still sessional) lecturer increased somewhat until 1949, when she reached $2,700 per year, but the following year, when for unknown reasons she became once again a demonstrator, it dropped to $800. Although she was reinstated as (sessional) lecturer for 1951–52 at a salary of $3,400 per year, she resigned for personal reasons effective the end of 1951. Normal retirement age at the university was seventy, so why did she retire at only sixty-three? Margaret Benston

In contrast to the women scientists above, Margaret (Maggie) Benston (1937–1991) chose teaching/social activism during her all-too-brief life.60 US-born and -educated and trained as a theoretical chemist, she was hired by Simon Fraser University in 1966 for an initial two-year term. Because of the excellence of her teaching and research (published in prestigious journals such as the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, the Journal of Chemical Physics, and Molecular Physics), her contract was renewed, and she received tenure in 1970. Influenced by the women’s and anti-war movements and the student unrest of the late 1960s, Benston more and more believed that her research in theoretical chemistry had little relevance to society. The Chemistry Department where she worked was conservative, and she and other women chemists, including Hannah Gay, received little recognition. Al-

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though she “was doing a lot of theoretical chemistry, [and] increasingly … working on computer simulations and modelling … when they opened a department of computing science she ended up working part-time in computing science and part-time in chemistry. This gave her a whole new lease on life, as far as the university and just being able to be there.”61 Within a few years, Benston’s interests shifted to the emerging fields of computer science, science studies, and women’s studies, and she gave up chemistry research. Instead she focused on scientists’ responsibility to society, on community-based research rather than elitist science, and on women’s status in science, and she wrote and lectured on these subjects. Her article “Political Economy of Women’s Liberation” (Monthly Review, 1969) has been translated into many languages and is still frequently reprinted.62 Her writings on women and technology have reached a wide audience inside and outside of academic institutions, and her feminist critique of science remains valid to this day. Although Benston’s academic and public teaching and writing influenced students and the general public, her chemistry colleagues at Simon Fraser disapproved of her change of professional paths. While she had come to Canada to work in a more liberal atmosphere than existed at the time in the United States, she found that exchanging scientific research for teaching and social activism was detrimental to her professional advancement, to her pay, and, because of stress, ultimately to her health. I became aware of Benston and her commitment to women, science, and technology in 1983 when she organized the first Canadian Conference on Women and Science, which I did not attend. My own awareness of social and environmental issues and involvement in women’s studies occurred much later. It was only after her untimely death that I learned about her life and was able to interview former colleagues, friends, and her twin sister, Marion Lowe, a biologist.

Combining Teaching, Research, and Administration During the first half of the twentieth century, most North American universities increasingly expected faculty members to do research in addition to their teaching. In Canada, many department heads, often without an assistant or secretary, continued to do much of the departmental administrative work. During the same period, the administration of larger academic units such as universities, colleges, schools, and faculties became the domain of powerful male administrators who had their own support staff. Some university presidents, such as H.M. Tory at Alberta,

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wielded absolute power in the 1920s and single-handedly hired and fired faculty members.63 At most Canadian universities, academic advisers and registrars were men, although women filled these roles at single-sex colleges, such as McGill’s Royal Victoria College. Powerful women at coeducational institutions, such as Jean Royce, registrar 1933–69 at Queen’s, were definitely an exception, while very few women in administrative positions were responsible for the budget of a teaching and/or research unit. Among the women scientists who held administrative positions and maintained their teaching and/or research, four are the subjects of this section: Madeleine Fritz, a geologist; Muriel Roscoe, a botanist; Allie Vibert Douglas, an astrophysicist; and Helen Reynolds, a chemist. Their professional activities encompassed several decades from the 1920s to the late 1960s. Madeleine Fritz

The geologist Madeleine Alberta Fritz (1896–1990) had a different professional path from most other women scientists at Canadian universities. Her work at Toronto, in a stereotypically male domain of science, involved administration, teaching, and research. Born in New Brunswick, Fritz had an early interest in how the mountains formed. After graduating in 1919 with a general arts degree at McGill, she met palaeontologist Alice Wilson and spent a summer in the field with her. As a result, Fritz decided to study geology at Toronto, where she obtained an MA in 1923 and a PhD in 1926. She was the first woman in Canada to obtain a PhD in geology/palaeontology and the only woman geologist to have an academic position during the interwar period.64 Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, men dominated geology, with its old association of rugged field work, exploration, and mining. Undeterred, in the 1890s some Canadian women studied geology as part of their undergraduate course work. During and after the First World War, John Andrew Allan at Alberta and W.A. Parks at Toronto mentored a number of women geology students.65 Among these students were Grace Anna Stewart (1893–1970) (BS c 1918, MA 1920, PhD 1922) and Vera Lee (BS c 1919, MS c 1921) at Alberta and Margaret Howell (1901–1988) (BS c 1924) and Madeleine Fritz at Toronto. Stewart found an academic position at Ohio State University; Lee married and, as Mrs Stoner, worked as secretary of the Geology Department at her alma mater. Because of financial constraints after her father’s death, Margaret Howell could not pursue graduate studies and worked as the secretary to

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the Department of Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto until 1927, when she married engineer Osborne Mitchell and left paid employment.66 Fritz, aware of the difficulties married women faced in academe and socialized to believe that a woman can have only one career, chose to remain single and pursue graduate studies. She had a satisfying professional life as researcher, administrator, and teacher. In an oral history interview at the University of Toronto in 1973, Fritz recalled that Parks got her to work on some fossil organisms that she had found under Toronto. At Toronto in the 1920s, Fritz was the only woman graduate student in her department. She commented that she felt accepted by the men and that no one tried to discourage her.67 Although she did some demonstrating as a graduate student, her first permanent appointment came in 1927 as an assistant in the Royal Ontario Museum of Palaeontology, an institution affiliated with the university. She did not obtain a teaching position until 1935, when she became part-time assistant professor of geology at the university, as well as assistant director at the museum. Despite considerable opposition by the Geological Survey to women field geologists, Fritz not only undertook field work but also wrote more than sixty research papers between 1923 and 1977. Evidently she was good at juggling field work, teaching, and administrative duties, for she was also responsible for administering research grants for her male colleagues. She became curator of the Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology of the Royal Ontario Museum in 1955 and full professor of geology at the university in 1956. In 1942, she became the second Canadian woman scientist and the second woman geologist to be elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was also a fellow of the Geological Association of Canada and the Geological Society of America. In 1967, she received the Centennial Medal of Canada, and in 1977 Toronto conferred on her a distinguished service award.68 She retired as professor emerita in 1977 but remained a research associate at the museum well into her eighties. Her three-pronged professional path was unique in the history of Canadian women and science, because men dominated such positions in geology/palaeontology, in both university and museum settings. Other women scientists who combined administration, teaching, and research followed the more usual path of “surrogate mother” as dean or warden of women, as we see in the rest of this section.69

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Muriel Roscoe

Muriel V. Roscoe (1897–1990), botanist, teacher, and fifth warden of Royal Victoria College, was born and educated in Nova Scotia. She was one of twelve women in her graduating class at Acadia (BA 1918). Acadia had numerous “lady graduates” beginning in 1884, and most of them became “wage-earning women” (Acadia Record).70 Roscoe was one of them. After working with victims of the Halifax Explosion in December 1917 and earning her BA in 1918, she obtained a teaching licence from the Truro Normal School in Nova Scotia and then taught science in Terryville, Connecticut, and in Truro. With the money she earned, she studied botany at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, obtaining an AM in 1923 and a PhD in 1926. During a conversation in 1986, she recalled that in anticipation of her PhD she applied for work in various places, including California, but immediately after her oral examination the president of Acadia “walked into my lab and invited me to come teach at Acadia.”71 She joined Hettie Morse Chute (BA 1916), an assistant in biology, and Florence Sharman, MA , who was appointed assistant professor of economics and history in 1928.72 At Acadia in the 1920s, teaching ability was more important than research experience. Nevertheless, with a research degree, Roscoe wanted to pursue her investigations in cytology, but she soon found that the biology laboratories were poorly equipped. On the advice of Lily Perry, her former roommate at Radcliffe, she asked the university president for equipment, and he provided funds for microscopes and other instruments. But her teaching, without an assistant (eighteen hours a week in the first term and twenty-eight in the second), left her only Saturday afternoons for research. As Yves Gingras noted: “In 1911, for example, [H.L. Bronson, a Dalhousie physicist] … was forced to teach seven courses and direct nineteen hours of laboratory tutorials.”73 While Roscoe’s teaching remained onerous, she was promoted to professor within two years. She taught courses in systematic and cryptogamic botany, cytology of vascular plants, and botanical techniques. Despite her initial enthusiasm for research, during her time at Acadia she published only about a half-dozen papers as sole author in the Botanical Gazette, the Journal of Genetics, and Rhodora. In 1940, she left her full professorship at Acadia to become an assistant professor at McGill and the fifth warden (till 1962) of Royal Victoria Col-

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lege.74 In the two interviews I had with her, in 1986 and 1988, she hinted that the move was because of personal rather than professional reasons. Within a few months of her arrival at McGill, it became evident to her that, as she wrote to Principal James, “‘the ample research facilities’ mentioned in your letter of April 29, have not been available.” As well, the two microscopes “fall short of requirement for cytological work.”75 Yet McGill was well aware before enticing Roscoe from Acadia that she needed such a microscope for her research in plant anatomy and cytology. After an exchange of letters, during which D.L. Thomson (dean of science) found her attitude regarding academic work “a little unreasonable,”76 the university borrowed a microscope for her and, at her request, appointed Thelma Stevens, a former student, as her assistant and demonstrator in botany for $450 for 1941–42.77 With her duties as warden and teaching from eleven to twelve hours a week, Roscoe had little time for her investigations of apple chromosomes, which she had begun in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. While this was a topic of great value to the apple orchards in her native province and elsewhere, for reasons that are unclear the National Research Council refused to fund her research. At McGill, she allowed her students to publish the papers of their joint efforts under their names and no longer published on her own. However, her low research output did not prevent her serving 1945–62 as chair of her department and her promotion to full professor in 1948. In 1955, she became Macdonald Professor of Botany – “one of the very few women at McGill in any Department to hold an endowed chair.”78 Roscoe did not actively encourage women in science, but her presence as a senior female faculty member and as a warden made her a role model. In 1962, at age sixty-five, she had to retire from administrative work at McGill, but she continued to teach and even do some research for several years. Then she moved back to the Maritimes. Soon after her return to Wolfville, Acadia’s president invited her to return to the university, but this time as part-time dean of women and professor. She was delighted to do so.79 Although Roscoe felt that as a single professional woman her private life had suffered, she had a busy and in many ways enjoyable professional life.80 She was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Botanical Society of America, and the Canadian Federation of University Women (and chaired its scholarship committee for three years). Her biographies were included in both American Men of

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Science and the Canadian Who’s Who, and she received honorary degrees from Acadia (DS c 1948), Queen’s (LLD 1952), and McGill (LLD 1967). In addition, Radcliffe College at Harvard awarded her its Graduate Chapter Medal in 1959. The citation describes her well: “Wise warden of Royal Victoria College, our sister institution in Canada; respected professor and chairman for the Department of Botany, McGill University; ardent exponent of the value of education for international goodwill; in combining these roles, you have succeeded in a rare achievement: the fusion of two conflicting arts, Teaching and Administration.”81 Allie Vibert Douglas

Another scientist who chose to combine teaching and research with administration was Allie Vibert Douglas (1894–1988).82 Unfortunately, I never met her, as she died during the year that I was waiting for a grant to study women physical scientists. Fortunately, her professional life is relatively well documented. In addition, she left autobiographical notes that describe her early life, wartime activities, and graduate studies at Cambridge and McGill. From these notes, we learn that, despite her early interest in physics, she did not want to pursue graduate research in this field and that she came to prefer teaching to research. Born in Montreal, she matriculated from Westmount Academy in 1912 with first-place honours and obtained a McGill entrance scholarship. From 1912 to 1915, Douglas studied honours mathematics and physics and took courses in radioactivity, education, history, and philosophy. In 1915, she left Montreal to work in the War Office, in London, England, and, in 1918, she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) to honour her wartime service. After the war, she became the registrar of the Khaki University of Canada, a new institution based in England, which offered education to war veterans during the demobilization period. She returned to McGill in 1919 to complete her undergraduate degree, obtaining first-class honours in mathematics and physics in 1920 and receiving the Anne Molson Gold Medal for excellence. While working as a demonstrator; she enrolled in the graduate program in physics at McGill and studied “the range of β-rays for an isotope of Radium,” which resulted in an MS c in 1921. Receiving a War Memorial Scholarship from the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), she studied physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (as a member of Newn-

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ham College for women), under the direction of Ernest Rutherford. Her research on a topic that he established progressed slowly. In early 1922, the brilliant Russian physics student Peter Kapitza solved the problem on which she had been working. She felt “on the road to nowhere” and later recalled: “Neither my heart nor my abilities were in nuclear physics.” For a variety of reasons, she changed her field to astrophysics, a relatively new, interdisciplinary field. Arthur S. Eddington at the Cambridge Observatory suggested that she do a “statistical study of the relation between stellar velocity and absolute magnitude of a certain large group of stars.” She was fascinated by the idea and pursued this topic, but, as women could not obtain graduate degrees at Cambridge, she returned to McGill. There she took up her position as demonstrator and lectured in physics to various groups of students, such as women in the physical education program and men in pharmacy. Feeling that “no one at McGill was really interested in my chosen field,” in 1925 she moved to the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin to undertake graduate work. Yet the following year, at McGill, she completed her PhD dissertation under the direction of A.H.S. Gillson of the Physics Department. She remained at McGill as lecturer in astrophysics for thirteen years.83 In addition to her regular teaching duties, Douglas taught extension courses and served as a student adviser. She was active in the Montreal chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, she travelled widely, and her articles appeared in scientific journals and popular magazines. Between 1920 and 1937, she published sixteen technical papers and more than thirty popular science articles. She also became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, London, a life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Then, in early 1937, in her early forties, she decided to change her career, applying to become warden of Royal Victoria College at McGill. We have little information on her motives, but we can speculate. For one thing, she had enjoyed and valued “the close contacts that have been established with” the students, as an assistant to the student adviser.84 As well, her failure to advance professionally at McGill was also perhaps a factor. Becoming a “surrogate mother” to women students had been an earlier possibility for her. “In the late 1920s,” she wrote in her application, “I was unofficially invited to apply for the position of Resident Tutor in Natural Philosophy at Newnham College, Cambridge … Family respon-

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sibilities during those years rendered it out of the question for me to consider these possibilities.”85 Orphaned as an infant, she and her brother, George, were brought up by female relatives, and in the late 1920s her Aunt Mina was still alive. She also had many friendships and affiliations at McGill. In the late 1930s, for the few women considering such a career change, the move usually “took place most directly … as surrogate mothers of students, or dean of women students, a position greatly in demand as increasing number of female students sought female role models.”86 These positions usually came with free room and board. Despite her excellent qualifications, Douglas was not selected.87 Two years later, at age forty-five, she applied to Queen’s to become dean of women. The minutes of the board of trustees for 9 June 1939 included the principal’s recommendation that she be appointed “Dean of Women as from September 1, 1939 at $2 500 a year with room and board.”88 A later entry recorded that “Dr. Douglas comes to Queen’s University with a high record of distinction in her chosen field of mathematical physics and astronomy, with intellectual enthusiasm and with wisdom in the problems which fall to the lot of a dean of women to deal with.”89 Douglas was listed in university calendars from 1949–50 until 1958–59 as “Acting Professor of Astronomy” – whatever that meant. It was only after she retired as dean of women in 1959 that she became professor of astronomy, a position that she held until she retired from Queen’s in 1964.90 While she no longer conducted original astrophysical research, her extensive knowledge of her field became a part of the major biography of Sir Arthur Eddington, her favourite professor and mentor at Cambridge.91 Douglas was well known and respected in a variety of circles. She was president of the Royal Astronomical Society, Canada, from 1943 to 1945 and of the International Federation of University Women from 1947 to 1950. In 1965, she received an honorary DS c from the University of Queensland, and in 1967 she was named “Woman of the Century” by the National Council of Jewish Women. That same year, she was awarded the Order of Canada. She received honorary doctorates of laws from McGill and Queen’s and the Distinguished Service Award of Queen’s. Helen Reynolds

By the time the chemist Helen Reynolds (1904–1995) became the sixth warden of Royal Victoria College in 1962, times had changed for both

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women academics and students. I enjoyed my interview with her in 1988, in a beautiful Halifax apartment full of flowers and art. A charming, seemingly frail woman, she had an excellent memory and was keenly interested in my research on women scientists.92 Reynolds was born and educated in Nova Scotia and studied honours physics at Dalhousie, receiving her BS c in 1934. Unfortunately, tuberculosis prevented her from completing her master’s degree. Following a convalescence of two years, in 1936 she found a position teaching science at the Halifax Ladies College. Then in 1940 she was persuaded to teach chemistry at Havergal College, a private girls’ school in Toronto. There she became the head of the Science Department, and, finding the chemistry curriculum “backward,” she persuaded the administration to review its science program and developed a new curriculum for grade thirteen chemistry. During her time in Toronto, she was an active member of the science section of the Ontario Educational Association, serving as its president 1955–62. In 1955, Reynolds became the first dean of women at Dalhousie (previously there were wardens at Sherriff Hall, the women’s residence). This seemingly attractive position provided her with considerable responsibility, but she soon found male administrators impeding her efforts. Moreover, while the position was supposed to combine administration and teaching, she taught few courses. The dean, A.E. Kerr, expected her to share her apartment with visitors to the university, so she resigned in 1962. McGill invited her to apply for the wardenship of Royal Victoria College, and selected her “from about fifty applicants” to succeed Muriel Roscoe (see above in this section).93 Because the number of women students increased during the 1950s, she was unable to meet all of them personally, but she insisted on welcoming first-year students and advising them about their programs. During her eight years at McGill (1962–70), she taught first-year physical chemistry to many students and (again) campaigned for revision of the chemistry curriculum. She told me that, because of her long-term interest in teaching and curriculum, she “did some work” with the Journal of Chemical Education. Other than that, her duties as warden conflicted with the pursuit of science. Although she was a member of the Chemical Institute of Canada, lack of time and her own precarious health prevented her from taking an active role. Unlike Roscoe, she became active in the social and cultural life of Montreal, and, despite the “unpleasantness” of student unrest in the late 1960s, she enjoyed her years as warden and lecturer.

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Reynolds suffered from ill-health most of her life and often looked frail, but she was strong-willed and principled. Whether she was protecting her own rights or those of her students, she stood her ground in dealing with powerful men. These included members of the Ontario educational establishment and the president of Dalhousie. Her students referred to her as “a square with flair,” but Ontario’s deputy minister of education hit the mark in 1955: “a swan, swimming on a lake – not a ripple on the surface, but paddling like hell underneath.”94

Reflections During the six decades from 1920 to 1980, single women scientists at Canadian universities had varied experiences. Some worked for short periods and left to marry or engage in other professional activities. Although teaching loads were often onerous, some women conducted original research, participated in the activities of scientific associations, and led satisfying professional lives, as we saw in the first section of this chapter. Others, whom we met in the second, focused on teaching and enjoyed their work despite their relatively slow advancement and low pay. Yet others, frustrated by a variety of factors inherent in sexist academic institutions, resigned or retired relatively young. A few (in the third section) who, despite the odds, combined research with teaching or administration, were the precursors of the many others who, in the period following the second women’s movement, which lasted from the early 1960s to the late 1990s, began to fill positions previously dominated by men. Lack of comparable biographical material makes it difficult to ascertain how most women scientists chose their professional paths. Nevertheless there is enough evidence for us to see that many academic women scientists felt that they had interesting and meaningful lives. We need to be careful, therefore, not to evaluate their accomplishments or professional trajectories in view of what is now available to women.

4 Complicated Lives I: Family Life and Science, 1920–1950 In a stable society, composing a life is somewhat like throwing a pot or building a house in a traditional form: the materials are known … Today the materials and skills from which a life is composed are no longer clear. It is no longer possible to follow the paths of previous generations … Many of the most basic concepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed meanings: Work, Home, Love, Commitment.1

Introduction Life was certainly not stable in Western societies during the twentieth century. Two world wars, a major economic Depression, revolutions, widespread suffrage and better educational opportunities for women, and increased reliance on science and technology were among many factors that led to many new life-paths quite different from those of previous generations. We know that women, by breaking out of the traditional gender roles of wife, mother, homemaker, and caregiver, inevitably complicated their own lives. The complexity of women’s lives has been explored by a number of twentieth-century authors, but fictional and non-fictional accounts have treated them in different ways. Fictionalized women’s lives were frequently based on authors’ own observations and perspectives, often conflating the characteristics of several persons. In contrast, feminist biographers have concentrated on the detailed life histories of individual women, while feminist historians have emphasized individual and group experiences during particular periods and within socio-economic and geopolitical contexts. Unfortunately, few fiction writers found it worthwhile to write about women scientists.2 This challenging task remained the domain of a few feminist biographers and other scholars.

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For the past several years, I have been trying to find alternative ways to study women’s lives in science, and, like some feminist geographers, historians, and sociologists, I found that both my overall and biographical research benefited from looking at life-course change. This biographical/ geographical approach follows women’s lives across space and time and considers the “simultaneity and extension of events and possibilities.”3 It studies “relationships between biological life stages and social construction” at the intersections of women’s “gender with other forms of difference, especially race, ethnicity, and class.” Life-course changes depend on “access to particular resources and their interdependence on the choices and practices of those with whom we share our lives.”4 Feminist scholars have argued that all women have agency to make changes in their lives – that is, they are able to assess situations and make choices. According to Lorraine Code, agency is the possibility for “effective, independent action.”5 Julie Thacker wrote: “Agency empowers individuals to control events in their own lives free of other people’s excessive control or unwarranted social constraints. Agency through empowerment provides access to the power necessary to obtain needed resources.”6 Women who deliberately use their agency to facilitate change are catalysts who make things happen. I have interviewed many women who obtained science degrees and entered academic science between 1920 and 1950, and I have obtained first-hand accounts about their working lives in a variety of institutions. Their experiences varied widely from person to person and between universities and scientific disciplines. Equally important was their changing attitude towards combining marriage/motherhood and science. For them, a life in science provided financial independence together with meaningful and challenging work.7 This was a major departure from the attitude of first-generation women scientists who obtained their degrees between 1890 and 1920, who saw professional life and marriage/motherhood as mutually exclusive. In fact, vestiges of this attitude persisted, and during the early twentieth century most women science students and scientists also believed that a “woman could have only one career” (see the first section of this chapter).8 When did women scientists realize that they could combine marriage to supportive, progressive men with a working life in science? The second section looks at women of the second generation who combined part-time work with family life, and the third considers those who combined academic science and family life.

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Leaving Academic Science: Pre-1920 Experience In the Western world, the institutions of both marriage and science changed considerably during the nineteenth century. Some progressive men mentored and encouraged women to broaden their horizons, study at universities, and gain independence.9 As I argued above, science was neither lucrative nor powerful until well into the twentieth century. Few parents encouraged their sons to study science, and few people understood how the different sciences were practised in the laboratory and the field. And few parents of young women considered scientists desirable husbands for their carefully nurtured daughters. The stereotypical scientist spent long days in a smelly laboratory, or long periods in the field, and had little time to socialize with people outside his own scientific circle. Many of these men focused on their scientific interests, virtually ignoring literature, music, and other facets of polite culture. They often used a seemingly esoteric vocabulary. No wonder that young- or even middleaged male scientists often married their former students and assistants. These were the only women who could understand the passion for science that kept their husbands enthusiastic regardless of appalling working conditions and low pay. When I looked at the available documentation on married women scientists, I realized that most of these women married men whom they met at university or at research institutes. Once they married, they may not have continued working outside the home as scientists. However, we have evidence that many retained their interest in science, participated in scientific discussions with their husbands and colleagues, and often served as intellectually engaged though unpaid assistants to their husbands in the laboratory and the field. It is hard to know how many promising women scientists gave up any ideas of a professional life during the twentieth century. Many were pressed by family, society, and their own socialization to marry before even obtaining a university teaching post. Did this happen more often to women scientists of the pre-1920 “first generation”? We look now at two instances: Harriet Brooks Pitcher and Edith Dunington Berkeley. Harriet Brooks Pitcher

Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham’s Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist10 details many aspects of Brooks’s studies and scientific research in Canada and abroad. The Rayner-Canhams located some of her correspondence and were able to interview a few very helpful relatives. Because

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theirs is the only full-length biography of a Canadian woman scientist, I deal with her case in some detail. Harriet Brooks (married name Pitcher) (1876–1933) was born in Exeter, Ontario, lived and studied in Ontario and Quebec (her father was a commercial traveller), and entered McGill in 1894 to study science. After she obtained her BA in 1898, she became Ernest Rutherford’s first graduate student at McGill. She never held an academic position in Canada because in 1907 she married Frank Pitcher, who had pursued her relentlessly for several years. Brooks Pitcher had great promise as a scientist and was in the first generation of Canadian women to obtain graduate degrees in science. In 1899, while working with Rutherford at McGill, she observed that a radioactive substance (now called radon) was released from radium.11 During this exciting time of scientific research and discovery, she became non-resident tutor at McGill’s Royal Victoria College. Rutherford was supportive of women in science and continued to serve as her mentor throughout her academic life. After she gained her MA in 1901, he encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania to further her graduate training. She won one, and in 1902 he supported her application for the Bryn Mawr College President’s European Fellowship. The award enabled her to work for a year at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with the noted physicist J.J. Thomson (Nobel Prize winner in 1906). McGill Principal W. Peterson wrote to congratulate her and said that “he looked forward to the probability of her applying for work at McGill after her year at Cambridge.”12 At Cambridge, Brooks Pitcher continued her investigations into radioactivity, though under the less-supportive tutelage of Thomson. Dispirited by her perceived lack of research success at Cambridge, she never returned to Bryn Mawr, instead resuming her position as non-resident tutor at Royal Victoria College. She rejoined Rutherford and his research group and wrote several papers on radioactivity. In 1904, she accepted an academic position at Barnard College in New York.13 Then, during the summer of 1906, she announced her plan to marry Bergen Davis, a physicist at Columbia, whom she had met at the Cavendish Laboratory. Unfortunately for her, Dean Laura Gill of Barnard College did not believe that women academics should marry and informed her that she had to resign. She replied that she did not see why and added: “I think also it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she married. I cannot conceive how women’s colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter

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professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a principle … I cannot acquiesce without violating my deepest convictions on my rights.”14 Although her department head, the physicist Margaret Maltby, supported her stance, the dean remained adamant. Brooks Pitcher eventually abandoned her plans to marry and, suffering from exhaustion, resigned in mid-1906. Some months later, she joined Maria Skłodowska-Curie’s research group in Paris, and, with Rutherford’s encouragement, she applied for the prestigious John Harling Fellowship at the University of Manchester, where her mentor now taught.15 Though offered the fellowship, she declined it. Instead, despite all her previous decisions about combining her professional life with marriage, she gave up science to marry Frank Pitcher, one of her former instructors at McGill. Her earlier correspondence indicates that she had refused him several times, and we do not know what caused her change of mind. When she wed in Montreal in July 1907, she was thirty-one. According to her biographers, she “never did pursue her research after marriage … notwithstanding her belief in a woman’s right to continue a career after marriage.” This was perhaps because, with Rutherford’s move to Manchester, she lost her mentor, or because her husband did not pursue academic research. As a wife and the mother of three children, she became involved in social organizations such as the University Women’s Club of Montreal and the Women’s Canadian Club. It remains a mystery why she gave up the place in the scientific community she had fought for. Could she foresee that while McGill and Toronto were already employing single women scientists, they would expect most of them to resign when they married? Brooks Pitcher died in 1933, at age fifty-six, after a long, radiation-induced illness. Societal changes during the First World War led to women’s suffrage and to their widening educational opportunities. While Western societies still expected women to choose between family and profession, the shortage of teaching personnel during the war meant that educated, non-wage-earning women could be called on as a reserve workforce. Edith Dunington Berkeley

During the war, a middle-aged, married woman and mother of a teenage daughter, Edith Dunington (married name Berkeley) (1875–1963), an English-born graduate of University College of London University, was

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delighted to be finally offered a scientific position by the University of British Columbia (UBC).16 She had studied zoology and chemistry at London, but, after she married agricultural chemist Cyril Bergtheil (later Berkeley) in 1901, she accompanied him to Bihar, India. There he worked as imperial bacteriologist on indigo cultivation, but she could practise science only as an unpaid medical factotum for workers in an indigo factory. The harsh climate impaired her health, and the family left India in 1912. After visiting relatives in England, they migrated to Canada and settled in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, where in 1914 they began pig farming near Vernon. In 1916, when Cyril Berkeley was offered a teaching post at UBC as an assistant in bacteriology at $100 per month, his spouse became the first woman scientist to be hired by the university, as a class assistant in zoology at only $30 per month (even though they had similar qualifications from London). We do know that she preferred research to teaching, gave up her paid position after two years, and began an illustrious professional path as a volunteer scientist at the Pacific Biological Station, where she became a pioneer investigator in Polychaete taxonomy.17 Although she did not remain in academe, her hiring established precedents at UBC in two ways. First, when women, even married ones, were offered academic positions vacated by men during wars, it was as “special case” appointments. Second, these women were offered, and accepted, lower salaries than their male peers, because they preferred science to traditional female occupations.

Betwixt and Between: Family Life and/or Science Canadian university calendars and archives make it clear that during the 1920s few women scientists had permanent faculty positions.18 It is also apparent that during and after the First World War, most EnglishCanadian universities employed students (both women and men) as demonstrators or class assistants. An increasing number of women also enrolled in graduate science programs. This indicates both a more general acceptance of women into higher education and women’s desire to have interesting professional lives and financial independence. And while many women chose to remain independent and single, others planned to marry and work in science. After graduation, their experiences varied. Some women married and/ or worked in other non-scientific fields. A few had long-term academic

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posts even though they married. Others were expected by their employers to resign when they married, although this did not necessarily keep them out of science. Did academic administrators believe, as did men of previous generations, that married women/mothers could not give their full attention to science? Did they still regard double Nobel laureate Maria Skłodowska-Curie, who spent long hours at the laboratory bench and also found time for her husband and two children, as an anomaly? In the absence of letters, interviews, and other personal information, it is hard to determine how most Canadian women scientists viewed their options. Attitudes were changing in the 1920s, and this led to new expectations by aspiring professional women. Archival sources certainly indicate that most women scientists who were employed at Canadian universities during the 1920s and 1930s resigned on marriage, and unfortunately we do not know how they felt about it. The archival records reveal that many science students and graduates worked part time while bringing up children or accepted positions as “occasional” science workers, particularly during and after the Depression. Many others sought full-time, permanent academic employment, while an undetermined number quit university science and practised it vicariously through their husband’s research and through interaction with other scientists. Among those who quit academe on marriage and disappeared from the written record were University of Manitoba scientists Lily A. McCullough (MA), an assistant in the Department of Political Economy since 1917, and zoology lecturer Eileen Bulman (MA Columbia), who was hired in 1920. At Dalhousie, Merle Colpitt (married name Bronson) (1895–?) (BA 1917, MA 1918, Dalhousie) was a demonstrator in physics in 1917, the first woman scientist to be employed there. She was promoted to instructor in 1920. Unlike McCullough and Bulman, she did not leave immediately when she married, even though her husband, H.L. Bronson, was head of physics. “Merle Bronson” appears in the 1925–26 university calendar, but not in subsequent calendars. Did these women think that combining marriage and motherhood with science would lead to a life too complex to consider? Did they genuinely prefer to be homemakers rather than working scientists? Did they agree with their classmates and colleagues who felt that marriage was too confining and, like many women in the Western world, decided to remain single? To what extent did contemporary attitudes toward celibacy, sex, and marriage influence their choices?

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Veronica Strong–Boag wrote that between the wars “explicit information on sex was … hard … to come by, even for adults.”19 In the absence of safe and affordable contraception, fear of too many pregnancies and lack of a social support network probably influenced women’s choices well past 1950. So too did most universities’ widely varying, mostly unwritten practices regarding employment and retention of married women members of faculty. In this section we look principally at six women: Carol Anne Robertson Maass at McGill; Etta Reid Newlands at Queen’s; the itinerant Irene Biss Spry; and Mattie Levi Rotenberg, May Annetts Smith, and Laura Chalk Rowles at Toronto. Carol Anne Robertson Maass

While my oral history interviews and discussions with women scientists have given me valuable insights into some of their choices, most women of the second and third generations were reticent about their private lives. There was one fascinating exception, however. Carol Anne Robertson (married name Maass) (1902–?) was eighty-eight years old at the time of my interview. She was born in Lennoxville, Quebec, the daughter of a country doctor, and she was one of the promising women graduates who exchanged active science for marriage/motherhood. She developed an early interest in learning and a curiosity about how things happened.20 After studying at Trafalgar School for Girls in Montreal, she entered McGill in 1920 with a $100 scholarship that paid for her tuition fees while she lived at home, although Royal Victoria College served as her academic base. She was one of the few women students in the mixed introductory chemistry class, and she also studied English literature, mathematics, and physics. Although she wanted to become a teacher, she also took scientific German and French, necessary at the time for scientific research. In her third year, she enrolled in honours courses for her BS c, including one with Otto Maass, who had a “clear mind … [and was] a very good teacher.” She worked in the laboratory with his research (that is, graduate) students, some of whom came from the Universities of British Columbia and Manitoba. Initially, the shy and chivalrous Maass turned down her request to take her on as a research student for a master’s degree and offered her instead

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his support for a Moyse Travelling Fellowship. When he saw, however, that she was serious about continuing her studies, he complied. She was one of two women graduate students in chemistry, and the only one in physical chemistry. Maass taught all his students (including her) how to blow their own glassware and make their own laboratory equipment (both essential requirements in those days), but he did not treat her “as one of the boys.” Her master’s thesis was on sulphur dioxide, and, with the help of outside funding, she continued her research for a doctorate. In conversation with Vicki Marçok, she recalled that, despite planning to marry, she wanted to be able to earn her living but never seriously considered research after graduate school – there were few research positions available even for men. After her marriage to Maass in 1926, she continued her graduate studies and obtained her doctorate the following year. When their son was born in 1929, she became her husband’s “social secretary,” which enabled her to meet many local and visiting scientists and participate in discussions about science. She took lessons in art and enjoyed painting with Edwin Holgate, a non-founding member of the Group of Seven. As jobs were scarce during the Depression, it was not until the Second World War that she joined the workforce. She obtained a temporary position in the chemical comptroller’s office in the Department of National Defence. She retained her involvement in science and had an interesting and fulfilling life. None of the other interviewees provided comparable personal information, and I have been unable to find correspondence or diaries written by Canadian women professionals in the post-1920 period. Fortunately, three books published in the 1980s and 1990s consisted of essays by women who attended either McGill or Queen’s: Margaret Gillett and Kay Sibbald, eds., A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women;21 Margaret Gillett and Ann Beer, eds., Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical Essays by Women Associated with McGill University;22 and Joy Parr, ed., Still Running: Personal Stories by Queen’s Women Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marty Scholarship.23 These collections provide interesting reflections on the studies, aspirations, and professional experiences of dozens of women, several of whom were scientists. Although the essays deal with topics that the authors chose to present about their life and work, several illuminate their attitudes towards marriage and science. In particular, the women had a pragmatic acceptance of working on a “need to” basis. Their stories also bring

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to light their awareness or unawareness of gender issues as an influence on their own academic employment. The details of their experiences as occasional workers, for instance, add to the basic information that I obtained from the archival record about other women. At the University of British Columbia, perhaps because of the precedent set by the hiring of Dunington in 1916, there seemed to be no initial opposition to the hiring or retention of married women, although few had permanent positions until after 1950. Some of them worked in lowlevel positions as assistants and retained their posts at the whim of the department chair or president. Doris Lee (MA 1925), an assistant 1925–28 in the Department of Economics, Political Science and Sociology, continued to work after her wedding “as needed.” She was listed 1929–49 in the university calendars as “Mrs. Doris E. Lazenby.”24 I was unable to find any other information about her. Etta Reid Newlands

There are more official data but no personal information about Etta Reid (married name Newlands) (1869–1963) (MA 1892, Queen’s), a fifty-oneyear-old widow when in 1920 she became a part-time mathematics tutor at Queen’s. Her salary was, “according to work,” $500–$700 per year.25 In 1922, she became an instructor at $900 per year, when a male lecturer earned $2,000 and a male assistant $1,000. Her income rose to $1,000 in 1923, $1,100 in 1924, and $1,150 in 1926, when she went on leave for unspecified reasons. Perhaps her other interests took precedence. According to the Kingston Standard, 8 January 1925, “the Board of Education elected Mrs. Newlands as Chairman. She is the first woman to preside over any board of the Civic Administration.” Despite other commitments and poor health, she continued teaching as an underpaid, part-time instructor until the early 1930s. When her term as chair expired in 1932, the minutes of the university’s board of trustees noted that she “apparently regards herself on leave [therefore] a special note of her case to be made here … The Principal recommends that Mrs. Newlands be told the University will use her services in any year in which they may be required but that any subsequent appointment will be on an annual basis at a salary to be arranged.”26 She was thus the first female tutor in the Mathematics Department, although after 1918 single women had been hired as science tutors in physics and chemistry. While details of her life are not known, it is ap-

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parent that she managed to combine family life, some scientific work, and community involvement. Several years after Reid Newlands left Queen’s, Mrs Gerald Graham was hired as instructor of mathematics for 1945–46. She was to lecture nine hours per week for $1,500 per year.27 The Depression seriously influenced the employment, professional advancement, and earning power of men and women. Its long-term impact on women remained more serious than on men, particularly in the light of women’s earlier advances. During the Depression, most women science graduates were unable to find permanent “career-stream” academic positions. One reason was marriage to someone in the same field or at the same institution. This also happened outside academe. While Helen Battle (see chapter 3) obtained a permanent academic post at Western and retained it during the Depression, her contemporary Alfreda Berkeley (daughter of marine biologists Edith and Cyril Berkeley) did not fare as well. She was in the first generation of marine biology PhDs from Toronto, but after she married A.W.H. Needler at the beginning of the Depression, she was unable to find academic or government positions. As the mother of three children, she conducted pioneering research but had access to a laboratory only through her husband’s affiliations.28 Although documentation about the policy regarding married women faculty members is scarce, there are some tantalizing archival and interview records regarding official, unofficial, and personal decisions, particularly from the 1930s. In 1931, the board of governors at Toronto decided it “undesirable to employ married women … unless … such persons require to earn money for the support of their families.”29 Married women were employed there, too, as needed, but the minutes say nothing of that. In 1927, Adelaide Macdonald (married name Sinclair) (1900–1982) (BA 1924, MA 1925, Toronto) was appointed lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at Toronto. However, when she married Toronto lawyer Donald B. Sinclair in 1930, she quit; as she recalled in 1981, “I had already proved myself.” After the death of her husband in 1938, she moved to Ottawa and worked as an economist for the federal government. Later she was deputy executive director of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).30

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Irene Biss Spry

Political Economy at Toronto then hired Irene Biss (married name Spry) (1907–1998), who was born in South Africa and educated in England (BA , MA , Cambridge) and the United States (MA , Bryn Mawr). She was lecturer and then assistant professor 1929–38. After Harold Innis became head of the department in 1937, she worked with him on research that led to formulation of the staples approach to Canadian development.31 During my interview with Biss Spry in late 1990, she told me that when, in 1938, she married Graham Spry and left the department to go to England, Innis swore that he would never again hire a woman. In England, she taught 1938–39 at Girton College, a women’s college at Cambridge. While her husband was working in England, she returned to Ottawa to serve on the federal Wartime Prices Board. She recalled her later, lonely time raising three children while missing meaningful outside employment and stimulating discussions with colleagues.32 She did not teach again until 1967–68, when the University of Saskatchewan hired her, perhaps to replace the newly retired Mabel Timlin (see above). From 1968 until 1973, she was a faculty member at the University of Ottawa, eventually becoming full professor. Toronto was one of many Canadian universities that, during the 1930s, eliminated or reduced part-time posts, such as assistants, demonstrators, and instructors. Early in the war, Toronto and New Brunswick hired women graduates, instead of students, as teachers or laboratory personnel to replace male faculty members on war service. Lucy Winnifred Robinson (married name Bryce) (?–1967) provided another example. She had worked in India since 1913 but returned to Canada in 1937 to study anthropology at Toronto. In 1942, the Department of Anthropology took her on as a class assistant, but she did not stay long. Apparently the department or the university hired women PhDs as assistants rather than as lecturers to save money.33 Mattie Levi Rotenberg

Toronto’s Department of Physics employed Beatrice Reid Deacon and Mattie Levi Rotenberg whenever it needed them. Mattie Levi (married name Rotenberg) (1897–1989) (BA 1921, MA 1922, Toronto) had married and was expecting her first child when in 1926 she completed her PhD in physics34 – the first woman and the first Jew to do

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so at Toronto. Her thesis, “On the Characteristic X-Rays from Light Elements,” had appeared in 1924 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. By all account a brilliant thinker and writer, she did no scientific work during the Depression – perhaps partly by choice and partly because scientific work was not available. When, in the late 1980s, her daughter asked her, “If it were possible in your day for a woman to have a full-time career, would you have done it?” she replied: “Not if it meant not having a family.”35 Having a family did not mean, however, no outside work, and it helped that her husband, a lawyer, supported her activities. She was active in broadcasting and journalism throughout the 1930s and 1940s, winning the Canadian Women’s Press Club Memorial Award in 1945. She returned to the Physics Department at Toronto in 1941, working as assistant demonstrator three days per week at $1.25 per hour.36 She continued in that capacity, off and on, until 1947, when she became a demonstrator. For reasons that are unclear, she resigned in 1955, but she was rehired in 1956 as demonstrator, promoted to instructor in 1962, and listed as “an employee” for 1967–68.37 When she retired, she was seventy. May Annetts Smith

Another physicist, May Annetts (married name Smith) (b. 1906) (BA 1928, MA 1929, PhD 1933, Toronto), worked at her alma mater during and after her graduate studies. She was an assistant demonstrator 1928–30, assistant demonstrator and research assistant to E.F. Burton 1930–33, and demonstrator 1933–35.38 She briefly conducted research in Uppsala, Sweden, and after marrying Clarence E. Smith in 1936 moved to England. With the onset of war in 1939, the Smiths returned to Canada for him to join the School of Social Work at Manitoba. She served in the Department of Physics there as demonstrator 1940–41 and as assistant until 1949. The following year, she was appointed lecturer in mathematics, where her records in the university archives stop.39 Apparently, she moved in the early 1950s to Montreal, where she was a sessional lecturer 1955–56 in agricultural physics at McGill’s Macdonald College.40 Laura Chalk Rowles

The physicist Mary Laura Chalk (married name Rowles) (1904–1996) was born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and educated in Montreal. She

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was interested in arts and mathematics and at her high school graduation in 1921 obtained both a gold medal and the Macdonald Entrance Scholarship to McGill. Although she registered in arts, she took a first-year physics course taught by Arthur S. Eve, who encouraged her to enrol in his second-year engineering course in heat, light, and sound. Becoming fired with enthusiasm, she changed from arts to the honours program in mathematics and physics. In her autobiographical “Long Experience and a Happy Existence,” in Gillett and Beer’s Our Own Agendas,41 she wrote about her experiences as an occasional worker and her own unawareness of sexism and university politics. Though writing several decades after the events, she shows how one talented woman scientist dealt with the lack of a permanent academic post. Chalk Rowles won several scholarships as an undergraduate and, on graduation, the Anne Molson Gold Medal and a National Research Council Bursary. She opted to stay in Montreal and pursue research at McGill with physics professor John Stuart Foster. The research team included William Rowles, a graduate of Saskatchewan. In her essay, she wrote about her experiences in the laboratory – an invaluable glimpse of graduate research at McGill in the 1920s. Students built their own experimental equipment, and Foster’s two graduate students worked on the so-called Stark effect. After writing a master’s thesis, “Potential Distribution in the Crookes Dark Space,” Chalk Rowles entered the PhD program, as did her husband-to-be, and they both completed their theses under Foster’s supervision. Her “Observed Relative Intensities of Stark Components in Hydrogen” provided the first published data on Schrödinger’s wave mechanics.42 According to the historian of science Stephen G. Brush, “The earliest novel predictions of quantum mechanics were … the intensities of Stark components in the spectra of hydrogen and helium (i.e. lines shifted by an external electrical field).”43 According to Brush, Chalk Rowles’s work should have made her famous, because “her result [unlike Foster’s own, on helium] was not just a retrospective explanation of experimental facts already known, but confirmation of a prediction about new facts.”44 Chalk Rowles obtained her PhD in 1928, but her application for a Moyse Travelling Scholarship was turned down because of the false rumour that “she was engaged to be married.” In retrospect, although she admitted to having been disappointed, she did not see gender discrimination in what happened to her. Instead of pursuing postdoctoral research in

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England, she worked as a research assistant in Foster’s laboratory for a year, studying the effect of parallel electric and magnetic fields on the helium spectrum. Her second application for the Moyse Scholarship was successful, and for 1929–30 she went to England to work with the recent Nobel laureate O.W. Richardson, at King’s College, London.45 Richardson presented her results to the Royal Society (she was not a “fellow” – an FRS – so could not attend). While travelling in Europe, she received an appointment to teach physics at Macdonald College. She did not mention whether or not the McGill administration knew that her husband-to-be was by then chair of the Physics Department at Macdonald. Her full-time job lasted only one year, apparently not because she married in 1931, but because she chose to teach part time. Her well-composed life was not to last: “After I had spent about five years in this position, McGill decreed that, because of the state of the economy, no wives could hold [paid] positions in their husband’s departments. So, I lost my jobs and thereafter was employed intermittently ‘as needed.’” She replaced demonstrators and faculty teaching personnel until the Second World War. Then McGill hired her to teach a “crash” course in electricity theory to five hundred Royal Canadian Air Force men prior to their training as radar officers. After the war, she was again called “to help out.” She wrote: “Clearly I was never a famous scientist, but kept busy in my field a lot of the time and was glad to be needed.”46 The excellence of her doctoral research might well have gained her fame in her chosen field, but we will never know for sure. Yet the way she constructed it, her life was rich and satisfying. She had no children but had a very close relationship with her husband; she kept up with her scientific field and took advantage of being needed. She was also active in sports and enjoyed gardening. In her autobiographical essay, she recalled that she had been glad to be living in the twentieth century “to see all the technical progress and changing social behaviour … I have watched with interest the agitation of women as they have gradually been relieved of many of the duties of their forebears by modern inventions.” She perceived her dismissal during the Depression not as a gender issue but as due to a McGill “law … disallowing women in their husband’s department. Not because I was a woman, but because I was drawing a second salary which was earned in my husband’s department.”47 In fact

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there was no such “law” at McGill or anywhere else in Canada, although there were anti-nepotism practices that could be waived or invoked at the discretion of the university administration. Summary

In summary, Levi Rotenberg married “out of science” – her husband was a lawyer who supported her manifold interests but whose professional activities were outside academe. Other occasional workers, such as the physicists Annetts Smith and Chalk Rowles, married other scientists. Annetts Smith followed her husband to England and then back to Canada and never found permanent academic employment. We do not know how she viewed her situation: a married woman with a PhD in science who followed her husband’s professional path instead of developing one of her own. Did she plan to make a choice between family life and science? Or, as did many other pragmatic women scientists, did she make the best of available situations? Because she did not leave any papers, we do not know. By contrast, Chalk Rowles’s recollections illuminate her life and the choices that contributed to her composing a complex and interesting life. Many second-generation women scientists may never have considered making a choice. Their ideas of marriage differed from those of their mothers’ generation. Australian feminist writer Alison MacKinnon was fortunate to find diaries and correspondence that dealt with choices of professional and marital lives during the first half of the twentieth century. Her essay “Two Antagonistic Worlds? Love and the Life of the Mind,” in Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life,48 describes the dilemma emancipated women and men faced in Australia and the United States. She quotes from the correspondence of Jessie Lillingston (married name Street), an Australian feminist, and from the autobiography of American anthropologist Margaret Mead, both of whom successfully reconciled their married and professional lives. Their well-documented experiences as married women professionals stand in contrast to Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s statement: “Marriage, in short, is a bargain, like buying a house or entering a profession. One chooses it knowing that, by that very decision, one is abnegating other possibilities.”49 Heilbrun was a feminist literary scholar who taught at Columbia from 1960 to 1993. An outspoken critique of patriarchy, she had considerable awareness of women’s position in Western societies and had exten-

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sive knowledge of feminist theory and literature. Her retroactive analysis was quite different from those of women scientists who functioned before the second feminist movement of the 1960s. By today’s standards, few women scientists before the 1960s had a good understanding of their own situation. There were relatively few women in each university science department, if any at all, and they may not have been aware of the writings of some of the more outspoken feminists of their times. Although women professors such as Helen Battle at Western and Dixie Pelluet at Dalhousie (see the next section) mentored their female students, this mentoring most likely did not include feminist consciousness-raising. Thus most aspiring women scientists did not know that they were likely to “abnegate all other possibilities” when they married. UBC scientist Gertrude May Smith (married name Watney) (1902–1985) was among those unaware of feminist issues, particularly systemic sexism in academe. She first worked at UBC as a class assistant in botany after her BA in 1923 (she was first listed in the UBC calendar in 1924–25). In 1927, after her MA in 1926, she was promoted to instructor in zoology, and in 1930 she advanced to assistant professor.50 Although she obtained a PhD in 1934 from the University of California, Berkeley, she remained an assistant professor until 1940. A dedicated scientist who enjoyed her studies and professional life, she produced eight important papers between 1927 and 1940. In a letter to the author, she recalled that, after she married a professor at the Anglican Theological College (affiliated with UBC) in 1937, she retained her position “until there was a change in the head of the Department of Zoology in 1940 … When I left the University in 1940 I no longer had access to a laboratory or equipment.” In retrospect, she thought for a long time that she was not treated differently because she was a woman, but after her dismissal she did wonder if her married status “influenced the decision of the new Head … not to renew my appointment in 1940.”51 In fact, she was not the only person whose appointment was terminated without explanation. During 1940, a male “associate professor of education with 10 years’ service found that he was no longer wanted, though no one would tell him why.” Apparently the university “did not have to give a reason for not renewing a contract.”52

Marriage and Full-time Employment? The records of the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) document the interests and research accomplishments of several women

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science graduates who received Travelling Fellowships from the CFUW. In the mid-1980s, I interviewed two of them who married and retained fulltime employment: Eleanor Dowding Keeping and Dixie Pelluet Hayes (see about both below). Dowding Keeping was partially deaf from an early age, but this disability did not stop her from living a full life. Although I was somewhat concerned about being able to discuss her life and work, I found that by writing out the interview questions in large block letters I elicited thoughtful responses and reflections. Although the Canadian civil service had rules against nepotism and restrictions on the employment of married women,53 academe, which tended not to have formal rules on either subject, seems to have used the allegation of nepotism as a way to keep out women. American historian Margaret Rossiter observed: “How these informal practices and expectations became rules is not clear.”54 At Dalhousie, according to historian Judith Fingard, “hiring was based on personal recommendation.” This practice allowed married women to help their husbands and permitted qualified widows to take over their husbands’ classes.55 It was not until the 1950s that Dalhousie tried to ensure that the wives of faculty members had only low-level positions and one-year appointments. Even worse discrimination occurred in 1952 at Memorial, when the administration “codified and published the usual terms of employment for faculty … The faculty countered with various complaints. One of their official stands was that marriage should not change a woman’s appointment. The administration agreed to negotiate.”56 In fact, it was not until the early 1960s that the “administration changed its exclusionary rule.” Many university administrations conveniently ignored these practices when that suited their purposes, as we see below about eleven women. The first two are Eleanor Dowding Keeping, who ended up leaving academe, and Dixie Pelluet Hayes at Dalhousie. Next we consider three women at McGill: Kathleen Godwin Terroux, Helen MacGill Hughes, and Annie Porter Fantham. Three at Toronto follow: Norma Ford Walker, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and Jeanne Manery Fisher. We examine next the experience of someone we might call a freelancer, Eleanor Clarke Hay, and two women who spent part of their careers at New Brunswick: Norah Barry Toole and Althea Warren Macaulay. Eleanor Dowding Keeping

Eleanor Silver Dowding (married name, Keeping) (1903–1991) obtained her BS c in 1922 and her MS c in 1924 at Alberta, being appointed lecturer in

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botany on graduation. She was one of the three women to teach science at Alberta in the early 1920s, along with Grace Anna Stewart (1893–1970), a student assistant 1919–20 to John Andrew Allen in the Department of Geology, and Dixie Pelluet Hayes (see below) who became a laboratory assistant to William Rowan in the Department of Zoology in 1921. During summers, Dowding Keeping conducted field work near Edmonton. In 1928, she received the CFUW ’s Travelling Fellowship and went to Cambridge, England, for a year of postgraduate study. But Cambridge did not confer graduate degrees on women, and she returned to Canada to take up a doctoral scholarship at Manitoba, where she became a protégée of the eminent botanist Reginald Buller. In 1931, she obtained her PhD and married University of Alberta mathematician Fred S. Keeping. He was “keenly interested in her work … [and] encouraged her lively interest in continuing her research, although as the wife of a faculty member she could not expect to receive a salary.”57 So instead she found a position with the Provincial Laboratory of Public Health, where she became a pioneer investigator in medical mycology. In 1954, she gave up her work in public health and became an unpaid research associate at Alberta (bacteriology, 1954–57; botany, 1958–61; and genetics, 1962–64). When I interviewed her in her home in 1985, she was still fascinated by science. Dixie Pelluet Hayes

In the mid-1980s, Judith Fingard wrote about the case of biologist Dixie Pelluet (married name Hayes) (1896–1990) (BA 1919, Alberta; MA 1920, Toronto) in “Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie: Faculty Women before 1950.”58 Despite anti-nepotism practices at Dalhousie, Pelluet Hayes worked there until her retirement in 1964. I later explored her situation from a different perspective and wrote about her in “Last in the Field?”59 and, more recently, in “Gendered Careers.”60 From my 1986 interview with Pelluet Hayes, it is clear to me that only her clever strategy after marrying her colleague Ronald Hayes kept her at Dalhousie.61 English-born, she studied botany before working briefly as a laboratory assistant in zoology with William Rowan at Alberta. On his advice, and with a CFUW travelling fellowship, she went to University College, London, in 1921 to undertake research with ecologist Francis Wall Oliver. There she became more interested in ecology and biology and changed her field to zoology. Her graduate work took her to Bryn Mawr College, and, after graduation, in 1927, she taught at various American colleges because she was unable to find a position in Canada.

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In 1931, physicist A.S. Mackenzie, president of Dalhousie, who knew her from Bryn Mawr and who had no objections to hiring female faculty members, invited her to teach elementary zoology at $2,000 a year. With her excellent training and glowing recommendations, she negotiated to start at $2,600 per year. She began as lecturer but rose to assistant professor the following year. In 1934, she became engaged to her biology colleague Ronald Hayes. She asked Dalhousie’s new president, Carleton Stanley, to give his “word as a gentleman” that she could continue to teach and conduct her research in fish embryology after marriage. She did not admit until after the wedding that she was marrying another Dalhousie scientist and, more specifically, one from her own department. Even though she had not told Stanley the whole truth, he still honoured his promise. The Hayeses had no children. She was thirty-eight when they married, and she was well aware of her own worth as a scientist and academic. Although it took ten years for her to reach associate professor, her salary, like those of other faculty members at Dalhousie, remained frozen until 1947. She was more aware of gender issues than most of her contemporaries. In 1952, disappointed about her slow promotion and her relatively low pay, she wrote to President A.E. Kerr: “I have been unjustly penalized for a) my sex which I cannot help, b) my marital status which is my private concern and does not interfere with the fulfilling of my academic duties.”62 Although originally Dalhousie expected women to retire at age sixty, it changed the rule, and she worked until sixty-eight, in 1964. She was appointed full professor only three months before her retirement, and it took three men to replace her.63 At the time of the interviews, I was still at the beginning of my research on women and science and asked different questions than I would have asked a few years later. I do not know if the women scientists to whom I talked were familiar with the official positions of the CFUW and the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) regarding married women in the professions. Were they aware that the Fourth Conference of the IFUW in Amsterdam in 1926 “focused strongly on the right of married women to practice a profession”?64 However, the CFUW remained ambivalent about awarding travelling fellowships to women who planned to marry. The report of CFUW Convenor Geneva Misener and the Scholarship Committee for 1928–29 refers to the committee’s dilemma when scholarship winner Ellen Hemmeon, dean of women and instructor of French and English at Mount Allison,

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announced her approaching marriage. “Her application was … made in good faith and her decision to marry very recent.” In fact, committee members were unsure whether or not to withdraw the award, but on “the advice of the President of the Federation and other members of the Executive, it was decided that the committee had no power to change the award.” In the event, Hemmeon decided “that she could not fulfil the conditions of the scholarship.”65 Did women scientists know that the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada supported the graduate work only of single women? Carol Anne Robertson Maass, Mattie Levi Rotenberg, and Laura Chalk Rowles, all of whom we met in the previous section, were among those women who received NRC funds and subsequently married. Robertson Maass received a bursary in 1924–25 and a studentship worth $1,000 the following year. She obtained her doctorate in 1927, the year after she married. Levi Rotenberg obtained the NRC Bursary in 1921–22, married in 1926, and completed her doctorate in 1927. Chalk Rowles was the recipient of a studentship in 1925–26. By the mid-1920s, six of the twenty-four women scholarship graduates had married, a clear indication that, following women’s suffrage, many educated women no longer saw marriage and a professional life as mutually exclusive. Kathleen Godwin Terroux

McGill becomes our focus for this biography and the next two. Of the six married women listed in the 1924–25 report whom the NRC funded as graduate students, only the twice-married Kathleen Godwin Terroux retained her full-time academic positions throughout her married life. This is puzzling. Kathleen Godwin (married names Pinhey, then Terroux) (1900–1984) (BA 1921, MS c 1922) worked at McGill in two departments from 1920 until 1982, which makes her the longest-serving member of the “bridging generation” – the women scientists who began their academic work before 1939 and maintained or improved their positions until well past 1950. In the 1920s, Godwin Terroux was one of two women demonstrators in McGill’s Zoology Department, even after she married J.W. Pinhey in 1922 (the other was Jean T. Henderson [MS c 1926], who moved to England when she married W.P. Phillips). Godwin was one of the first recipients, in 1921–22, of a NRC bursary of $750 “given to men (or women) who have already graduated from a university and have shown aptitude or ability in

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the field of scientific research.”66 She later held a Philip Carpenter Fellowship in Zoology at McGill. She became a lecturer in the late 1920s and obtained her PhD in 1930. I could find no information about her first husband and do not know whether she was a young widow or a divorcée when she married McGill physics professor Ferdinand Terroux. Although it is not clear whether her subsequent shift to demonstrator was due to her marital status or to the Depression, she retained her academic post throughout the 1930s.67 In 1944, she transferred to the Department of Physiology, where she conducted research with A.S.V. Burgen. She was appointed associate professor in 1961 and retired in 1969 but continued as a senior demonstrator until 1982. The Kathleen Terroux Prize, established in 1981, goes annually to the best physiology undergraduate at McGill. Helen MacGill Hughes

Macdonald College was the suburban campus of McGill University when it hired Chalk Rowles in 1930, when she was still single. Her marriage to the department head in 1931 did not cause her dismissal. It seems that, at Macdonald at least, hiring a married woman into, or retaining a married one in, a relatively minor position did not create waves, unlike the situation at McGill’s main, downtown campus, as we see vis-à-vis both Helen MacGill Hughes and Annie Porter Fantham. Helen MacGill (married name Hughes) (1902–1992) (PhD 1937, Chicago), a Vancouver-born graduate student in sociology at Chicago and new wife of fellow sociology student Everett Hughes, moved to Montreal with him in 1927. He obtained an academic appointment at McGill, and she, too, had hoped for the same. While working on her dissertation, she was a part-time teaching fellow (1927–30) at McGill and later an assistant in sociology (1929–37). She probably did some teaching as well as research for a token salary, and the position must have been so insignificant (and so useful to her department) as to escape the notice of, or at least not disturb, the higher administration. Her husband held a full-time position at McGill from 1927 to 1937, and his own work on his famous book French Canada in Transition68 certainly benefited from her research skills. Although she participated in the field work in French and no doubt in the data analysis, and also typed the manuscript, they did not share authorship.69 In fact, the Hugheses did not publish jointly until the early 1950s, long after they moved to the United States.70

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Annie Porter Fantham

In contrast, Annie Porter Fantham was a well-known scientist from England and, unlike MacGill Hughes, did not benefit from benign neglect. She worked in McGill’s Zoology Department without pay, and her few, very reasonable requests after her husband’s death seem to have evoked harsh treatment and strong emotions among her colleagues and the administration. In 1932, the department was seeking a new head, and, despite strong opposition, hired Harold B. Fantham, a British parasitologist working in South Africa. Principal Sir Arthur Currie opposed the employment of Fantham’s wife, Annie Porter, a well-known parasitologist, because he “did not like husband-and-wife business.”71 Annie Porter (married name Fantham) (1880–1963) had been Fantham’s student at the University of London. The two married in 1915, when he was serving as a protozoologist for the British army during the First World War. After he was invalided out in 1917, the couple moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, where they both had faculty positions at the University of Witwatersrand. Despite her teaching and research experience, Currie would make her only a research associate, a position without stipend. She had been described as a “scientist in her own right, very clever,” but, lacking an appropriate academic position, she subsumed her own scientific life into a “two-person single career.”72 The Fanthams’ lives revolved around his teaching and their scientific research. They were childless, “eccentric but sincere people,” who, for reasons that are unclear, were unpopular in the department. After his unexpected death in 1937, personal animosities came into play. It became clear that his widow and zoology professor T.W.M. Cameron, also a parasitologist, had been “scientifically jealous enemies” prior to the Fanthams’ move to McGill. This animosity contributed to the department’s wish to get rid of Porter Fantham. With twenty years of teaching experience, she had hoped to take over her late husband’s classes and asked permission to do so. She was told that Mrs Terroux (see above) and a Mrs Richardson had already “done some lecturing during the emergency” (that is, following Fantham’s death). Terroux and Richardson were married women in low and seemingly insignificant positions, which they managed to retain during the Depression. Perhaps they were not a threat to their male colleagues. Evidently, Porter Fantham was.

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I found no further correspondence at McGill regarding Porter’s fate at that institution, but some letters turned up from other sources. To Principal H.R. Raikes at Witwatersrand, she wrote in April 1938 that she was completing joint publications. “I have numerous offers of positions but shall probably go to London in July.”73 Before she left, she established a scholarship at McGill in the name of her late husband. Norma Ford Walker

The case of Norma Ford Walker – at Toronto, like our next two subjects – clearly shows a satisfactory professional life regardless of the personal biases of university administrators or institutional anti-nepotism practices. Norma Ford (married name Walker) (1893–1968) (BA 1918, PhD 1923) was a well-established, middle-aged scientist when she married the head of the Department of Zoology at Toronto in 1943, after a quarter-century at the university. She worked first as a class assistant in biology 1917–18, then as a special assistant in household science 1918–23. Following completion of her doctorate in 1923, she was hired as instructor and departmental secretary in Zoology. Karen Kelly wrote that although Department Head Benjamin Arthur Bensley “objected to women teaching[,] he grudgingly hired Ford Walker as the department’s first female instructor in 1924.”74 She rose through the ranks – to lecturer in 1925, assistant professor in 1930, associate professor in human biology in 1937, and professor of zoology in 1943, the year she married Department Chair Edmund Murton Walker. After the Second World War, the scientist-spouses of male faculty members who had received special-case appointments during the war lost their faculty positions. However, Ford Walker, who had entered the ranks decades before her marriage, was able to continue until her retirement in 1962 at age sixty-nine. At the same university, Toronto, Helen Sawyer Hogg in Astronomy and Jeanne Manery Fisher in Zoology were not so fortunate. Their cases remind me once again how difficult it is to discern long-term patterns in the life-course of women scientists. During the war, these two figures had similar experiences, but their different disciplines and personal circumstances later led to dissimilar professional trajectories. Both women were excellent scientists in their own right; both were wives and mothers with husbands who had better faculty positions than they at Toronto – not because they were better scientists but simply because they were men.75

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I was fortunate to have several conversations with Helen Sawyer Hogg, which illuminated her feeling about being a married woman scientist with three children. Jeanne Manery Fisher died before I could interview her. Helen Sawyer Hogg

Helen Sawyer (married name Hogg) (1905–1993), one of Canada’s bestknown scientists and an astronomer of world renown, experienced several distinct phases throughout her professional life. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, she early developed a keen interest in nature. Brought up and influenced by two strong, educated women (her mother and her aunt), she met forceful women scientists at Mount Holyoke, a women’s liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she studied chemistry.76 In her junior year, she took Anne Young’s astronomy course, which included a trip to Connecticut to view a total eclipse of the sun on 24 January 1925. More than half a century later, she recalled: “The glory of the spectacle seems to have tied me to astronomy for life.”77 She gave up chemistry to concentrate on astronomy and graduated with honours in 1926. Then, with the support of the well-known astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, she obtained the Edward C. Pickering Fellowship of $600 at the Harvard Observatory. Having developed a “fondness” for globular star clusters – groups that contain some of the oldest stars in our galaxy – she looked forward to working with the world’s authority, Harlow Shapley. She studied photographic plates from the observatory’s collection to identify variable stars – that is, stars that give out varying amounts of light. At the December 1927 meeting of the American Astronomical Society at Yale University, a lecture by Jan Schilt of Columbia about the lack of meaningful material on “the period-luminosity curve for Cepheids in globular clusters” redirected her, “still searching for a research mission in life.”78 Thus, with her adviser’s help, she branched out into an area that led to a career of her own and involved research that refuted his theories. Frank Scott Hogg, a Canadian astronomer, arrived at the Harvard Observatory. Harvard had several astronomical couples, which may have encouraged Sawyer and Hogg. They married on 6 September 1930, and she still obtained a teaching post in astronomy at Mount Holyoke. After teaching there for one year while finishing her dissertation at Radcliffe, she and her husband moved to western Canada. She had two tempting offers: to teach at Harvard and to do research at the Dominion Astro-

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physical Observatory (DAO) in Victoria, British Columbia, with its director, John Stanley Plaskett, on the radial velocity and rotation of the galaxy. In Canada, federal (“dominion”) observatories did most of the astronomy, and universities offered no graduate work. Astronomers, like other government scientists, had to conform to rigid regulations, and women scientists, like all women in the civil service, could not remain on the payroll after their marriage.79 Plaskett felt lucky to obtain funds to hire Hogg at $1,200 per year, but he could not employ his wife.80 Plaskett was pleased, however, to have her work at the DAO (with a desk in Hogg’s office) and offered her access to the seventy-two-inch telescope. She was the first woman to use the instrument (Allie V. Douglas of McGill obtained access to it in 1932). Only seven years previously, Plaskett did not hire Cecilia Payne (later Payne-Gaposchkin) because “there would be difficulty about the observing end of it with a woman in this isolated place.”81 As a married woman without a salary, Sawyer Hogg had a husband as her “built-in chaperon.”82 When I interviewed her in 1991, she was eightysix and still convinced that it was her own publication record (from 1927 to 1932, thirteen papers at Harvard – seven with Shapley, and six on her own), that prompted Plaskett to offer her both the “use of the telescope for … research on variables in globular clusters and office space with her husband.”83 Plaskett’s offer ensured that her husband would accept the position. Sawyer Hogg was the first person to use the telescope for direct photography, instead of spectroscopy. This was quite a challenge. At Harvard, she had done no direct observation, although at Mount Holyoke she had used an eight-inch Alvan Clark refractor telescope. She now found photography with a huge instrument a totally new experience. It took Hogg and a technical assistant several weeks to convert the telescope for direct photography. Finally, on 22 September 1931, Sawyer Hogg exposed photographic plates and recorded globular clusters for the first time. Hogg, who had used the sixty-inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1930, and night-assistant Frank Hutchinson were there to help her. Nearly fifty years later, she recalled her routine: “I stayed all night at the top of the dome and after each exposure, let the plate holder down in an old leather handbag to observers on the floor below, who swiftly in the darkroom replaced the exposed plate with a fresh one, and I hauled the bag up again.” In October, the earth’s revolution precluded further direct photography.

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During the winter, she helped her husband with his spectroscopy – “behind-the-scenes help … like typing manuscripts, not the kind you acknowledge.”84 The rest of the time, she studied short-period Cepheids by using previously collected plates from the southern hemisphere. She returned to night observation only at the end of July 1932, carrying her five-week-old daughter Sally in a basket. “As I was nursing, this meant that she had to come to the dome with us for the night.”85 The baby’s presence at the observatory did not last long. Plaskett received a grant of $200 per year from the Gould Fund of the US National Academy of Sciences, which he turned over to Sawyer Hogg, who hired a capable live-in maid.86 During 1934, Hogg received a position as lecturer in astronomy at Toronto. In addition to teaching, he was to conduct research using the new seventy-four-inch telescope at the David Dunlap Observatory at Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. The proximity of their families, work on the radial velocities of stars using the best telescope in Canada, and $2,000 per year, an average salary, made the new position attractive. Hogg became an assistant professor in 1936, an associate professor in 1942, and a professor of astronomy and director of the observatory in 1946. He was president 1941–42 of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, published numerous scientific and popular articles, and invented the twostar sextant. By 1935, he was well launched on an illustrious career, while his wife remained unemployed, although they shared an office at the University of Toronto. She recalled that observatory founder Dr C.A. Chant “had great respect for me and my ability[,] and it was just taken for granted that I would share Frank’s office.” She worked without pay at the observatory on her own research program on variables and star clusters.87 In 1936, Director R.K. Young hired her as a research assistant for $300 per year. She gave birth to sons David and James in January 1936 and September 1937, respectively, but household help was available and affordable, and she enjoyed three years of intensive research. The pay was poor even after she became a research associate in 1939 – never more than $500 a year until the early 1940s.88 She wrote papers on, and her first catalogue of, variables in globular clusters. In 1941, she became lecturer of astronomy at the university for about $1,100 per year. Later, she rationalized that she was paid less than other university lecturers “because she was a woman and the wife of a higher ranking faculty member.” The war probably made this appointment possible – many faculty members were absent on service. The department hired also Ruth Northcott (MA 1935,

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Toronto). Although she never married, her career advanced slower than Sawyer Hogg’s – she became lecturer in 1944, assistant professor in 1954, and associate professor in 1962. Hogg, who had a heart condition as a result of childhood rheumatic fever, taught most of the undergraduate and graduate courses in astronomy and at night worked at the observatory, commuting to suburban Richmond Hill even on freezing winter nights. Sawyer Hogg taught two courses, commuted with him, continued with her own research, spent time with her children, and discussed science with her husband and their colleagues.89 Although they worked on different scientific problems within astronomy, her work required a two-person team, and he helped her. While she observed nightly from the top of the telescope, he remained on the platform below to receive the exposed photographic plates. She helped him with measuring plates of some of his observations and later with typing and editing his popular astronomy column in the Toronto Star. With his encouragement, she spent most of her time on research. Her discoveries made her well known. This disconnect between her status (lecturer) and her fame may seem an anomaly to us today, but it was not unusual during mid-century, particularly in an incompletely professionalized science.90 She was president 1940–41 of the American Association of Variable Star Observers and the first woman in the physical science division elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (which embarrassed her, as her husband was not elected). In 1950, she received the prestigious Annie Jump Cannon Prize of the American Astronomical Society. During my interview in 1991, she recalled that her colleagues at the university “treated her respectfully,” particularly after the Cannon Prize.91 Hogg died on 1 January 1951, and his premature death improved her career (as Pierre Curie’s did for Maria Skłodowska-Curie92) – it “made all the difference in the world” professionally. The university president promoted her to assistant professor in 1951. She became associate professor in 1955 and full professor in 1957. In 1991 she remarked, “I don’t know if I ever would have become full professor being married to a scientist.”93 She became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1968 and a companion in 1976, an honour she greatly valued. She received numerous honorary doctorates and prizes, including the 1983 Klumpke-Roberts award. In 1984, a minor planet was named Sawyer-Hogg after her. When I last met her in 1992, she proudly told me that the University of Toronto dedicated “its 61 cm telescope on Las Campanas, Chile, in honour of Profes-

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sor Emerita Helen Sawyer Hogg to celebrate her lifetime of accomplishment.”94 Later that year she received the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation for her “significant contributions to Canada.”95 An emerita professor beginning in 1976, she remained active to the end. Though ill in later years, she published articles on astronomy and the history of astronomy and worked on star clusters and on her fourth catalogue of variable stars. She prepared an audio-recording on the role of women in science two days before her death on 28 January 1993.96 Jeanne Manery Fisher

Jeanne Manery (married name Fisher) (1908–1986) (BA 1932, MA 1933, PhD 1935, Toronto) was born and educated in Ontario and was encouraged by her family and teachers to go to university. After attending Toronto Normal School 1925–26, she taught in a public school for two years and, with money saved from teaching, entered university. Many years later she recalled that with “scholarships, borrowed money and help from my family I managed to survive at the University of Toronto for 4 years.”97 In her retirement speech in 1975, she recalled: “[My] choice of a course in the Biological and Medical Sciences was based on trivialities and naivety; it was rated as a difficult, ‘men only’ course; it was biological science but not household science, which I was assured by some to be more suitable for women; it was a route to high school teaching and medicine.”98 The biochemist Hardolph Wasteneys was her mentor, and thanks to him she was a demonstrator 1932–35 in the Department of Physiology and received the opportunity to attend a summer session at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Station in Massachusetts. There the intellectual give-and-take, the research, and the generosity of the marine biologists strengthened her wish to become a biochemist. On the advice of the director, Laurence Irving, she applied for a postdoctoral fellowship from the US National Research Council. She was successful and spent 1935–37 at the University of Rochester, New York, and at Harvard Medical School. In 1937 she returned to the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, serving 1937–39 as an instructor. In 1938, she married Kenneth Fisher, “a man who could live … in a world of science, which comprised women and men in equal partnership.”99 He was an assistant professor of zoology at Toronto. She left Rochester in

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1939 to be with him and took a less interesting and poorer-paid job at Toronto in the Department of Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine – “in flagrant opposition to the [university’s] policy of having no married women on staff, but … the position was so unimportant.” Wasteneys continued to mentor her. Apparently, he “paid lip service to the rules and unobtrusively helped … in many ways. For example he made my training of graduate students possible.”100 During the Second World War, Manery Fisher took over her husband’s laboratory and course work in the Department of Zoology. She earned $1,700 for 1944–45. Her mother looked after the couple’s young children: Ken, born in 1942, and Marjorie, born in 1945. Without her mother’s help and “special permission to enroll our son (and later our daughter) in the [university’s] Institute of Child Study … the war-engendered assignments would have been impossible.” She was one of several wives who, “given Special Lecturer Status, assumed their husbands’ responsibilities during the war years.”101 When their husbands returned after the war, these women either lost their appointments or were demoted to low-paying, low-prestige positions. As demonstrator, Manery Fisher now earned only $1,100 per year (her earlier salary).102 She became a part-time assistant professor in biochemistry in 1948, full time in 1953, associate professor in 1959, full professor in 1965, and professor emerita on retirement in 1977. Although she was an excellent scientist, her professional advancement was slower than her husband’s because she was “born forty years too early and of the wrong sex.”103 I do not know when she became an outspoken feminist. Her protégée, Rose Sheinin, an eminent biochemist, quoted her as saying, “As life returned to normalcy after the war, slowly and unobtrusively but with great certainty, any real or imagined discrimination, in my own environment, against women seemed to disappear. Perhaps this applied only to those of us who had demonstrated that we too, had chosen a profession.”104 Manery Fisher continued to observe inequalities in her discipline, and the lack of women at scientific meetings dismayed her. She had “defined herself as a scientist” at an early age and “chose friends and mentors who were of like mind.” She was a member of the Canadian Biochemical Society (CBS) and the Canadian Guild of Biochemists but “never had the opportunity to contribute to CBS policy.” She believed that “if you are endowed with scientific curiosity and a love of research and teaching, stay in the game. It is the best sport in

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the world. I am happy that I chose the right profession and that, though female, I stayed with it regardless of the weather.”105 And stay she did, although later she felt that “compared with my male peers my career has been unusual only in the slow pace at which the ladder was climbed.” Her promotion to full professor took ten years (it took her husband eight), but this was not an unusual pace for the times. Slower promotions for women affected pay and pensions, as many other women scientists observed, including Pelluet Hayes at Dalhousie and, a generation later, Rose Johnston at McGill. At her retirement party in 1975, Manery Fisher cautioned her younger female colleagues: “You will find the going easier now that some of us have blazed the trail but make no mistake, you have a long way to go and the road is still rough. The International Women’s Year has helped to change the atmosphere somewhat. With regret, however, I am inclined to view it as a neophyte attempt at Mission Impossible. Moreover, the I.W.Y. has forced you to cope with a new problem – ‘Token’ recognition. You will be wise and accept recognition based solely on merit.”106 Women’s caucuses were springing up in scientific societies to examine the status of women in science and to account for their low representation in the higher echelons of scientific societies. Manery Fisher was a moving force behind the CBS’s forming an Equal Opportunities Committee in 1980.107 Despite her slow academic advancement, she published numerous prestigious papers on electrolytes and received wide recognition for them.108 In 1960, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial. Following her death in 1986, the CBS established the Jeanne Manery Fisher Lecture Award. Norah Barry Toole

The chemist Norah Vernon Barry (married name Toole) (1906–1990) was also a member of the ‘bridging generation’ of women in science. Her experiences in and out of the laboratory document issues of balancing motherhood, science, and social activism. In addition, her life-path illustrates the vagaries of Canadian academic anti-nepotism practices and the effects of part-time and/or low-level academic employment on women’s earning power and pensions. Barry Toole did not publish scientific papers, made no scientific discoveries, and won no awards for her scientific work. Nevertheless she was a well-known figure on the Fredericton campus of the University of New

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Brunswick (UNB) and its environs. She influenced countless science students, fought for human rights and peace, and in 1984 received the Person’s Award for her many contributions.109 I first heard her name in 1990, at the Canadian Society for Chemistry Annual Conference in Halifax, where I was presenting a paper on Canadian women chemists. Did I know, asked her friend and former colleague Marie MacBeath that Norah had died? I admitted that I had never even heard of her. As MacBeath talked to me about this fascinating woman, I realized that her experiences could help me understand the lives of Canadian women in science. Soon, I was reading her official and personal correspondence in the university archives. I also travelled to Grand Manan Island to interview members of her family. Through several other visits to New Brunswick, I came to know and like this woman. She became a valuable part of my research, a role model, whose example reinforced my belief that scientists can and do contribute to science in a variety of ways – and particularly that women without conventional professional lives can still affect science and society. Barry, daughter of a bank manager, was born at Smiths Falls, Ontario. Her family moved periodically, and she attended schools in Quebec. She was an independent girl who was interested in sports in addition to a range of academic subjects. She decided to study science because she was a poor speller and because her parents never told her that she could not do it because she was a girl.110 Living in Montreal, after graduating from Montreal High School for Girls she entered McGill, where by 1920 women had obtained higher education for forty years. It is not known why she chose chemistry rather than physics or biology. She entered chemistry in 1925 and completed a BS c in 1929. While at McGill, she met and fell in love with Frank (Francis) Toole, a Britishborn chemical engineer who returned to university after the First World War to obtain a doctorate in chemistry. After graduation, she worked as a laboratory technician at the Royal Victoria Hospital for a year, and then taught chemistry at Montreal High School for Girls. In 1934, she married Toole and moved to Fredericton, where he taught chemistry at UNB. At UNB, Barry Toole found no professional opportunities for a young faculty wife, and, like many other science-educated wives of scientists, she was unwilling to give up her scientific training. She later recalled that she “looked forward to helping Frank in the chemistry department.”111 Becoming his unpaid assistant, she helped him mark exams, cleaned up

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the laboratory, and acted as an unpaid instructor during the summers of 1934 and 1935. Shortage of male scientific personnel during the Second World War led to her first paid position since her marriage. Women had been admitted as students to UNB since 1887, but there were no women faculty members until 1939.112 That year, the psychologist Louise Thompson became UNB’s first woman scientist, but as an assistant in education, not in psychology. As we see below, the biologist Althea Warren Macaulay replaced her in 1942. In 1941 Frances Crocker became an assistant in biology, and in 1942 Florence Bailey became a technician and Dorothy McBride (BS c 1940, MA 1942) an assistant, both in zoology. The 1943 calendar lists MacBride as “Acting Professor Zoology.” Apparently, during the war she took “over some of the courses formerly given by Dr. William S. Hoar.”113 In 1942, Barry Toole became a laboratory instructor in chemistry. The Senate minutes for 13 October 1942 state: “Dr. F.J. Toole of the Department of Chemistry found it necessary to have a laboratory assistant and Mrs. Toole has been engaged temporarily at Fifty Dollars (50.00) per month. She is a trained teacher in Chemistry.”114 She already had two children (Barry, born 1936, and Brigid, born 1938). She was also very active in social issues: she was a member of a Women’s Study Club, which discussed current international affairs; she helped run a canteen on campus for army personnel; and she gave talks for the Trans-Canada Matinee program of CBC on being a working woman. Her husband supported her interests, and they had maids to help at home.115 Her position was made “regular” (permanent) in 1944. She was “in charge of the freshman laboratory, including direction of course (lecture and laboratory work) and supervision of demonstrators.”116 With the return of veterans, her workload increased considerably, and she taught three day and three night classes per week with only a graduate student to assist her. Yet she campaigned for women’s right to vote in municipal elections, even if they did not own property, and she became the first chair of the Citizenship Committee of the new Fredericton Council of Women. In addition, she surveyed existing services for European immigrants. When she found that the “oldest Canadians” – that is, First Nations – had little access to social services, she organized the Native/European Goodwill Association. She visited reserves, including the local Malecite one, where she encouraged formation of a home-and-school association, and she was instrumental in establishing a kindergarten and summer

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arts program for the children. In later years, she actively supported nonstatus women in their quest to regain their First Nations status. Her increasing awareness of racism in Canada, together with her concern for marginalized people, led to her increasing her involvement at the local and provincial levels, in addition to being a full-time, underpaid, laboratory instructor at UNB. She joined the Voice of Women (a new Canadian peace organization) in 1960, serving as its national vicepresident and provincial representative, and in 1966 she formed the Fredericton branch. Even though she had worked hard for the war effort twenty years earlier, she became a peace activist and feminist who campaigned against Canadian policies that abetted the war in Vietnam (for example, supplying weapons to the United States). She disliked public demonstrations but took part in many, because she believed that they raised public consciousness. In 1971, after nearly thirty years of paid work there, she retired from UNB without pension. She did not, however, leave public life. As her daughter Brigid recalled: “She made things happen. She was a catalyst.”117 She continued her activism for the environment, human rights, peace, and women’s rights until her sudden death on 27 May 1990. Although she never sought honours, her work was recognized by many people and organizations. For example, in 1989, UNB conferred on her an honorary doctor of laws. Barry Toole created a life for herself that included marriage, motherhood, scientific work, and social activism. Many other women made different choices and also managed to have meaningful, interesting lives, although their scientific involvements took a variety of forms. Eleanor Clarke Hay

The recollections of Eleanor Clarke (married name Hay) (b. 1915) (MS c 1940, PhD 1943, McGill) reflected on her experiences in the 1940s and dealt with issues that persisted well into the working lives of the next generation of women scientists. In “Change and Changing” in Joy Parr, ed., Still Running, she wrote: “In 1943, the month before I was awarded my doctorate, I married Dr. Alden W. Hay. He had received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from McGill a year earlier … A woman does not need to lose her independence when she marries. My marriage has liberated me more than it confined me.

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Chosen physical, mental and emotional commitment is the essence of free life.”118 While her marriage was liberating, the birth of her first child derailed a promising professional life. She recollected that it “was not my intent to interrupt my career when our first son was born. Some of my peers managed to continue, but I could not find adequate child care. I am glad that I did not. Rearing children has been an integral part of the fulfilment of my life.” Her lack of a university position made it easier for the Hays to move to the United States, where he found employment at the Celanese Corporation. She “tried to obtain a teaching position at Drew University [in Madison, New Jersey] … The remuneration for part-time work was less than the cost of a baby-sitter!” – the sort of situation facing many Canadian women well into the 1970s. Nevertheless she did not give up on science; instead, she abstracted journal articles and worked on a popular endocrinology book for Ronald Press. The end of the Second World War brought major changes in many areas of Canadian and, indeed, Western societies, which strongly affected the professional opportunities of women. As we saw above, some women, such as Manery Fisher and Sawyer Hogg at Toronto, had been hired as “special case” faculty members to teach full time during the war. Then most of them were expected to return to part-time positions when the men returned from service. Others, such as Chalk Rowles at Macdonald College, were postwar recruits to teach overcrowded classrooms full of veterans. Yet Barry Toole, hired in 1942, retained her position at UNB until her retirement in 1971. Other women used the opportunity to start a family and expected to return to work later. We do not know how many women chose to withdraw from professional life after the war because of their desire to have children before it was too late. Althea Warren Macaulay

My discussion in 1994 with Althea Warren (married name Macaulay) (b. 1918) (BA 1939, UNB), a former biologist at UNB, provided me with insight into the lives of women who spent their young adulthood in the company of other women during the war. Because of this experience, in their middle age they were willing to exchange professional life for marriage and motherhood.119

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Warren, with an MA from Clark University in 1940 and useful laboratory research experience at McGill and at Harvard Medical School, became an assistant in education at UNB in 1942. She was hired to replace Louise Thompson, who went on study leave to pursue a PhD at Yale. Though a biologist, Warren taught a course in psychology and one in curriculum development, but she wanted “to get into the biology department, my first love and basic love.”120 When she was asked to teach an upper-level course there, she accepted with alacrity. She taught at UNB until 1945 and then went on study leave to pursue doctoral studies in zoology at Toronto under the supervision of Kenneth Fisher. In preparation for her studies, she obtained a summer research position at the Atlantic Biological Station in St Andrews, New Brunswick, working on a pioneering project in aquaculture, attempting to grow plants in “a mixture of sea water and various minerals.” While working on her doctorate at Toronto, she also served as don of the Women’s Residence at University College, University of Toronto. It was a pleasant life, but almost entirely in the company of women. Nevertheless she enjoyed Toronto, the university, and meeting other scientists. Manery Fisher (see above), the wife of her supervisor, served as her role model. Warren completed her dissertation, “Some Observations on the Water Hardening Process of the Eggs of Fishes,” in 1950. Then, with a Beaverbrook Overseas Scholarship for postdoctoral studies, she went to England, where she was offered space at the University of London’s Queen Mary College, but in the Botany Department. Although she enjoyed England, her research did not advance fast enough, as the “College was badly bombed during the war” and rebuilding had proceeded slowly. When she received a telegram from William Argue at UNB inviting her to be research associate in the Department of Biology, she was happy to return. She taught three courses and the following spring rose to associate professor, without going through lecturer and then assistant professor. She enjoyed her professional work but declined the deanship of women, though “very interested in the welfare of women on campus … But I felt that it would mean giving up my biology and giving up my teaching … I felt it was not the kind of job that I wanted to do … So I decided that I would rather stick with my teaching, which I really loved.” However, in 1958 at age forty, she married Beverley Francis Macaulay and gave up her professional life. She had a “standing offer” from her head of department at UNB, but the Macaulays had a son within the year

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and subsequently adopted a daughter. She later recollected: “I could not really cope with having more children and looking after … [her husband, by then vice-president, administration, at UNB] … and still manage to do a good job of teaching … sort of a twenty-four-hour-a-day job … [Something] would have to give, and I didn’t want it to be either Bev or the children or family, so I never did go back.” Evidently the choices were complex, and her reason for giving up science was not one that I even considered. So, once again, I was reminded that the historian has to be careful not to attribute current motivations to women of an earlier era. Clearly, Warren Macaulay never regreted her decision to quit academic life and science. Other women scientists chose to accept positions that became available to them and were largely successful in juggling professional and family commitments. Clearly, even if the women in the first section of this chapter left science for family life, those in the second and third directed the course of their lives, contributed to science, and effected change.

5 Complicated Lives II: Family Life and Science after 1950 In a career that requires independent academic work, many young women have found it easier, as I did, to find and accept positions as “assistants” to a “patron” rather than setting up an independent show. The debut of a research career frequently coincides with the arrival of children, or when the children are small. There are worries and fears about the division of time and energy (physical and emotional) between home, family, and career. With many young women, the latter have been major considerations if not the major [one] … in opting for the assistant’s role rather than an independent position, even when opportunities for both were available.1 South Asian women scientists with children all agreed that they have had a hard time managing family life and career, especially when the children were young … The co-operation of family members is a very important factor in the advancement of a woman’s career. 2

This chapter deals with three main groups of women scientists in the period since 1950: in/visible assistants – the people behind the scenes who make so much of science possible; mobile academics, from other parts of the world; and women, a number of them from other countries, who found various ways to combine university and family life.

In/visible Assistants There is a long history of wives and daughters serving as “invisible” assistants to male members of their family.3 In twentieth-century Canada, many married women who could not, for a variety of reasons, find positions of their own helped their husbands in different ways, often subsuming their own professional aspirations to those of their mates. During the interwar period, as we saw in chapter 4, Helen MacGill Hughes,

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Carol Anne Robertson Maass, and Norah Barry Toole were among those who spent many years helping behind the scenes, without pay and often without recognition, to lessen their husband’s considerable teaching workload and provide home and work environments that were conducive to their creative thinking about their research. They, and many others, went largely unrecognized in the scientific literature. The more fortunate wife-assistants were acknowledged in print or included as junior authors on their husbands’ scientific publications. In this section we see the career of Elizabeth Preston Parnis and my own years of laboratory work in Montreal. What happened to trained women scientists who worked as technicians and assistants to their male colleagues? Above, I noted that by about 1900 science had become increasingly complex and professional. This situation gradually led to stratification of science, and as a result assistants were needed to carry out the day-to-day minutiae of scientific research. Some early university calendars listed assistants and demonstrators, but not in a consistent manner. Even then, I found little biographical information about most of them. In contrast, alumni records throughout the twentieth century indicate that numerous women studied science. Many of these women changed fields to spend their working lives as journalists, missionaries, or teachers; others worked as scientists for government agencies or research institutes. Among those working at a research institute was physics graduate Audrey Tweedie (d. 1995) (BS c 1929, MS c 1930, Manitoba), who had a good professional life at the National Research Council of Canada. Actually, Tweedie applied for a junior position in physical chemistry in 1930 but, for reasons that are unclear, was hired for a similar post in wool research.4 Unfortunately, there is no detailed documentation regarding the experiences of women who worked as technicians or research assistants in university (as well as in medical and industrial) laboratories. We have practically no record about their hiring, pay, or work experiences. Because of this, it is impossible to know if they – like faculty personnel – were expected to quit their low-level scientific positions when they married. Did they also depend on the vagaries of department heads and other administrators who might ignore their married status for the sake of the functioning of science departments? We do know, however, that scientific support positions in academe have continued since after the Second World War.5

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Scientific support positions included “nine-to-five” research assistants, laboratory instructors, demonstrators, and part-time teaching positions without administrative duties. Although the jobs had low pay, the welldefined working hours made them attractive to many mothers of daycare or school-age children. The positions also appealed to many women who chose to construct their lives to include social activism, community involvement, and artistic or other fulfilling activities, in addition to paid scientific work. Well into the 1970s, a woman’s income from part-time scientific work was usually so low that at best it would cover only child care, leaving little for luxuries. At a time when child care was not tax deductible, the professional work enabled women to use their scientific training and meet people with similar interests. Unfortunately, we also do not know the proportion of Canadian-, as opposed to European- or Asian-educated, women in university science laboratories between 1950 and 1980. My interviews and personal acquaintance with other new-Canadian research assistants or laboratory instructors during this period provide valuable data on some women’s expectations, motivations, and experiences. In addition, Nilima Mandal Giri’s research on South Asian women scientists in Montreal presents a much-needed perspective on “other” women scientists at Canadian universities after the Immigration Act changed in the early 1960s.6 The next section of this chapter looks at Giri’s findings and at the live and career of Mary Pitman Baldwin, from Australia. Elizabeth Preston Parnis

In 2007, on a natural history excursion to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, I talked with my friend the painter and plant pathologist Elizabeth Preston Parnis about her Canadian work history. I soon realized that her experiences were symptomatic of issues that faced other women. The following week, on a sunny balcony above our artists’ studio in Victoria, I did a more formal interview with her about her work history. Elizabeth Preston (married name Parnis) was born in London, England, in 1929, but soon moved with her family to Cheshire.7 As a young child, she collected flowers with her mother, and by the time she entered a convent boarding school she was seriously interested in science. After the Second World War, she studied botany and biology at the University of Liverpool, graduating in 1950. She recalled sixty years later that she

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had been one of three women science students and that there were no female science professors. During her last undergraduate year, to escape postwar Britain, she applied for a position at the University of Western Ontario, which, much to her surprise, offered her a full-time laboratory demonstratorship in botany. Her work involved giving a short introductory lecture at the beginning of each laboratory session, supervising the students’ microscopic work, and correcting their assignments. By her second year there, she was a senior demonstrator, responsible for the first- and second-year botany laboratories as well as the mycology laboratory. She was also demonstrator in the fourth-year bacteriology laboratory course for nurses. During the summer, she catalogued supplies. She also began graduate studies in botany, but after four years as a demonstrator was ready for a change and decided to leave the university. Although a junior male colleague warned her that she would “never get the job,” she was offered a position as a microbiologist with the provincial Department of Agriculture in Calgary, analysing cattle feed under a microscope. However, within a few months she married Alfred Parnis, a banker from Malta, and had to quit because of government policy. She then worked briefly for the Canadian Red Cross doing blood grouping. The family moved across Canada several times, and she, like many other married women at the time, had to give up her aspirations for a permanent job. When they moved to Toronto – where their fourth child was born in 1960 – she felt dissatisfied and isolated. Her husband worked very long days in the bank, while at home she felt lonely, overworked, frustrated, and poor. A new friend introduced her to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique,8 which they read and discussed, and encouraged her to return to scientific work. She applied for a position at the University of Toronto and obtained that of a demonstrator in botany. Her older children were at school, and with her earnings she hired a babysitter for the younger one. This arrangement worked well until her husband was transferred to Montreal, where their fifth child arrived in 1966. She was not ready to give up science and worked as a senior demonstrator for the evening courses in mycology and anatomy at Sir George Williams University. Unfortunately, she began to suffer from depression and needed treatment. Eventually, she decided to improve her professional chances and return to university. In 1969, she began graduate studies at McGill’s Macdonald College under the direction of W.E. Sackston. In 1974, she earned her MS c with a thesis on “The Invasion of Lupinus albus Seed by Verticillium alob-atrum.” She also became assistant curator at the McGill Uni-

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versity Herbarium, also at Macdonald College. Concurrently, she worked as senior demonstrator in plant systematics and as a part-time lecturer in plant morphology. During 1975, she was a sessional lecturer in botany at Concordia, and then she developed a course for 1976–77 on edible wild plants for the extension department at Macdonald College. When her husband was transferred to Toronto in 1977, she found part-time work at the University of Toronto, as a part-time lecturer in botany 1977–78 and then as a demonstrator at the Erindale campus 1978–80. For reasons that are unclear, these jobs ceased to exist after 1980. Without a doctorate, her scientific opportunities remained poor, but, after seriously considering her options, she decided not to work for that degree. Instead, at age fifty-one, she gave up looking for scientific work, but she retained her interest in science, as is evident in her nature photography and Chinese brush painting. From her story, it is clear that being married to a man from a macho Mediterranean culture, who provided neither household help nor emotional support, and being the mother of five children seriously limited her options for permanent academic employment. My Own Experience

How many other women scientists were in similar positions? It is hard to know. My own work history as well as my later interviews with women scientists suggests that availability of adequate child care and the willingness of husbands to share household chores were crucial for women who wished to work in the laboratory and the field. My own experience with scientific work in academe began in 1966 when chemistry professor Thomas Nogrády at Loyola College hired me as his full-time research assistant, which post I held 1966–69 and 1973– 74. I was a young wife and mother, and although I had hoped for challenging work, I soon found that research with a spectrophotometer consisted of routine tasks that were repetitious and boring. However, no one else depended on my work, so I had considerable flexibility in my schedule. This enabled me to combine marriage, motherhood, and science. Instead of working from nine to five, as did other staff members, I was allowed to start and finish half an hour earlier than anyone else. This suited me well, as I could arrive home ahead of my husband and daughter. I could take time off for my child’s medical appointments and start work earlier on another day instead.

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Having interviewed dozens of women, I now know that not all academic science departments and employers provided such flexibility for their research assistants and technicians. But for many women, conducting scientific work – even other people’s research and for ridiculously low pay and with no administrative tasks or departmental meetings – made such positions attractive. I did not understand that this situation left me unaware of what happened within the department and at the college. It also kept me invisible, at the periphery of science. Because of the encouragement I had received in my childhood to study science, I did not understand the gendered relations of ruling9 within science and academe. My male colleagues were pleasant and polite, and the scientist I worked for, Nogrády, was understanding and supported the work of professional women. It was not until several years later that I realized that, while his publications resulting from my work acknowledged my effort, he made my male Jamaican colleague a junior author on the paper resulting from his work. He did the same for advanced undergraduates who worked on another research project with him. Although he wrote “without the able assistance of Mrs. Marianne Ainley this project could not have been completed,”10 in fact I did the research singlehanded while he was on sabbatical in England. Now I see this as a clear example of systemic sexism by an excellent scientist and a kind and understanding boss and colleague; junior authorship would help his male research assistants and students advance, but not me! Unaware of the importance of authorship in science, I was pleased about being acknowledged and did not keep a copy of the paper! Only a decade later, when I was a graduate student at the Université de Montréal, did I finally value authorship and thus authority. After the Second World War, numerous immigrant women with advanced degrees from Europe and South East Asia entered the Canadian scientific community as “invisible” workers in academe and industry.11 For example, Judit Szy, a Hungarian engineer who emigrated to Canada in 1969, worked as an instructor in the Physics Department at the University of Victoria from 1987 until her retirement in 1995.12 But while many members of this new generation of women remained technicians, others eventually obtained part- or full-time academic positions. The historical literature is still largely silent on the role of technicians and assistants, who make scientific research possible.13 Above in this chapter, I mentioned that the increasingly complex and stratified Western scientific community needed trained workers to free the mostly male academic scientists from the routine tasks of their research. Peter Twohig

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and Nadia Fahmy-Eid, and other historians, have investigated medical laboratory workers and occupational health technicians.14 However, we know very little about those Canadian women and men who spent much of their academic working life as assistants in biology, chemistry, physics, and other sciences’ research laboratories. Although their role has been largely undocumented, a closer examination of published papers and interviews with science workers on various levels confirms their importance in the day-to-day execution of scientific research. Although many remained invisible science workers, some of the assistants landed mainstream academic positions or “reinvented” themselves. As we saw above, in chapter 1, I was among those who chose to leave invisible scientific work and embark – in the late 1970s – on a new direction. I had worked as Nogrády’s research assistant in medicinal chemistry at Loyola College from 1966 to late 1969, when I left a few weeks before the birth of my second child. I must have been useful there, because I received several phone calls per year from Nogrády asking me to return. I resisted for a while, because I had had to work when my oldest child was a year old and felt that I had missed out on many positive aspects of motherhood. Thus I stayed at home for nearly four years with my second child, while my husband taught high school and evening classes for extra money and also pursued an MA part time in kinesiology at McGill. I had little household help and no money for private day care. I found that looking after an energetic little boy left me with practically no time for reading; I missed adult companionship and conversation and found the housework boring and unsatisfying. With depression hovering, I searched for suitable full-time day care for my son and, on finding it in 1973, returned to assist Nogrády. The following year, his research grant that paid me was not renewed. Fortunately, I was promptly offered a part-time position as a laboratory instructor with a contract for two sessions of the first-year inorganic chemistry laboratory. Although my main interest had been in chemistry, I had no other prospects, and, like many other women in science before me, I accepted a paid position when it became available. Mark Doughty, the department chair, had practically insisted that I accept the post because Loyola, part of the new Concordia University as of 1974, had to open several new laboratory sections to accommodate the influx of students from other countries, who chose Canada rather than the United States primarily because of its lower tuition fees. So, at age thirty-six, I became a part-time chemistry instructor and occasional part-time scientific worker. I had no teaching experience and had never

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wanted to teach but soon found that I enjoyed the challenge, the intellectual stimulation, and the contact with students. My work was similar to that of Preston Parnis in botany and no doubt of countless other women in different scientific fields. I was required to give a short lecture before each two-hour laboratory session, supervise the students’ work, and correct their assignments. However, I had no control over the type of experiments that the students had to do. Because my position depended on enrolment figures, I could neither count on a steady income nor plan ahead. Moreover, when I wanted to teach a laboratory course during the summer session, I was told that a younger male colleague who “had a family” had priority. I too had a family, we also needed the money, and I wanted to work. I had to depend on unemployment insurance until I returned to teach in the autumn term. Although the merging Loyola and Sir George Williams University still maintained separate departments at the two campuses, Loyola’s flexibility regarding schedules and employment was giving way to the rules and regulations of Sir George Williams. Its easy collegiality was eroding, and there were palpable tensions about the new system. I disliked the changed atmosphere of the chemistry department. By 1976, I realized that if I wanted to continue in chemistry I would need to upgrade my qualifications. However, twenty years after leaving the polytechnic in Hungary, I was not interested in studying chemistry at the graduate level. Instead, as I mentioned in chapter 1, I began a twoyear MS c program in the history of science at the Université de Montréal, although I continued teaching chemistry laboratories until the end of the following academic year. Then in 1978, I quit working in science to research the history of science and the environment, areas in which my scientific background and emerging feminist approach led to new perspectives for me on the interdisciplinary history of Canadian science.

Mobile Academics Mary Pitman Baldwin

While Preston Parnis and I were among countless women who gave up science for other activities, Australian-born Mary E. Pitman (married name Baldwin) (b. 1934) (BS c 1956, MS c 1958) was one of those who fol-

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lowed a different path.15 Pitman Baldwin obtained full-time academic employment partly through administration and partly through returning to graduate school for a second master’s degree in the expanding area of occupational health and safety. Born in Hobart, Tasmania, into an academic family, she was the second of four children, and, while she loved flowers and nature, she does not recall an early interest in science. In high school, she studied English and languages and did not take chemistry until her final year. She also had to study mathematics to qualify for university. Although she first registered in an arts program at the University of Tasmania, she soon transferred into science. Women have studied science at Australian universities since the late nineteenth century, although, according to Pitman Baldwin’s recollections, there were still few after the Second World War.16 At Tasmania in the 1950s, there were “plenty of women in arts but few in science,” and she had no women science teachers. Because her father was a professor of mathematics at this small university, she found choosing a discipline quite complicated. She did not feel that she was good enough in mathematics to pursue it professionally, and university politics – namely, her father’s animosity towards the botany professor – kept her out of botany. So she chose organic chemistry and found herself conspicuous – the only girl and with a prominent university member for a father. At home, she was aware of the separation of genders, and in the laboratory she further experienced the sexist culture of Australia. Apparently, the boys thought that girls would need “help with everything,” and it was also “not considered proper to put a lady, the daughter of a colleague in with the wild boys.” The faculty did not seem to do anything to encourage her integration into the life of the laboratory, and there was certainly no attempt to tame the “wild boys.” In her final year, she obtained a scholarship for postgraduate work, and in 1956 she left for the New South Wales Institute of Technology in Sydney (now the University of New South Wales) as an external graduate student. In Australia’s British-style tradition, a graduate student went to “work for someone in a lab” and earned a master’s degree “entirely on the basis of research and a thesis.” Pitman worked for Chemistry Chair Stephen Angyal on carbohydrate stereo-chemistry. The doctoral degree was not yet a requirement for scientific careers, and, although her scholarship would have enabled her to pursue one, “it did not seem necessary.” Instead, she travelled to the United States and England with her parents and found a position in the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry,

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University of London, working on synthetic organic compounds for spectroscopic studies. Although she attended classes at nearby University College of the University of London, she did not consider doctoral studies. Instead, she immigrated to Canada to marry R. John Baldwin, her Canadian boyfriend, whom she met in England. I met her at Loyola College in 1966, and we often spoke about ourselves as new Canadians in science. However, it was not until 1990 that we had a formal interview. Her search for an interesting scientific position first took her to McGill, where only poorly paid assistant positions were available. She then went to a few pharmaceutical companies and encountered “the reality in Quebec” – since she was “young and married everyone assumed that she would stay home and raise babies right away.” This view apparently shocked her – she knew several young men who intended to move from their positions within a couple of years, but no one seemed to question them about this. Many years later, she recalled that while she “intended to have children at some time … she did not think that it was the business of an employer.” Eventually she worked 1961–62 in McGill’s biochemistry research laboratory at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Many of the other researchers and technicians there were also women. All but two of them were single, and the married mothers seemed satisfied with part-time routine laboratory work. In contrast, she was in charge of a laboratory. After the birth of her first child she stopped working. She found staying at home a lonely experience. Her own university-educated mother never worked outside the home, and, while her family members had expected Pittman Baldwin to obtain a university education, they never discussed what she should do with that education after she married. Unlike professional women trained in Europe and Latin America, she was not familiar with the idea of household help. Eventually, she found a reliable babysitter and worked part time at the Loyola College science library from 1962 until 1964. After she had another child, she developed Meunière‘s syndrome and for a while could not work; she felt isolated and depressed. A timely call from Loyola in 1966 “to look after some of the labs on a part-time basis” prompted her return to work. So in 1968, she became a full-time instructor, but without a contract. The department chair still hired teaching personnel. Kurt Ekler, a colleague, advised her to request a contract, and in 1970 she finally obtained one as lecturer. Because her salary still did not match those of her junior male colleagues, she benefited from salary adjustments insisted on by the faculty union.

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In 1974, when Loyola merged with Sir George Williams, Ekler advised her to apply for tenure. Thanks to his mentoring, in 1975, she obtained tenure and promotion to assistant professor of chemistry at Concordia. She had been seriously considering leaving science and taking a graduate degree in library science, but her promotion encouraged her to stay in chemistry. In 1979, she became assistant dean of student affairs within the new Faculty of Arts and Science – “convenient and an interesting opportunity” when her future in the Chemistry Department was not clear. Moreover, “the administrative path seemed … compatible with teaching,” and she taught both day and evening classes while assistant dean. At the end of her administrative term, she was promoted to associate professor. Having been in the teaching rather than in the research stream, it was unlikely that she could return to organic chemistry research, and she decided instead to use her sabbatical leave to change her professional orientation. Partly funded by the university, in 1982 she went to Harvard’s School of Public Health, where she earned another master’s degree, this one in environmental health sciences. From that time on, her professional life focused on occupational health and safety, although she still taught organic chemistry courses and supervised graduate students. It was not until the early 1990s that she was able to do research, this time in areas relating to environmental health. This came about through her association with the Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire sur la biologie, la santé, la société et l’environnement (CINBIOSE), a feminist research group at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She had “accidentally dropped into” academic work. She had combined marriage and motherhood with science, but it had taken her a quartercentury from part-time teaching at Loyola to be able to focus on research. Her circuitous path was probably characteristic of many women, particularly mothers, who had to distribute their time, energy, and loyalties among many competing interests and demands. In retrospect, she felt that had she “set out to have an academic career” she would have been further ahead, but she had done her best with the opportunities that came her way. She was adaptable and willing to take risks. South and East Asians

Cultural differences existed between the expectations of Canadian women, their employers, and many immigrant women, especially those

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from South and East Asia. Class experiences in the homeland regarding household help influenced women’s and their families’ attitudes towards employment. Women from continental Europe and Latin America were more likely than Americans and Australians to employ assistance at home. In contrast, South and East Asian women who entered the Canadian scientific workforce about 1960 usually had experience with household help. While there is no large-scale study of their experiences, in the early 1990s Nilima Mandal Giri conducted research on Montreal-area women academics, many of whom were scientists. Her study revealed that women scientists from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan “tended to be from middle class families.”17 Their arrival in Canada was facilitated by new, liberal immigration policy, expansion of educational institutions, the need for teachers, and availability of financial assistance for foreign graduate students. In addition, the universal “non-discriminatory” immigration policy of 1962 attracted women scientists from other regions of the world. Hsey-Er Lin (MS c, PhD, Iowa) from Taiwan became, during the late 1960s, an assistant professor (and later associate professor) of physics, and Mallinga Nagarajan from India, an instructor of biology, both at the University of Prince Edward Island. About the same time, Barbara Jones (1937–1969) from Trinidad taught at Macdonald College and Sir George Williams, before becoming an assistant professor of genetics at McGill. Even with graduate degrees, South Asian women scientists were disadvantaged compared to other immigrants. Giri writes that by the 1960s “discrimination based on gender was eased, but not on race.”18 In Montreal’s close-knit South Asian community, which she studied, the women scientists knew both each other and the researcher, and the respondents were interested in her project, so she had a 100 per cent return on the structured survey questionnaire that she sent to the thirty subjects. But, because they knew each other, they preferred to remain anonymous, and so the results of the follow-up interviews with twenty-six women (87 per cent) do not disclose names (neither did Mary Kinnear’s work on professional women in Winnipeg19). While this makes comparison with my more detailed biographical research difficult, her findings represent another perspective on the experiences of women scientists at Canadian universities after 1945. They also reflect on the different treatments they received at various educational institutions, including French-language colleges and universities in Montreal.

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While generally speaking there were more women social scientists than natural scientists at Canadian universities, Giri found that those from South and East Asia were more likely to have advanced degrees in engineering, mathematics, and the natural sciences.20 In the 1960s and 1970s, they found positions at all levels of academe (all but one in Englishspeaking institutions), from part-time instructor to full-time professor. The women scientists in Giri’s study were all married and had children. They agreed that it was difficult to manage family life and scientific work, particularly while their children were young, and they relied on family members to help.21

Choosing Professional Lives As I found in my research at English-Canadian university archives, after 1945 women scientists worked at various occupational levels, despite the discourse that was intended to keep mothers out of the professions and at home.22 Daughters of immigrant and working-class families began entering universities with a view to developing professional lives. These young women included the biochemist Rose Mamelak Johnstone, psychologist Dolores Pushkar Gold, and the marine biologist Delphine Wallace Maclellan. About this time, several social scientists entered Canada and the academic workforce from the United States. Among them were the sociologists Dorothy Smith and Susan Hoecker-Drysdale and the anthropologists Kathleen Gough Aberle and Fumiko Ikawa Smith. Elinor Kartzmark, a chemist at the University of Manitoba, chose to be an adoptive mother without, as she remarked, complicating her life with a husband. Then, in the late 1970s, Lillian Quan, a neuropsychologist from Cree-Chinese background, made “herstory” as a Western-trained First Nations woman scientist in academe. The professional lives of these eight women, both as scientists and as mothers, have taken different trajectories depending on their discipline, their institutional environment, and their own coping strategies and household arrangements. Rose Mamelak Johnstone

I first met Rose Mamelak (married name Johnstone) in 1988 when I was conducting interviews with Montreal women scientists. I had already

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read her autobiographical essay in A Fair Shake, an edited volume on McGill women.23 She seemed an interesting and articulate subject who was unlikely to hesitate about an interview. Mamelak Johnstone (b. 1928) (BS c 1950, PhD 1953, McGill), born in Łodz, Poland, arrived in Canada with her parents when she was eight years old. In Montreal, she lived in the immigrant district around St Lawrence Boulevard and attended Aberdeen, Mount Royal, and Baron Byng schools. The family was poor, and she knew that she would have to earn her living. Nursing did not appeal to her. She wanted to work as a medical technician, but when the Montreal Neurological Institute turned her down she decided to enter McGill. Although she had considered economics, she enrolled as a science student, because “a degree in science was practical and she could find more ways of earning a living” – and because she found science more interesting than arts. Originally, she preferred chemistry to biology. Then she took a course in biochemistry taught by David L. Thompson, who made it “come alive.” As a result, she fell in love with the subject and switched her concentration to biochemistry. At that stage, she liked “the quantitative aspects and the elements of prediction in chemistry [but was more] interested in seeing how biological systems worked and was fascinated with what was going on in a cell.”24 As an honours biochemistry student, she soon learned that she had two options: find employment or go to graduate school. In her final year, she decided on graduate school at McGill. That way, she could live at home while pursuing her research and enter the PhD program without having to do a master’s degree, which in her opinion turns out “more sophisticated technicians” but does not prepare one adequately for a research career. In 1950, she set out to find an appropriate laboratory for her graduate work and decided to ask J.H. Quastel, director of the McGill-Montreal General Hospital Research Institute, to be her supervisor. Quastel was an internationally known biochemist who immigrated to Canada after 1945 to run the institute’s research laboratory and serve as a professor of biochemistry at McGill. When Mamelak approached him about her becoming a research student, he initially demurred. She later recalled that his “prime worry” was her marital status and career intentions.25 He was far less interested in her grades than in her research plans and wanted a serious graduate student.26 Quastel had several research projects in progress but no unified research program and so obtained funding from a variety of sources. He

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suggested research topics to his students, all of whom worked on different projects. Mamelak’s thesis was on “Anaerobic Amino Acid Interactions in Cl.sporogenes.” The day after she submitted it, she married Douglas Johnstone, a man eight years her senior, whom she met when they were both canvassing for a left-wing candidate. She applied for one of the new National Cancer Institute of Canada Fellowships to study abroad. In her autobiographical essay, she recalled, “I am convinced that the chief reason for being awarded that Fellowship was catching the committee of five men, who made the decision, entirely by surprise. The committee was convinced that my husband had business affairs in Europe and that his wife was looking for a way to accompany him at public expense. Imagine their chagrin when informed that my husband had given up his job to accompany his wife to Europe for the post-doctoral training she considered essential for her career.”27 The Johnstones spent nearly two years in England, where she conducted research at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. When she was expecting a child, she continued “working after it showed.” No women there had “had the nerve to work while pregnant. It was simply not done.” It did not even occur to her to leave – for her, pregnancy was not an illness. The director could not ask her to leave, because she was paid from Canadian sources. The birth of her first son in 1955 had become “the watershed that changed the behaviour” of her female colleagues. Nearly thirty years later, she was still amused by the fact that she set a trend. Her pregnancy “unleashed a flood of pregnancies at the Institute. Both a librarian and a crystallographer assured me that they now could risk being pregnant while on the job. The emotional damage to male colleagues, derived from associating on a daily basis with a pregnant, but unrelated female, had been done.”28 Life in postwar England was cold, uncomfortable, and financially taxing for a couple with a young child. The Johnstones returned in 1956 to Montreal, where she made what she later considered a career mistake. Because Quastel wanted her to return to his laboratory at the institute, she was glad to accept, but the situation had changed. Although she did her own research, she did not obtain her own funding and so in addition had to assist new graduate students with their work. She remained a research associate until 1960, when she was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill. The institute still paid her salary, but she now qualified for a McGill pension. By

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1964, she worked only part time in the laboratory, and, after an acrimonious discussion with Quastel regarding her salary, she left and became a full-time McGill employee. In 1989, she recalled that he “exploited his employees.” When she requested a raise, “he would say, ‘You have a husband – why do you need a raise in pay?’” She responded, “If that is how you give a raise, you should pay your janitor more money because he has more kids.” At McGill, she had her own laboratory and conducted research with the help of graduate student assistants, whom she paid with funds from the National Cancer Institute of Canada and the National Research Council. She was promoted to associate professor in 1966 and full professor in 1977. She published a “reasonable amount,” but felt at the time that her male colleagues were promoted faster. She became chair of her department in 1980 and served for ten years. Five years later, she was named Gilman Cheney Chair of Biochemistry and president of the Canadian Biochemical Society. She was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Silver Medal in 1978 and fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 1987. In 1991, she was the Jeanne Manery Fisher Lecturer of the Canadian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She retired from full-time work in 1996. As a member of the International Association for Women Bioscientists, she tried to increase the profile of women in science while still carrying on with her own research. Then in 2001, she finally gave up her laboratory research because her “grant dried up and … [she] didn’t want to apply for more research money.”29 Dolores Pushkar Gold

The well-known psychologist Dolores Pushkar (married name Gold) was one of my colleagues at Concordia. We met after someone suggested her for an annual panel discussion for my advanced undergraduate course on women and science. A while later, she agreed to be interviewed for my research. Pushkar (b. 1939) was born in Winnipeg into a large Ukrainian immigrant family. On annual summer visits to her brother in rural Manitoba, she developed a deep love for the countryside. Although her parents were largely uneducated, she had observed how the strong, capable women in her family and community organized events and got things done and “never doubted that if they set out to do something they would succeed.”30 These women served as early role models for her. At Isaac Newton High

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School, in working-class, immigrant north-end Winnipeg, she liked history and biology. Some of her teachers, recognizing her potential, motivated and encouraged her and spoke to her parents about sending her to university. As a child, she often accompanied her socialist father to the Labour Temple, and at an early age she observed that both the socialists and the nuns at the Catholic Sunday school she attended were dogmatic, although their approaches differed. Dissatisfied with the church, she stopped going by age fifteen. Instead, the Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) provided her with companionship, activities, and organizational experience. Her interest in nature was more aesthetic than scientific, but the study of biology turned her into a materialist reductionist. Endowed with an inquiring mind, she did not like to “take things on authority” but preferred testing out ideas and theories. In our interview, she recalled that it was in biology that she first encountered the scientific method applied to a problem that interested her. Through the aid of a scholarship, financial help from her parents, and money from summer jobs, she was able to attend the University of Manitoba. She studied biology, English, history, mathematics, philosophy, physics, and psychology, but not chemistry, which omission she considered a disadvantage. She recalled that she had no female science teachers and that only about 10–20 per cent of the science students were women, even though the ratio of women to men was about 50 per cent in psychology. Although she earned the highest mark in biology, her professor turned her down for a summer job banding ducks in northern Manitoba “because he thought that as a female she could not possibly camp out with men.” Despite her active social life, she, unlike other women students, was in no rush to marry. After obtaining her MA in psychology from Manitoba in 1961, she worked as a clinical psychologist at the University of Saskatchewan Hospital. In 1963, she married R.J.M. Gold, an English physician, who moved to Canada during Saskatchewan’s doctors’ strike in 1962. When she told the head of her department of her plans to marry, he “asked to be given two months’ notice to replace her.” Her response was, “Why do you want to replace me?” Recently, she recalled, “He was a nice person. Basically he said something like ‘Oh, OK , that’s fine.’” They had a good working relationship, and she does not “believe there was any hidden motive, just an unthinking assumption of what was conventional at that time.”31

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Working in clinical psychology, she became sceptical about the “benefits patients derived from sessions” and decided to pursue further studies. She enrolled in the doctoral program at Saskatchewan in 1964 and within two years obtained her PhD. She conducted her field work on a dozen First Nations reserves in Saskatchewan, where she examined “the acculturation of Indian women going from the reserves to live in the city.” In contrast to her own experiences with “working class poverty,” she found on the reservations a “demoralized poverty of no hope.” In 1967, the Golds moved to Montreal, where she obtained a position in the Psychology Department at Sir George Williams while he was working on his PhD in genetics at McGill. In my 1995 interview, she recalled that she was hired because of her interest in social personality development and that she taught two day and two evening classes. She published articles in psychology journals. Women were well represented in her department (unlike in other science departments), and she enjoyed working with a core group of women: Tannis Arbuckle-Maag, June Chaikelton, Jane Stewart, and Nancy Taylor, who “made their mark at the university through research and administrative work.” That reminded her of her mother and aunts “as a group of women who worked together and enjoyed it.” By the 1970s, having children while working in her department was regarded as a normal event.32 She continued to work throughout her pregnancies “until the day of delivery.” Her first daughter, Alice, was born in April 1971, and she was able to take two weeks away from university work. Her mother visited for a few weeks and taught her a lot about baby care. The Golds found “a wonderful older woman through a newspaper ad. We were lucky she turned into a ‘grandmother’ for the children.” After her second child, Leslie, was born in 1974, she again took off a couple of weeks, and “someone in the department covered” her classes. At home, her husband “helped” with child care, for example, taking turns doing night feedings. “He did help, but he regarded it as helping me, not as a primary responsibility of his.” She still remembers the fatigue during the months that her babies woke up for night feeding and she felt “grateful to having Nanna and having two healthy children.”33 She accepted “the constraints of sticking to a domestic timetable” and “never had any doubts that it was worth it.” It was during this period that her research interests changed, in response to the challenge of learning new multivariate techniques and her growing interest in child development. She also decided to “slow down.” Her own children’s development and natural experiments fascinated her.

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She asked questions such as: “What is the result of: being born female rather than male; being born working class instead of middle class; and having an employed rather than unemployed mother?” Her publications reflect this interest. Her first major contribution after her “slow-down and reorientation” was “Full-time Employment of Mothers in Relation to Their 10-year old Children” (1976) in the women’s studies/feminist journal Atlantis. Six of her further articles in scientific journals (out of twelve in the next five years) compared children of employed and of non-employed mothers. She helped to set up the Working Women’s Association at Sir George Williams – a precursor of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. Later, she took on a minor role as a tutor at the institute, but she did not teach women’s studies because she wanted to concentrate on her work in the Psychology Department. After 1980, her research interests expanded into ageing – she wished to discover how people age successfully. Since then, she has been a principal member of the Concordia University Research Centre for Human Development. Pushkar Gold managed to balance her professional life with an active private one. She has investigated a number of interconnected areas within social psychology; she was able to concentrate on research and teaching; she had supportive colleagues and family; and she was able to mentor numerous graduate students. She decided early that “it is possible to shape the environment in which we function although it may be extremely hard, rather than resign oneself … to simply doing time.” She has always felt that “change is possible within one’s own context,” such as helping to establish the Centre for Human Development and thus influence more general change. Delphine Wallace Maclellan

As so often happened during my long research process, I discovered another interesting woman scientist through word of mouth. In 1986, I visited St Andrews, New Brunswick, to do research at the Atlantic Biological Station Archives. There I met Elinor Mawson, then volunteer archivist for Charlotte County, a former physiologist whose father was the well-known marine biologist A.G. Huntsman. Mawson recommended that I write to retired marine biologist Delphine Wallace (married name Maclellan). Having heard her name the previous year from Max Dunbar, my PhD supervisor, I decided to contact her. I wrote to her, asking if she would be

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willing to correspond with me about her studies and work. She agreed to an interview in 1988 on my next research trip to Atlantic Canada.34 A detailed curriculum vitae followed, and later I interviewed her in her Fredericton apartment, surrounded by scientific books and journals.35 From our interview and correspondence, and numerous conversations since with her daughter, Janet Maclellan Toole, I learned that Wallace Maclellan (1914–1995) (MS c 1964, McGill) worked at the Atlantic Biological Station as a research assistant during the 1940s and again in the late 1950s, and then she returned to university in 1961 as a forty-sevenyear-old widow after her two daughters left home. Born in St Andrews, New Brunswick (her mother came from Bergen, Norway, and her father from Providence, Rhode Island), she attended local schools. On numerous walks with her father, she learned about the marine life of Passamaquoddy Bay, launching her interest in copepods and other marine organisms. After finishing high school in 1931, she enrolled at Dalhousie with a Charlotte County scholarship to study science with the intention of becoming a physician. However, her active social life hurt her marks. In 1933, she met medical student Robert Maclellan, whom she married two years later. In 1936 she obtained her BS c, and in 1937 she became a mother. After their second daughter was born in 1939, she postponed her plans for further education. Her husband died in 1941 while in the army, but as death occurred before he saw action, she did not receive a widow’s pension. Thus she and her two young daughters had to move in with her husband’s family in Halifax. In 1944, she returned to St Andrews, and for the next two years she worked part time at the Atlantic Biological Station, including filling a routine technical position for the Atlantic Herring Investigation Committee. Later she recalled that “pay was scant and the work lacked any real intellectual challenge.” When her widow’s pension began, she devoted her time to her daughters and community service. In 1951, she remarried and moved to Saint John, but the marriage did not work out. After the divorce in 1955, she returned to St Andrews, which had “no tolerance for a divorcée.” She was “invited to work with the International Passamaquody Commission” as assistant technician at the Atlantic Biological Station and, at age forty-two, “discovered a new passion: plankton.” In her recollections, she wrote, “My introduction to the study of marine zooplankton took place in September 1956 … The purpose of the work was to investigate the conditions of Passamaquoddy Bay, N.B. and

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adjoining … [areas of Maine] in regard to the food available in these waters to the lucrative herring fishery in the region, before the proposed Passamaquoddy Dam was built.”36 She worked under Noel Tibbel and was “well respected for the quality of her work.” After so many years, she rediscovered the “intellectual challenge of thinking about relationships.” She loved her research but officially was still an “assistant technician,” even after a promotion. In 1960, she resigned from the station; she was co-author of a scientific paper with her colleague Henri Legare; and her older daughter married and moved to Montreal. After an interview with H.R. Robertson, head of surgery at the Montreal General Hospital, she accepted a position in his laboratory, but she was unhappy there and did not like working with live animals. “In May 1961,” she later recalled, “I visited McGill University especially to talk with Dr. Max Dunbar, professor of zoology … an authority on marine fauna. When I appeared at the door of his office and introduced myself, he immediately said ‘You published on the zooplankton of Passamaquoddy Bay – come here and do your master’s degree.’” Although she wanted to work on larval fish, Dunbar insisted that she do her thesis research on copepods that he had collected “in the early 1940s, when he was Canadian Consul General to Denmark and was stationed in Godthaab, the capital of Greenland.” After Dunbar “established the Marine Sciences Centre for studies in oceanography at McGill University [in 1963] … he asked me to join his staff as a research assistant. My duties were to include the supervision of laboratories in Biological oceanography, the occasional lecture in Dr. Dunbar’s course, and assistance to graduate students in the identification of animals in the plankton. I added the writing of the Annual Report of the Marine Sciences Centre.” In addition, she helped graduate students with writing and editing their theses. Ian McLaren, a “very clever marine biologist,” invited her to pursue a doctorate, but she refused. Although she loved both her teaching and her research – particularly spending summer at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax and occasionally also serving as a marine biologist (“the copepod woman”) on cruises – doing a graduate degree in her late forties had exhausted her, and she had no money to pursue a higher degree. Instead, she became senior staff demonstrator in 1965 and lecturer in 1967. In our discussion, she recalled that Max Dunbar, though originally enthusiastic about her research, kept her at a low-level, poorly paid position and, in 1966, turned down her initial request for a raise.

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The following year, with the help of McGill Principal H.R. Robertson, with whom she had worked at the Montreal General, she obtained a considerable pay raise. In 1970, she applied for promotion to assistant professor but was turned down, although she was a respected teacher and scientist and, even without a doctorate, had several well-received publications. Three years later, she was promised promotion, but the department chair did not put her name forward because another woman scientist had also applied. She appealed to W.F. Hitschfeld, dean of graduate studies, who promised “to look into it.” As a result (and without the support of her chair), she was promoted in 1973 to assistant professor, which status she retained until her retirement in 1979. She was an academic late bloomer, with the attendant advantages and disadvantages. With an undergraduate science degree, this widowed mother of two children was able to obtain good work experience as an occasional researcher in marine biology at the Atlantic Biological Station. She was fortunate to have her mother and an elderly cousin as readily available babysitters. Entering graduate school as a middle-aged woman with grown-up children, she was able to study and work without worrying about day care, school holidays, or caring for sick children. Her age, gender, and lack of finances prevented her from pursuing a doctorate, and, despite eventual promotion, she felt undervalued in academe as a scientist. She remained, however, confident in her own worth and fought for a better salary, a decent pension, and appropriate status recognition. She was a challenging teacher and a respected researcher in marine biology, who in her retirement maintained a keen interest in science. Elinor Kartzmark

Being a single professional mother, either because of adoption or of divorce, is not unusual today, but in the second half of the twentieth century most single professional mothers were widows or later bloomers. One example is the anthropologist Joan Ryan, who adopted two girls in the 1960s. There is little information about single women scientists adopting children in the 1950s. The only case I am able to document in detail is that of the chemist Elinor Kartzmark (b. 1926), who had a satisfying academic life at the University of Manitoba. I came across her name in the university archives during my 1989 cross-Canada research trip. Her name is listed as a respondent in Mary Kinnear’s book on professional women in Manitoba,37

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but neither source revealed any detail about her life and work. So, in 2001, when I began the first draft of this book and discovered that she was still alive, I wrote to her for permission to tape a telephone interview. Kartzmark told me38 that she had always wanted to teach and that one of her aunts, a dentist and independent single woman, served as her role model. Born in Selkirk, and educated in St Andrews and Winnipeg, Kartzmark enjoyed both literature and science. As a young woman during the Second World War, she taught in a one-room school house for a year before returning to Winnipeg to further her own education. Because she did not see how she could make a living from literature, she decided to study science and eventually specialized in chemistry. She also realized that “marriage sure as heck complicates things.” As an undergraduate, she came under the mentorship of A.N. Campbell, who had already built up a research school in chemistry at Manitoba in the 1930s. Mary Kinnear argued that the university remained mostly teaching-oriented well past 1950,39 but my own investigations have shown that after the First World War science departments such as Zoology and, later, Botany conducted important research under Charles O’Donoghue and A.H.R. Buller, respectively, and that women science students in other areas, such as chemistry and physics, went on to have research-oriented professional lives. Kartzmark completed her BS c in 1949 and graduate degrees in electrochemistry under Campbell’s supervision. She obtained scholarships, fellowships, and later research grants from the National Research Council. Between 1950 and 1974, she co-wrote thirty-five papers with Campbell. While a graduate student, she worked as a teaching assistant 1949– 50 and as sessional lecturer 1950–52. After obtaining her PhD, she became an assistant professor in 1952, associate professor in 1958, and full professor in 1980. Like Mabel Timlin at Saskatchewan and Jean Briggs at Memorial, Kartzmark enjoyed working in a small, congenial, provincial university. She had the support of her chair and colleagues as well as her parents. She admits that perhaps she was not “as ambitious for promotions as I might have been, like the young women now.” But for her, “the need really wasn’t there.” She chose to live with her parents in the country and in 1955 “fulfilled the idea I had in the back of my mind all my life, that is I wanted to adopt a child.” A private adoption enabled her to get a baby boy, and she “had the best of both worlds.” She remained independent from any man, had a child, and had parents willing to help raise her son. Although the teach-

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ing load seems heavy today – she lectured eight hours a week and ran two three-hour laboratory sections as well – it was standard in her time. Clearly, she has had a full and satisfying life, which she has constructed under her own terms. Dorothy Place Smith

I met Dorothy Place (married name Smith), a well-known sociologist, in Montreal in the early 1990s when I interviewed her about her late friend and colleague Kathleen Gough Aberle. In 1996, while working in Vancouver as a visiting fellow at the Centre for Research in Women’s Studies and Gender Relations at UBC, I had informal discussions with her both about Gough Aberle and about her own life. I followed this with a taped interview.40 I learned that Place Smith had a varied but ultimately productive and satisfying life, though in a completely different way from the other women about whom I have written. She achieved fame rather late in life, but she was not an academic late bloomer like Wallace. Place Smith (b. 1926) (PhD 1963) was born in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England. Her mother had married late and did not see marriage “as a state of dependency,” presenting an unusual role model for the times. A girls’ boarding school in Hampshire prepared Place for good manners, marriage, and/or secretarial work. She was unclear about what to do. After high school, she spent a short period at home and then studied social work at the University of Birmingham. She did not like being a social worker, so she “bummed around for a while, and became politically active in the Labour Party, working for a Labour Member of Parliament in a working-class district of Essex.” She never considered a career but took secretarial training, had a variety of jobs, and discovered that she “really hated being a secretary … it bored me to tears.” Eventually, at age twenty-six, she applied to the London School of Economics (LSE). It was an escape from a series of boring occupations, but she still did not consider an academic life. She recalled that she did not have “the right kind of examinations” or “the right kind of certificates … so I had a rather limited range of things I could get into.” Sociology was one of them, and she took the three-year BS c program with a major in social anthropology. At LSE, she met William Reid Smith, a graduate student. The two married after her final exams in 1955 and within a few weeks moved to the

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University of California at Berkeley for graduate studies. Although she did not have a master’s degree (her husband did), she was accepted directly into the doctoral program in sociology. She liked Berkeley but found the Sociology Department very sexist and very different from English universities, with their tutorials and student independence. At Berkeley, “you had to toe the line as far as the course instructor went and you also had to go to all the lectures.” She did her thesis research in a state mental hospital, where her husband was a paid researcher. It took her eight years to complete her dissertation, for she also worked part time and looked after her sons (born in 1957 and 1963), and she had very little help at home. Soon after she completed her PhD, her husband walked out on her. She finally realized that she “had to have a career … and … that meant that I had to publish, which I really never sort of thought much about so … I started thinking about publishing more articles” and also about obtaining employment. With the help of a colleague, she obtained a post as lecturer at Berkeley. But she wanted a “proper job.” She “also thought that it was difficult being an immigrant with two small kids … You didn’t have any backup with you as a single parent.” She concluded that “it would be better to live” near her family. So in 1967 she returned to England, where she taught at the University of Essex for two years. She discovered that she could not tolerate England, with its class system, sexism, and the hard work she was expected to do. So she examined her options: return to Berkeley, go to a new school in New York, or move to Canada. She did not want to live in the United States for political reasons. So she accepted a position at UBC in the joint Department of Sociology and Anthropology. At UBC, she felt stigmatized because hers was a “defective” family. “It wasn’t like you have done anything, it was that, this was a situation, and you were not a proper family.” Yet she started as an associate professor because her degree from LSE was in “sociology with a major in social anthropology, and social anthropology dominated at UBC.” She soon became active in the BC women’s movement. In the early 1970s, she started teaching women’s studies in the Sociology Department, and “it was a bit of a battle to get” that approved. After several years, she felt that she needed to move to a more “central place,” and when the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) solicited her application, she was happy to comply. In 1977, she and her two sons moved to Toronto for her to teach in the Sociology Department

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at OISE, “a remarkable place of openness of new thinking.” There, surrounded by interested graduate students and other feminist sociologists, such as Margrit Eichler and Mary O’Brien, she began to publish prolifically. By now a full professor, she developed a considerable reputation internationally as a social scientist. In fact, she had been writing about women’s issues since the early 1970s. She prepared “A Peculiar Eclipsing: Women’s Exclusion from Men’s Culture” for the Women’s Studies course at UBC in 1972 and published it in the Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology in 1975. She wrote her first book, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, in 1987.41 Since then, she has completed six other books, the last, Institutional Ethnography as Practice, in 2006, when she was eighty.42 Being a single mother and an academic was, in many ways, harder for her than it was either for Wallace Maclellan, who returned to university after her children left home, or for Elinor Kartzmark, whose parents’ babysitting and emotional support facilitated her professional life as a chemist. Provincial attitudes toward divorced mothers were unpleasant factors in Wallace Maclellan and Place Smith’s lives, as I learned from my interviews with them in 1988 and 1996, respectively. Did anyone disapprove of Kartzmark’s domestic arrangements in Selkirk and Winnipeg? I do not know. She did not tell me of any adverse reaction by neighbours and colleagues. Her parents certainly made it clear to everyone that she chose a child, opted to remain single, and had their support. Perhaps she was immune to criticism because she felt secure in both home and professional life. UBC recruited Place Smith at a time of academic expansion in Canada. In “1969–1970 only 9% of the full-time university teachers in the core social sciences were women.”43 It was a period of political ferment in the United States, and a large number of scientists disagreed with American foreign policy. Many academics moved to Canada because they perceived it as a more liberal country and there were positions available in most scientific fields. As a result, married couples found it easier to be employed in the same city or even in the same institution than in the United States. Contrasting Canada and the United States

Place Smith opposed the Vietnam War and turned down a promising position in New York. Two other couples, whom we meet below, left the United States primarily for political reasons – the sociologists Susan

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Hoecker-Drysdale and John Drysdale and the anthropologists Kathleen Gough Aberle and David Aberle. Before the Second World War, anti-nepotism restrictions at Canadian and US universities were unofficial and erratic, but “most major [American] universities had anti-nepotism rules [by the 1950s].”44 Although they were intended to discourage employment of less-able relatives of influential employees, their wording or interpretation could exclude members of the same family by the same department or institution or even system of institutions. The situation was different in Canada. I discussed above ways that university administrators used fictitious anti-nepotism rules to deny positions to qualified women scientists whose husbands were on the faculty. However, some ignored such practices when it suited them to hire academic wives. In 1966, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada conducted a survey regarding “policies on employing both husband and wife. University of Toronto had no particular policy … eleven universities headed by Dalhousie, the University of Western Ontario and the UBC would hire both but not in the same department.”45 McGill led a “progressive majority” group (eighteen out of the thirty institutions surveyed) that would “employ both husband and wife on the individual merits of each.” These policies had very different implications for three married-couple social scientists: the Gough-Aberles, who moved to Vancouver; the Hoecker-Drysdales, who moved to Montreal; and Fumiko Ikawa-Smith and Philip Smith, who went to Toronto from the United States before moving onto long-term positions, also in Montreal. When I compared and contrasted the professional lives of these three couples before and after their moving to Canada, I found that politics, policies, and individual personalities contributed to the shaping of women’s professional experiences at four Canadian universities. Kathleen Gough Aberle and David Aberle

Kathleen Gough Aberle and David Aberle immigrated to Canada in 1967 to take up permanent positions at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and UBC, respectively. They were mature people with international reputations, both as anthropologists and as political activists. Outspoken critics of American foreign policy, they found it difficult to obtain and retain permanent positions in the United States. In spite of the excellence of

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their scholarship, university anti-nepotism regulations limited their options; being a wife and mother further reduced Gough’s opportunities for suitable employment in the same city as her husband. I first became aware of her experiences in Canada when anthropologist friends mentioned her at a conference in 1991, a few months after her death at age sixty-five. Her friends and colleagues wished to organize a Canadian symposium in her memory. I was intrigued by what I heard and decided to find out more about her. I was interviewing women for my women and science project. Many people who had known her were willing to talk to me, including her husband; colleagues and friends, such as Richard Lee and Dorothy Place Smith; younger feminist anthropologists Homa Hoodfar and Judy Whitehead; and community friends and students Patricia Davitt and Anne Roberts.46 Gough Aberle (1925–1990) was born in the small north Yorkshire village of Hunsingore and educated locally until she won a scholarship to King James Grammar School at Knaresborough in Yorkshire. There she encountered strong, independent women who earned money, and they became her role models. Two of them, Molly Snowden and Paddy Wansbrough, became mentors and life-long friends. In our correspondence during 1994–95, when these former teachers were well into their eighties, they recalled her as a passionate, highly intelligent girl and young woman, who loved the countryside and wanted to learn. According to Snowdon, she “did nothing by halves … She made up her mind” and told her parents and mentors the result.47 She won a scholarship to Girton College at the University of Cambridge, where she studied English literature for two years before transferring to anthropology. Despite her rather humble background, she apparently did not feel insecure at Cambridge, which was perhaps less class-conscious because of the war. “Cambridge in the early 1940s contained rather few young Englishmen, for most were in the forces, but there were a great many from India, Malaya, Africa, Cyprus, the West Indies, etc., some of them stranded by wartime lack of transport. I dated several of these young men and became fascinated by their belief in struggles for independence. India especially attracted me, and I became an admirer of Gandhi and Nehru.” She became a socialist at Cambridge. “After graduating,” she continued, “I decided to prepare for field work in India,” and her time there “deepened … [her] convictions.”48 In 1947, she married fellow student Eric Miller, and the two went to Kerala, southern India, to do field work for their doctoral research. She obtained her PhD in 1950 for her research on the Nayar matrilineal system, but

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she now “chafed against a marriage which … robbed [her] of freedom of movement and career.” Looking for a position at Oxford, she was interviewed by famous anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard, who “warned me that if my husband obtained a university appointment [at Oxford], I could not have one because of nepotism rules. On the other hand, if my husband failed to be appointed, so would I, as the authorities would not want to humiliate him! This academic dilemma, and the whole position of women in England at the time, [were] partly responsible for our divorce in late 1950.”49 She then returned to south India to study kinship, ritual, and mythology. In 1953, she was appointed fellow at the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, where she studied psychoanalytic interpretations of myth and ritual. Although she found her year there intellectually exciting, she was disturbed by the oppressive atmosphere of the McCarthy era, so she returned to Britain to become a lecturer at the University of Manchester. In 1954, during a summer seminar on matriliny at Harvard, she met American anthropologist David Aberle, who taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They married the following year, and she moved to the United States to join him, thereby giving up a promising academic life in England. For the next dozen years, the Aberles moved around from one university to another. In 1955–56, while he was a visiting professor at Stanford, she was a visiting lecturer at Berkeley. When he returned to Ann Arbor, she commuted to Wayne State University in Detroit. Finally, in 1961, they joined Brandeis University, near Boston. He became chair of Anthropology, where she was an assistant professor. However, Ronald Frankenberg wrote in her obituary: “The joy and hope engendered by her appointment to a lively faculty and the opportunity to teach well-qualified and keen students was to be short lived. Involvement with anti-nuclear protests and a well-publicized expression of opposition to Kennedy’s Cuba policy at a student meeting … made David’s position as chair of her department untenable and Kathleen’s untenurable.”50 The two left Brandeis for the University of Oregon, but their political activism and opposition to US involvement in Vietnam created difficulties for both of them, and so in 1967 they decided to relocate to Canada. In the 1960s, there were few positions for women anthropologists in the United States. Canadian universities were expanding, and while they had few women social scientists, several American women sociologists and anthropologists found Canadian positions. The new, seemingly

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open-minded SFU hired forty-two-year-old Gough Aberle as an associate professor, promoted her to full professor within a year, and awarded her the President’s Research Award. In 1969, the administration refused to deal with students’ recommendations regarding promotion and tenure. In the ensuing protest and repercussions, it denied tenure or renewal to eleven members of the radical Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology Department (PSA). The Canadian Association of University Teachers and numerous professional associations throughout North America blacklisted SFU. Members of the new tenure committee, appointed to review the files, were unfamiliar with Gough Aberle’s path-breaking publications on social structures, kinship, and caste, among other subjects. She later learned that they read only her “New Proposal for Anthropologists,” part of a thought-provoking, three-paper Social Responsibilities Symposium published in Current Anthropology in 1968. Its radical tone was used against her in her fight for tenure. Characteristically, she was proud of having been fired for that paper.”51 There had been other instances in the history of Canadian universities when administrators “questioned the academic freedom of well-known, [permanently employed] highly productive teachers.”52 But these were individual cases. By contrast, Gough Aberle was part of a group, and she was in the unusual situation of being an untenured full professor. Eventually, SFU offered to rehire her, but she would not accept until her dismissed colleagues were also reinstated. The administration refused, and she was unable to find suitable academic employment in Vancouver. In contrast, her husband, a professor of anthropology at UBC, also with a reputation as a political activist, retained his position until his retirement in 1983. As a wife and mother, Gough Aberle would not take a permanent position far from her family. The Department of Anthropology at UBC hid behind nepotism rules; as it had stated in its response to the 1966 survey by the Association of University Colleges of Canada (AUCC), it would not hire couples. My research has, however, uncovered exceptions at many Canadian universities when it suited their administrations. In her case, it was probably her reputation as “an agitator, leftist sympathizer and a charismatic teacher with the ability to mobilize students against arbitrary administrations that worked against her.”53 She had achieved an international reputation as a scientist early in her career, and she had produced numerous prestigious publications by the time she moved to Canada at age forty-two. Unfortunately, “sexism, and political conservatism combined to make sure that this radical woman

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anthropologist married to a man in her field never held a full-time tenured position.”54 Clearly, dissenting radical women were uncomfortable colleagues and thorns in the side of conservative university administrators (as another example, Marlene Dixon, a radical American sociologist at McGill, could not be denied reappointment, but subsequent incredible harassment made her leave the university55). So, instead of a permanent academic position, Gough Aberle obtained affiliations at UBC as honorary research associate 1971–72 at the Institute of Asian Research and, from 1972 on, in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, where she also taught 1973–74 as a visiting professor. Although she gave the occasional lecture to the faculty and graduate students, she regretted the loss of permanent teaching. When in 1984 the department finally offered her a regular position following the retirement of her husband, she was no longer interested.56 As a highly trained and well-funded scholar, she felt isolated, while a generation of students lost the opportunity to study with this challenging teacher. Nevertheless her research and publications continued to influence anthropology and anthropologists. Susan Hoecker-Drysdale and John P. Drysdale

The employment situation and professional opportunities were certainly different for Susan Hoecker (married name Hoecker-Drysdale) (b. 1936) (PhD 1969) and John P. Drysdale, American sociologists in their thirties who had been active in the anti-Vietnam protests and in the US civil rights movement.57 Hoecker was born in Chicago and grew up at Eagle River in northern Wisconsin. As a child, she was interested in nature and spent much time in the woods, but, living in such a white resort town, she became fascinated by the interactions of the various classes of local residents and welloff tourists. Two of her older siblings had attended Northland, a liberal arts college in Ashland, Wisconsin, and her parents encouraged her too to study there. Initially, she wanted to major in biology. However, after she took an undergraduate sociology course, she chose sociology as her major subject, with a minor in English and German. Her professors encouraged her to attend graduate school, and she went to Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge with a scholarship to study sociology. There she met John Drysdale, whom she married in 1962. While studying for their doctorates in sociology at LSU, the Drysdales had a number of short-term appointments, but never in the same department of sociology. For example, in 1965, he became an instructor at the

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University of Kentucky, in Lexington, while she commuted twenty-five miles to Eastern Kentucky University, in Richmond, as assistant professor of sociology. In 1966, with his PhD completed, he was promoted to assistant professor. She served as an instructor 1966–67 in the National Teachers Corps, instructor 1967–68 in the Department of Home Economics also at Kentucky, and assistant professor 1968–71 of home economics and sociology at Kentucky. She applied to teach a course in her area of specialization of Marxist studies in the Department of Sociology. Was it anti-nepotism rules or her outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War that denied her the position? After their son was born in 1970, the Drysdales were seriously looking for promising long-term appointments. They were increasingly disenchanted with US foreign policy, were keen to move away from the American south, and needed permanent professional positions. At a sociology conference, Drysdale met Taylor Buckner, chair of Sociology at Sir George Williams University. Buckner encouraged him to apply to that institution and told him that his wife should apply to Loyola College. The Drysdales, who had already visited and liked Montreal, were excited about the prospect of returning. So they accepted one-year visiting professorships with equal pay and in 1971 moved to Montreal. There they found Quebec politics alienating, mostly because their French was not good enough for them to understand all the issues. Instead, they chose to concentrate on their teaching and professional development. Their appointments turned permanent, and they pursued satisfactory professional lives, even after the two institutions joined in 1974 to become Concordia University. As a graduate student at LSU, Hoecker-Drysdale had not been much affected by the second women’s movement. Then, in Kentucky, she began to read about women in the professions and taught the first feminist course at the University of Kentucky in 1970. At Loyola, she met other scholars interested in women’s issues and coordinated 1972–75 Loyola’s Women’s Studies program. She became increasingly interested in feminist writers and read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex,58 Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique,59 and Alice Rossi’s Feminist Papers.60 In 1981, she and her colleague and friend Katherine Waters taught an advanced seminar on “Women and Work through Literature and Sociology.” Throughout the 1970s, she gave regular sociology courses on classical social theory, the family, the child and the family, the individual and society, and social stratification, among other subjects. Developing new courses, serving on committees, and spending time with her young son kept her busy and fo-

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cused on teaching. Her husband helped with housework and child care, but good day care was scarce. As a result, she had little time to develop research projects or apply for grants until the late 1970s. Over the years, her interest grew in historical sociology, the feminist tradition in sociology, the work of the nineteenth-century writer Harriet Martineau, and also the lives of Canadian women sociologists. As soon as her son was in middle school, she spent more time on research, obtained a number of grants, and wrote a well-reviewed biography of Martineau61 together with several important book chapters on women sociologists. She was promoted to associate professor in 1975 and took early retirement as a professor emerita in 1997, but she continues her research and writing. Working in the same field at the same institution as her husband became possible for her in Montreal, which had no anti-nepotism rules. She overcame any difficulties by legally changing her surname to HoeckerDrysdale. During their working years, she and her husband shared intellectual exchange and emotional support, and in retirement they still challenge each other intellectually, participate in conferences, and contribute to scholarship. Fumiko Ikawa-Smith and Philip Smith

Fumiko Ikawa (married name Ikawa-Smith) and Philip Smith also shared scientific interests and found positions in Montreal, but at separate institutions. A contact at McGill recommended her to me for a panel discussion on women and science for my course on that subject. Her contribution proved so interesting that I followed it up with an oral history interview. Ikawa was born in 1930 in Kobe, Japan, daughter of an educated mother who taught English and a Buddhist priest and university professor whose specialty was Japanese history.62 Her mother encouraged her to go to college and study English, after which she became an assistant in Tokyo Metropolitan University’s Sociology Department. She was expected to be an “office lady,” however, and pour tea, and she thought, “I don’t think that is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” Yet she was able to meet visiting anthropologists and recalled later the “great gap in the scholarship between Japanese sociology and anthropology and what was going on in North America.” There were numerous American social scientists in Japan, and Japanese and American scholars wanted to interact and needed an interpreter. Ikawa filled this role but wanted more. She was already interested in

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differences in cultural traditions and, encouraged by one of the senior professors, decided to study anthropology. Nearly fifty years later, she remembered: “When a Fulbright Fellowship became available I took it and went to the United States, originally for one year because the Fulbright is for one year only. And then I just kept extending it year after year. And then ended up not going home at all.” She chose Radcliffe College, part of Harvard University, because it was a centre for Central American archaeology. As a graduate student, she participated in a 1956 expedition to Durango, Mexico, and obtained her AM in 1958. She worked 1958–59 as a research assistant and teaching fellow at Harvard. There she met Canadian Philip E.L. Smith, whom she married in 1959. In 1960, the Smiths, with an infant son, were looking for permanent positions. “In North America,” she recalled, “it was the man who had to find the job.” The University of Toronto offered him a position, and the family drove to Toronto. Instead of working, she looked after their son but did not enjoy being a stay-at-home mother. Although the child psychology literature recommended that mothers stay home with their children, she was frustrated and felt that she should have studied for her PhD instead of “worrying about diapers.” Their parents were too far away to help – in Newfoundland and Japan. During 1962–63, she accompanied her husband to Egypt on a one-year UNESCO -sponsored research project, and by the time they returned to Canada their son was eligible for nursery school. Expanding university departments needed qualified teaching personnel, and in 1964 Toronto offered her a part-time position teaching introductory anthropology. A cleaning woman helped her with child care, but again she was not satisfied. Although she did not have her PhD, other “all but dissertations” (ABDs), including her own husband, were obtaining full-time posts. She told Tom McFeat, the department chair, about a professor who could not “stay in place because his wife was asthmatic, and the climate [did] … not agree with her, so he had to leave. Well, in our case, if I don’t get the job, my husband is not going to stay.” When the chair offered her a part-time assistant professorship, she told him that she wanted a fulltime one. Perhaps taken aback by her audacity, he promised her one. Meanwhile the Anthropology Department was in upheaval, and when the Université de Montréal offered Smith a position, he accepted. She finally realized that she had to finish her doctorate. In 1967, McGill’s Anthropology Department was looking for a sabbatical replacement for

Family Life and Science after 1950  161

archaeologist Bruce Trigger and hired her as a part-time sessional. After two years as a visiting assistant professor, she sought to normalize her situation. In 1970, the department head appointed her as an assistant professor. As an archaeologist, she spent much time in the field. While studying in Japan, she conducted sociological investigations in several mountain villages. She also undertook a study of the social structure of a JapaneseAmerican community in Seattle. She and her husband often went on field trips together, and some people thought that she was his assistant, particularly because she spoke Japanese and seemed to be collecting material for him. “So I had to explain this is for my own thesis, and they looked very surprised. ‘Oh, this is not for your husband?’ Well, I mean they didn’t withdraw, but they seemed, the assumption was that I was working for my husband.” Later she chose to go on field trips on her own. She obtained her doctorate in 1974, and her professional life improved. She became associate professor that year and full professor in 1979. She chaired Anthropology 1975–80 and East Asian Languages and Literature 1983–88. Concurrently, she was director for McGill’s Centre of East Asian Studies. In our 1997 interview, she recalled that although her husband did share child care, she ran a Japanese household and was responsible for everything, including finances. In addition, she had a varied and fulfilling academic life. She taught a number of courses, provided valuable service to the university, organized and attended conferences, and published numerous papers on the early Palaeolithic period in South and East Asia and more recently on gender and prehistory. In her professional life, she had the support of her husband and the respect of her colleagues. Aware of her worth, she was willing to fight for her rights and confronted department heads to improve her academic position. When I asked her about her most important contributions to scholarship, she replied, “to make Japanese archaeology accessible to people who can’t read Japanese. And that I saw as my role, and I continue to do so.” Lillian Quan Dyck

Nearly one hundred years after English-Canadian women began scientific work at McGill and Toronto, Lillian Eva Quan (married name Dyck) (b. 1945) made history by becoming the first Aboriginal woman scientist to obtain a faculty position at a Canadian university. When I met her at a

162  cr e at in g compl i c at ed l i v e s

Women and Science Conference in Saskatoon in 1995, I was impressed by her dedication to science and also by her First Nations heritage. She was born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to a Cree mother, Eva, of the Gordon First Nation, and Winston Quan, of Chinese descent. She was protected from racism by her parents who did not disclose her mother’s Cree background. Keen on science from an early age, she graduated from the Swift Current High School in 1963 and studied science at Saskatchewan (BA biochemistry, 1968, MS c biochemistry, 1970, PhD biological psychiatry, 1981). As a graduate student, she worked as department assistant in biochemistry and with her brother’s help found a summer job in a chemistry laboratory. Working there deepened her interest in science. After completing her master’s degree, she spent 1971–72 as a senior technician in the Department of Medicine at Calgary. In 1972, she started as a scientist for the government of Saskatchewan. While working for the government, she returned to graduate school and studied neuropsychiatry for her doctorate, married, and had a son in 1974. Her husband fully supported her desire to be a working government scientist. She rose through the ranks, became a research scientist, and in 1987 joined the Neuropsychiatry Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan. She taught in the Department of Psychiatry at the university and became full professor in 1996. She found science a rewarding career, and, as an Aboriginal woman, feminist, and social activist, she worked hard to increase the number of women in science. She promotes Aboriginal health and welfare through her research and activism. “It’s her questioning of scientific norms as well as her determination to act as advocate for those with an unequal voice that most qualify her as a role model.”63

Reflections From the examples in this section, it is clear that women scientists who were mothers did not follow a single model of professional life. Institutions and department heads behaved differently from place to place, and this influenced women’s opportunities in science. Late starters, late bloomers, immigrants, and native-born Canadians have managed their professional and private lives in a variety of ways. Some were able to hire help for their children, but many relied on family members and/or friends. The lack of adequate social support networks resulted in some highly imaginative child-care arrangements within and outside the household.

Family Life and Science after 1950  163

Issues of motherhood and the professions surfaced in the new generation of academics beyond the time-frame of this book. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a younger generation rediscovered the “problem” and vented its frustration about motherhood, academic advancement, and tenure in the educational and psychological literature without being familiar with the feminist history and history of science literature.64 There is no doubt that women’s expectations have expanded since the second women’s movement, and universities, often conservative by nature and historically organized by men for men, struggle with women’s and men’s often-competing demands. When I read a selection of recent articles on women in academe, I was surprised to find how little contemporary women academics have learned from the past and how little they acknowledged women and science in their research. It seems that they have benefited little, if at all, from some of the detailed historical work that has been published during the last thirty years in North America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe and Australia. Moreover, most of what I read was about women academics in general, and, except for Grant et al.,65 this has ignored the fact that science has its own subculture. Reading the general historical literature on women and science, and on women’s history, ought to provide a long view, a continuum of women’s life and work in science in general. Then more detailed works on gender and race issues in both English- and Frenchspeaking Canadian universities would help fill the gap in the synchronic and diachronic matrix that constitutes the chequered past of women in Canadian science.

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Notes

Introduction





1 Warren O Hagström, The Scientific Community (New York: New York Basic Books, 1965). Hagström constructed a model of the American scientific community, based on interviews with seventy-nine scientists, eleven graduate students, and two technicians working in science, all men, at five prestigious American institutions. 2 Robert K. Merton, “The Matthew Effect in Science,” Science, 159 (5 Jan. 1968), 56–63. 3 Margaret W. Rossiter, “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science,” Social Studies of Science, 23 no. 2 (1993), 325–41. 4 Ibid., 325. 5 See Margaret Rossiter’s work on American women, Ann Koblitz’s on Russian women, Nessy Allen’s on Australian women, and the author’s in the following collections: Farley Kelly, ed., On the Edge of Discovery: Australian Women in Science (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 1993); Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1879–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990); G. Kass-Simon and P. Farnes, eds., Women of Science: Righting the Record (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Lucie Dumais and Véronique Boudreau, eds., Femmes et science: au coeur des débats institutionnels et épistémologiques (Ottawa: ACFAS-Outaouais, 1996); and Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). 6 Harriet Zuckermann, Jonathan R. Cole, and John T. Bruer, eds., The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community (New York: Norton, 1991). 7 Kenneth Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); Michael Bliss, Banting: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984); Marianne G. Ainley, Restless Energy: A Biography of William Rowan, 1891–1957 (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990); Susan HoeckerDrysdale, Harriet Martineau: First Woman Sociologist (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992); J.L. Cranmer-Byng, A Life with Birds: Percy A. Taverner, Canadian Ornithologist, 1875–1947 (Ottawa: Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club, 1996); and Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Clifford J. Choquette, A Dame Full of Vim and Vigor: A Biog-

166  Notes to pages 5–16



8 9

10



11

12 13

14 15

raphy of Alice Middleton Boring, Biologist in China (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999). Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (New York: Plume Books, 1989). Martha S. White, “Women in the Professions: Psychological and Social Barriers to Women in Science,” Science, 170 (23 Oct. 1970), 413–16. According to Lorraine Code, agency is the possibility for “effective, independent action.” “How Do We Know? Questions of Method in Feminist Practice,” in Sandra Burt and Lorraine Code, Changing Methods: Feminist Transforming Practices (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1995), 27. Cindy Katz and Janice Monk, eds., Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course (New York: Routledge, 1933). 2. Brigid Toole, referring to her mother, Norah Toole, personal communication with the author. Marianne G. Ainley, “Les femmes dans les science au Canada: y-a-t-il une division sexuelle du travail?,” in Lucie Dumais and Véronique Boudrault, eds., Femmes et science: au coeur des débats institutionnels et épistémologiques (Ottawa: ACFAS-Outaouais, 1996), 3–18. Ainley, Restless Energy. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1197.

Chapter one



1 D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, “Personal Experience Method,” in Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage, 1994), 423. 2 W.F. Bynum, E.J. Browne, and Roy Porter, Dictionary of the History of Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 145 and 211. See also Jan Golinski, Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Sandra Harding discusses these issues from a feminist philosophical perspective in Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998). 3 Henrika Kuklick and Robert E. Kohle, eds., “Science in the Field,” Osiris, special issue, 11 (1996). 4 John Lankford and Ricky L. Slavings, “Gender and Science: Women in American Astronomy, 1859–1940,” Physics Today (March 1990), 58–65. 5 R.A. Stebbins, “The Amateur: Two Sociological Definitions,” Pacific Sociological Review, 20 (1977), 583–605. 6 Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 175–96; Sandra Kirby and Kate McKenna, Experience, Research, Social Change: Methods from the Margins (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1989). 7 Margaret W. Rossiter, “Women’s Work in Science. 1880–1910,” Isis, 71 (1980), 381–98. 8 Margaret Morse Nice, Research Is a Passion with Me: The Autobiography of a Bird Lover (Toronto: Consolidated Amethyst Communications Inc., 1979).

Notes to pages 18–26  167









9 Laurel Richardson, “Writing: A Method of Inquiry,” in Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage, 1994), 516–29. 10 Sharon Traweek, unpublished paper, Minnesota talk, 1995, used by permission of the author. 11 In the early 1970s, Gerda Lerner and Joan Kelly were pioneering women’s history in the United States. Gerda Lerner, “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges” Feminist Studies, 3 (autumn 1975), 5–14; Joan Kelly, Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 12 “Introduction,” in Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 1–16. 13 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, Restless Energy; A Biography of William Rowan, 1891– 1957 (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1993). 14 Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). 15 Ann Hibner Koblitz, A Convergence of Lives: Sofia Kovalevskaia, Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1983). 16 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “The Contribution of the Amateur to North American Ornithology: A Historical Perspective,” Living Bird, 18 (1979–80), 161–77. 17 Clandinin and Connelly, “Personal Experience Method,” 423. 18 Ibid., 576. 19 Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall, Writing Women’s History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), xxx. 20 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]. 21 Carolyn Merchant, “‘Isis’ Consciousness Raised,” Isis, 73 no. 3 (1982), 398-409. 22 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Women in Science: No More Stereotypes,” Bridges (June/July 1989), 15–18. 23 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I], xv; Naomi Oreskes, “Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science,” in Henrika Kuklick and Robert E. Kohler, eds., “Science in the Field,” Osiris, special issue, 11 (1996), 87–116. 24 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I], xv. 25 Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Helen Longino, “The Women, Gender, and Science Question: What Do Research on Women in Science and Research on Gender and Science Have to Do with Each Other?” in Kohlstedt and Longino, eds., “Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions,” Osiris, special issue, 12 (1997), 7. 26 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]. 27 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “D’assistantes anonymes a chercheures scientifiques: une rétrospective sur la place des femmes en sciences,” Cahiers de recherche sociologique, 4 (April 1986), 55–71. 28 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Women Scientists in Canada: The Need for Documentation,” Resources for Feminist Research, 15 no. 3 (Nov. 1986), 7–8. 29 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Femmes et mathématique: quelles actions prendre?,” Bulletin d’association mathématique du Québec, 27 (Oct. 1987), 25–6. 30 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Field Work and Family: North American Women Ornithologists, 1900–1950,” in Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Un-

168  Notes to pages 26–46



31

32 33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43



44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52

easy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 60–76. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Rowan vs. Tory – Conflicting Views of Scientific Research in Canada, 1920–1935,” Scientia Canadensis, 12 (1988), 3–21. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “William Rowan: Canada’s First Avian Biologist,” Picoides, 1 (1987), 6–8. Editor’s note, Scientia Canadensis, 9 (June 1985), 1. Margaret Rossiter discussed this issue throughout Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]. Letter, Stephen Goban to author, 6 Oct. 1987. Assessors B’s comments and notification, attached to Goban’s letter of 6 Oct. 1987. Goban’s letter. Letter, SSHRC to Ainley, n.d. Report from Assessor A, 1988. Report from Assessor B, in French, translated into English by author. Letter, author to Marion P. King, 17 May 1988. Letter, Marion P. King to author, 31 May 1988. Marianne Ainley, application no. 3 to the SSHRC Women and Work strategic program, 8 March 1988. Andrée Levesque, personal communication with author, 1986. Ainley, “Women Scientists in Canada,” 7–8. Ainley, “Women in Science: No More Stereotypes.” Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990). Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “‘Women’s Work’ in Canadian Chemistry,” Canadian Woman Studies, 13 (winter 1993), 43–6. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “A Select Few: Women and the National Research Council of Canada, 1916–1991,” Scientia Canadensis, 15 (1991), 105–16. Letter, Marianne Ainley, 21 Dec. 1991. Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996). Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “In Memoriam: Margaret Howell Mitchell, 1901– 1988,” Auk, 107 (1990), 601–2.

Chapter Two

1 D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, “Personal Experience Method,” in Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds., Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage, 1994), 423. 2 Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal: Eden Press, 1982), 221. 3 Ibid., 227. 4 Simon T. Davies, “Providing Access to Information at McGill,” McGill Reporter, 18 no. 26 (17 April 1986), 7. 5 Letter, author to Marcel Caya, 19 Feb. 1986.

Notes to pages 46–9  169













6 The permission to consult the files was granted in April 1986 and transmitted in a telephone conversation on 22 April 1986 between Sheila Sheldon-Collyer and Robert Michel, who then conveyed the good news to me orally. 7 Stanley Brice Frost, McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning, 1801–1895, vol. I (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980). 8 Several historians of education have published on university students: for McGill, see Jo Lapierre, “The Academic Life of Canadian Coeds, 1880–1900,” Historical Studies in Education, 2, no. 2 (1900), 225–45; and for Queen’s, see Nicole Neatby, “Preparing for the Working World: Women at Queen’s during the 1920’s,” Historical Studies in Education, 1, no. 1 (1989), 53–72. 9 See Margaret Gillett, “The Heart of the Matter: Maud Abbott, M.D., 1869–1940,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 183–4; Lykke de la Cour and Rose Sheinin, “The Ontario Medical College for Women, 1883–1906: Lessons from Gender Separatism in Medical Education,” ibid., 112–13. 10 See Frost, McGill University, vol. I, and Gillett, We Walked Very Warily. 11 There is a vast literature on the professionalization of science. See Nathan Reingold, “Definitions and Speculations: The Professionalisation of Science in America in the Nineteenth Century,” in A. Oleson and S.C. Brown, eds., The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 33–69; R.A. Stebbins, “The Amateur: Two Sociological Definitions,” Pacific Sociological Review, 20 (1977), 583–605; and Joseph Ben-David and A. Zloczower, “Universities and Academic Systems in Modern Societies,” Archives Européennes de sociologie, 3 (1962), 45–82. On the impact of the professionalization of science on women, see Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), and Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds. 12 Alison Prentice et al., eds., Canadian Women: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1996); Alison Mackinnon, Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Katie Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts: The First Academic Women in Anglo-Canada, New Zealand and Australia,” Women’s History Review, 10 no. 2 (2001), 273–97. 13 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America. 14 McGill’s first botany professor, David Penhallow, had to petition the principal and the board of governors for an increase of his salary. In a letter to the board of 28 October 1903, he pointed out that “the majority of professors in the Faculty of Arts already enjoy an advance in salary to the above mentioned sum.” He requested $3,000 per year. Clearly, this science professor earned less than his colleagues in the humanities. RG 2, McGill University Archives (McGUA). 15 Ann R. Ford, A Path Not Strewn with Roses: One Hundred Years of Women at the University of Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1985). 16 Watson Kirkonnel, The Acadia Record, 1838–1953 (Wolfville: Acadia University, 1953). 17 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily. 18 John G. Reid, Mount Allison University: A History, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), vol. I , 118.

170  Notes to pages 49–53

19 Mary Kinnear, A Female Economy: Women’s Work in a Prairie Province (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998). 20 Arthur S. Morton, Saskatchewan: The Making of a University (Toronto: University of Saskatchewan by Toronto University Press, 1959). 21 John MacDonald, The History of the University of Alberta, 1908–1958 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1958). 22 Lee Stewart, “It’s Up to You”: Women at UBC in the Early Years (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990). 23 M.F. Rayner-Canham and G.W. Rayner-Canham, “Harriet Brooks, 1876–1933, Canada’s First Woman Nuclear Physicist,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 195–203; Marelene F. Rayner-Canham and Geoffrey W. RaynerCanham, Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). 24 A.W.H. Needler and Mary Needler Arai, conversations with author. 25 Alison Prentice, “Bluestockings, Feminists, or Women Workers? A Preliminary Look at Women’s Early Employment at the University of Toronto,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 2 (1991), 231–61; Mary Kinnear, In Subordination: Professional Women, 1870–1970 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995); Judith Fingard, “Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie: Faculty Women before 1950,” Dalhousie Review (winter 1984–85), 697–703; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily; Stewart, “It’s Up to You.” 26 On married women and work, see Prentice et al., eds., Canadian Women; Stephen G. Peitchinis, Women at Work: Discrimination and Response (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989); Pat Armstrong and Hugh Armstrong, The Double Ghetto: Canadian Women and Their Segregated Work, 3rd edn (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994); Nicole Morgan, The Equality Game: Women in the Federal Public Service (1908–1987) (Ottawa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1988). 27 Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]; Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds; G. Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes, eds., Women of Science: Righting the Record (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Veronica Stolte-Heiskanen, ed., Women in Science: Token Women or Gender Equality (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1991). 28 Harriet Zuckerman “The Careers of Men and Women Scientists: A Review of Current Research,” in Harriet Zuckerman, Jonathan R. Cole, and John T. Bruer, eds., The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community (New York: Norton, 1991), 27–56. 29 Biographical work on male scientists supports this. On eminent white male scientists whose paths were far from smooth, see Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, Restless Energy: A Biography of William Rowan, 1891–1957 (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1993); J. Cranmer-Byng, A Life with Birds: Percy A. Taverner, Canadian Ornithologist, 1875–1947 (Ottawa: Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club, 1996); Michael Bliss, Banting: A Biography (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1984). On the career of a brilliant minority-group male scientist, see Kenneth R. Manning, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Notes to pages 53–60  171

30 Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing A Life (New York: Plume Books, 1990); Cindy Katz and Janice Monk, eds., Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course (New York: Routledge, 1993). 31 Martha S. White, “Women in the Professions: Psychological and Social Barriers to Women in Science,” Science, 1 no. 70 (23 Oct. 1970), 413–16. 32 Fingard, “Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie”; Gillett, We Walked Very Warily; Prentice, “Bluestockings”; Kinnear, In Subordination. 33 Reid, Mount Allison University. 34 On invisible assistants from the beginning of experimental science in the seventeenth century on, see Stephen Shapin, “The Invisible Technician,” American Scientist, 77 (1989), 554–63. 35 Joan Burke, conversation with author. 36 On professional women’s private liaisons, see Penina Migdal Glazer and Miriam Slater, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions, 1890–1940 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987); Mackinnon, Love and Freedom; Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts.” 37 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily; Margaret Gillett, “Carrie Derick (1862–1941) and the Chair of Botany at McGill,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 74–87. 38 McGill University Archives (McGUA), Minutes of the Board of Governors, 1891– 97, 67, 25 Sept. 1891, 25. 39 Ibid., 25 March 1892, 118. 40 Ibid., 25 April 1896. She found this amount too low, although some, such as W.A. Duff, were appointed demonstrators in March 1895 with an annual salary of $500, while others, much younger than she, earned $750. 41 Ibid., 445–6, 514. At the same time a male lecturer in the Classics Department earned $1,000 per year. 42 McGUA , RG 2, Botany file, Principal William Peterson’s papers. 43 Gillett, “Carrie Derick,” 84. 44 McGUA , RG 2 C62, 9 Jan. 1928, Dept. botany files, 1927–33. 45 Ruby Heap, “From the Science of Housekeeping to the Science of Nutrition: Pioneers in Canadian Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Household Science, 1900–1950,” in Elizabeth Smyth et al., eds., Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women’s Professional Work (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 141–70. 46 “Curriculum Vitae of Miss Clara C. Benson, Ph.D., Presented to the Senate by the Alumnae of the Faculty of Household Science,” 1956, Department of Athletics and Recreation, A 86-0008/001, University of Toronto Archives (UTA); Harold Averill communication with author, 22 Aug. 2000. 47 Clara Benson, Curriculum Vitae; Clara Benson, “Report for the Department of Food Chemistry,” 1916–17, UTA . 48 Clara Benson, “Report for the Department of Food Chemistry,” 1918–19, UTA , Faculty of Household Science files, A67-0007. 49 Ibid., A-68-0006 1020 031. 50 Clara Benson, “Report for the Department of Food Chemistry,” 1920–21, UTA .

172  Notes to pages 60–7

51 The papers of the Chemical Institute of Canada, including membership lists and by-laws, state 1919 as the founding date. MG 28 I 294, box 97, National Archives of Canada (NA); however, the Canadian Encyclopaedia says 1920. On Clara Benson, see Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley and Tina Crossfield, “Canadian Women’s Contributions to Chemistry, 1900–1970,” Canadian Chemical News, 46 no. 4 (1994), 16–18; Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “‘Women’s Work’ in Canadian Chemistry,” Canadian Woman Studies, 13 no. 2 (winter 1993), 43–6; Heap, “From the Science of Housekeeping.” 52 See Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]; Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts”; and MacKinnon, Love and Freedom. 53 Clandinin and Connelly, “Personal Experience Method,” 416.

Chapter Three

1 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Limited Horizons: Women Science Educators at Canadian Universities,” Canadian History of Education Annual Conference, Vancouver, 17 Oct. 1998. 2 Laurence R. Vesey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). See also Robin S. Harris, History of Higher Education in Canada, 1663–1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976). 3 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley and Catherine Millar, “A Select Few: Women and the National Research Council of Canada, 1916–1991,” Scientia Canadensis, 15 no. 2 (1991), 105–16. 4 William Rowan and Winnifred Hughes at Alberta and Dorothy Forward at Toronto were among those who had to construct teaching and research materials. 5 Harris, History of Higher Education, 320. 6 Letter, Muriel V. Roscoe to author, 1 April 1986. 7 R.J. Moore and W.F. Grant, “Lulu Odell Gaiser, 1896–1965,” Canadian Journal of Genetics and Cytology, 7 no. 3 (Sept. 1965), 361–2. 8 According to the McMaster University Calendar for 1924–25, they were Olive Clark in mathematics, C.I.E. Currie in physics, D.M. Hallford in political economy, and K.L. Hull in biology. McMaster University Archives (McMUA). 9 Moore and Grant, “Lulu Odell Gaiser,” 361. 10 McMaster University, Senate Minutes, 1925–50, 4, 243, McMUA . 11 Charles M. Johnston, McMaster University. Vol. 2: The Early Years in Hamilton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), 25. 12 McMaster University, Annual Report 1936–37, 30 April 1937, p. 106, McMUA . 13 Letter, W.F. Grant to author, 3 March 2005. 14 Johnston, McMaster University. Vol. 2, 25. 15 McMaster University, Annual Report 1936–37, H.F. Dawes, 30 April 1937, cited in ibid., 106. 16 Letter, Louise Barber to author, 22 April 2005. 17 Letter, W.F. Grant to author, 3 March 2005. 18 Moore and Grant, “Lulu Odell Gaiser,” 361. 19 Johnston, McMaster University. Vol. 2, 161. 20 McMaster University, Board of Governors Minute Book, 5, 3, 13 Oct. 1949, McMUA .

Notes to pages 67–72  173

21 Letter, F.H. Montgomery to B. Boivin, n.d., Laval University Archives (LUA). 22 Letter, F.H. Montgomery to B. Boivin, 8 Feb. 1976, LUA . He wrote also about a “Mrs. Rachel Shawkence. She is a native of the Kettle Point Indian Reserve and guided Dr. Gaiser on her trips to that reserve.” Kettle Point is on southern Lake Huron; Squirrel Island is in St Mary’s River near Sault Ste Marie, at the northwest tip of Lake Huron. 23 Ralph Estey, “Margaret Newton: Distinguished Canadian Scientist,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 236–47. 24 Jody Mills, “Her Field Was the Ocean,” Alumni Gazette (1990), 14. 25 Marianne Ainley, interview of Helen Battle, n.d. 26 Mills, “Her Field Was the Ocean,” 15. 27 Yves Gingras, Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). 28 Margaret Wilson Bell, personal communication with author. 29 Marelene F. Rayner-Canham and Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham, A Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). 30 Alison Prentice, “The Early History of Women in University Physics: A Toronto Case Study,” Physics in Canada, 52 no. 2 (March/April 1996), 94–100. 31 Edith Engleberg, personal communication with author; and Anna Isobel McPherson, Curriculum vitae, McGill University Archives (McGUA). 32 Letter, Harold Averill to author, 29 Nov. 2001. 33 Alison Prentice, “A Blackboard in Her Kitchen: Women and Physics at the University of Toronto,” Scientia Canadensis, 29 no. 2 (2006), 17–44; Alison Prentice, “Elizabeth Allin: Physicist,” in Elspeth Cameron and Janice Dickin, eds., Great Dames (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 264–87. 34 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Mabel F. Timlin, 1891–1976: A Woman Economist in the World of Men,” Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal/Revue d’études sur les femmes, 23 no. 2 (spring/printemps 1999), 28–38. 35 J.S. Thomson, “Memo to Deans and Heads of Departments,” 28 Jan. 1946, Presidential Papers II B -17 (1), Arts and Science (1944–47), University of Saskatchewan Archives. 36 Ainley, “Mabel F. Timlin,” 30. 37 Mabel F. Timlin, Keynesian Economics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942). 38 Ainley, “Mabel F. Timlin,” 30–2. 39 Isabelle Anderson, personal communication with author; and Duff Spofford, personal communication with author. 40 Jack MacLeod, Zinger and Me (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1979). 41 Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, “Women Sociologists in Canada: The Careers of Helen MacGill Hughes, Aileen Dansken Ross, and Jean Robertson Burnet,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 152–76. 42 Aileen D. Ross, The Hindu Family in Its Urban Setting (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961). 43 Aileen D. Ross, Becoming a Nurse (Toronto: Macmillan, 1961).

174  Notes to pages 72–81

44 Aileen D. Ross, The Lost and the Lonely: Homeless Women in Montreal (Montreal: McGill University Printing Service 1982). 45 Hoecker-Drysdale, “Women Sociologists,” 167. 46 Janet Toole, interview of Nancy Henderson, 4 April 1991. Unless I note otherwise, all information and quotes are from this interview. 47 Margaret Crickard, personal communication with author. 48 Edward Shils, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macro Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). 49 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995), 259–63. 50 Jean Briggs, personal communication with author, April 2002; and Marianne Ainley, interview of Jean Briggs, 11 June 2002. Unless I note otherwise, all information is from this interview. 51 Muriel V. Roscoe, conversations with author. 52 Information courtesy of Chris Hives, University of British Columbia Archives (UBCA). 53 Edith Engleberg, personal communication with author. 54 Letter, A.E. Cameron to H.M. Tory, 30 June 1924, and letter, H.M. Tory to Winnifred Hughes, 5 July 1934, Department of Zoology Papers, University of Alberta Archives (UAA). 55 All information on Winnifred Hughes came from the William Rowan Papers, 69-16-797, UAA . 56 Harold Averill, personal communication with author, 16 Nov. 2001. Additional information from Records of Admission, A 1969-0008/box 064, University of Toronto Archives (UTA). 57 “Science Hails Feat of Women Chemists: Bios Discovery Called Triumph for Two Girls,” Toronto Daily Star, 22 May 1934, 1, 3, Press clipping file, A 1973-0026/092; A 1973-0026, UTA . Also “Chemistry Students Make Important Discoveries,” Toronto Daily Star, 22 May 1934, p. 3. 58 Salary information is from Human Resources files, A2000-0008, UTA . I am grateful to Harold Averill for providing details of Eastcott’s income. 59 Harold Averill, personal communication with author. 60 Meg Luxton and Pat Armstrong, “Margaret Lowe Benston, 1937–1991,” Studies in Political Economy, 35 (summer 1991), 7–11. 61 Marion Lowe, personal communication with author. 62 Margaret Benston, “The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation,” Monthly Labor Review (Sept. 1969), 13–27. 63 See Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, Restless Energy: A Biography of William Rowan, 1891–1957 (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1993). 64 Madeleine Alberta Fritz, “Curriculum Vitae,” copy sent to author by Joan Burke. See also Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Last in the Field? Canadian Women Natural Scientists, 1815–1965,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 25–62; Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Women’s Work in Geology: An Historical Perspective on Gender Division in Canadian Science,” Geoscience Canada, 21 no. 3 (1995), 139–41.

Notes to pages 81–8  175

65 Ainley, “Women’s Work in Geology.” 66 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “In Memoriam: Margaret Howell Mitchell, 1901– 1988,” Auk, 107 (1990), 601–2. 67 Madeleine Fritz, oral history interview, B -74-0022, 1973, UTA . 68 Joan Burke, personal communication with author. 69 Katie Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts: The First Academic Women in AngloCanada, New Zealand and Australia,” Women’s History Review, 10 no. 2 (2001), 281. 70 Acadia Record (1838–1953) – also known as the “blue book” – courtesy of Pat Townshend. 71 Marianne Ainley, interview of Muriel V. Roscoe, 18 July 1986. Unless I note otherwise, all information and quotes are from this interview. 72 Marianne Ainley, research notes from Acadia University Archives (AUA). 73 Gingras, Physics and the Rise, 77. 74 On Muriel V. Roscoe as warden of Royal Victoria College, see Margaret Gillett, We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill (Montreal: Eden Press, 1981), 194–201. 75 Letter, Muriel V. Roscoe to F.C. James, 31 Jan. 1941, Botany files, McGUA . 76 Letter, D.L. Thomson to F.C. James, 4 Feb. 1941, ibid. 77 Originally Scarth, as head of Botany, opposed her request for a demonstrator because he wanted one for his own classes. Letter, F.C. James to D.L. Thomson, 24 Sept. 1941, Botany files, McGUA . 78 Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 196. 79 Marianne Ainley, interview of Muriel V. Roscoe, 10 Aug. 1988. 80 She spoke no French, so was isolated from much of the intellectual and cultural life of Montreal. Ibid. 81 Text of speech given at Radcliffe, 6 June 1959, courtesy of Muriel V. Roscoe. 82 Research notes by Tina Crossfield for Marianne Ainley and Tina E. Crossfield, “Allie Vibert Douglas (1894–1988), Astrophysicist, Astronomer,” in Benjamin F. Shearer and Barbara S. Shearer, eds., Notable Women in the Physical Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 69–76. 83 Allie Vibert Douglas, “Memoirs,” typescript, A. Vibert Douglas Papers, Queen’s University Archives (QUA). I am grateful to Paul Banfield for providing me with a copy of the typescript. 84 A.V. Douglas, “Application,” n.d., 1937, copy in QUA . 85 Douglas, “Memoirs.” 86 Pickles, “Colonial Counterparts,” 281. 87 It was Maud Parkin Grant who filled the post 1937–40. See Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 192–4. 88 Queen’s University, Board of Trustees Minutes, 1939, 316, 9 June 1939, QUA . 89 Ibid., 1940, 3. 90 Queen’s University, Board of Trustees Minutes, 1945, 1946, 1949–50, QUA . 91 A. Vibert Douglas, The Life of Arthur Stanley Eddington (London: Nelson, 1956). 92 Marianne Ainley, interview of Helen Reynolds, 11 Aug. 1988. Unless I note otherwise, all information is from this interview. 93 See Gillett, We Walked Very Warily, 204.

176  Notes to pages 89–95

94 Helen Reynolds, “A Square with Flair,” in Margaret Gillett and Kay Sibbald, eds., A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (Montreal: Eden Press, 1984), 150.

Chapter Four







1 Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (New York: Plume Books, 1990), 1–2. 2 To date the only novel to deal with a woman scientist is by a philosopher of science, June Goodfield, An Imagined World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). 3 John Berger, The Look of Things (New York: Viking, 1974), 40, as quoted in Cindy Katz and Janice Monk, eds., Full Circles: Geographies of Women over the Life Course (London: Routledge, 1993), 2. 4 Ibid., 3. 5 Lorraine Code, “How Do We Know? Questions of Method in Feminist Practice,” in Sandra Burt and Lorraine Code, eds., Changing Methods: Feminist Transforming Practices (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1995), 27. 6 Julie Christine Thacker, “Mothers Who Live Apart from Their Children,” MA thesis, University of Northern British Columbia, 1999. 7 This of course may have also been true for all professional women. By the late twentieth century they resented the implication that they wanted an academic position to exchange the drudgery of house work – I believe that this was certainly true of the earlier generations; see contemporary writings as well as collections such as Deborah Keahey and Deborah Schnitzer, eds., Madwoman in the Academy: Forty-three Women Boldly Take on the Ivory Tower (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2003). 8 Madeleine Alberta Fritz, personal communication with Joan Burke. 9 “Introduction,” in Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 1–16. 10 Marelene F. Rayner-Canham and Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham, Harriet Brooks: Pioneer Nuclear Scientist (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). 11 M.F. Rayner-Canham and G.W. Rayner-Canham, “Canada’s First Nuclear Physicist: Harriet Brooks, 1876–1933,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 96. 12 Rayner-Canham and Rayner-Canham, Harriet Brooks, 30. 13 Ibid., 44. 14 Ibid., 47; letter, Harriet Brooks to Laura Gill, 18 July 1906, Barnard College Archives. 15 Ibid., 69. 16 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Marriage and Scientific Work in Canada: The Berkeleys in Marine Biology and the Hoggs in Astronomy,” in Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 143–55. 17 Ibid.; also Mary Needler Arai and A.W.H. Needler, conversations with author.

Notes to pages 95–102  177

18 At Toronto, most women academics with science training were in household science; see Ruby Heap, “From the Science of Housekeeping to the Science of Nutrition: Pioneers in Canadian Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Household Science, 1900–1950,” in Elizabeth Smyth et al., eds., Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women’s Professional Work (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 141–70. 19 Veronica Strong-Boag, “Janey Canuck”: Women in Canada, 1919–1939, Booklet No. 53 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1994), 5. 20 Vicki Marçok interview of Carol Anne Robertson Maass, Toronto, 25 July 1990. Unless I note otherwise, all information derives from this interview. 21 Margaret Gillett and Kay Sibbald, eds., A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (Montreal: Eden Press, 1984). 22 Margaret Gillett and Ann Beer, eds., Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical Essays by Women Associated with McGill University (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). 23 Joy Parr, ed., Still Running: Personal Stories by Queen’s Women Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marty Scholarship (Kingston: Queen’s University Alumnae Association, 1987). 24 Christopher Hives, personal communication with author. 25 Queen’s University, Board of Trustees Minutes, p. 118, Queen’s University Archives (QUA). 26 Ibid., 125. 27 Memo from the Principal and Vice Chancellor, 14 Sept. 1945, and letter to Mrs. Gerald Graham from “Ker,” 14 Sept. 1945, Department of Mathematics files, QUA . 28 Mary Needler Arai and A.W.H. Needler, conversations with author. 29 Ann Rochon Ford, A Path Not Strewn with Roses: One Hundred Years of Women at the University of Toronto 1884–1994 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 58. 30 Janice Middleton, “Women Who Served Are the Forgotten Veterans,” Ottawa Citizen, 10 (Nov. 1981), 82. 31 Irene Spry, Citation, 8 June 1985, University of Ottawa. 32 Marianne Ainley, interview of Irene Spry, 29 Nov. 1990; Irene Spry, Curriculum vitae. 33 Department of Graduate Records, A73-0027/383 (47) University of Toronto Archives (UTA). 34 Nessa Rappoport, Re: //Collections, 2 no. 1 (spring 2000), 1, published by the Jewish Women Archives. I am grateful to the University of Toronto’s deputy archivist, Harold Averill, for providing me with a copy of this article. 35 Ibid., 7. 36 University of Toronto, Report of the Board of Governors for the year ending 30 June 1942, 58, UTA ; Harold Averill, personal communication with author, 20 June 2002. 37 Harold Averill, personal communication with author, 20 June 2002. 38 University of Toronto, Directory of Staff and Students, 1928–1934. 39 Letter, Lewis Stubbs to author, 23 Jan. 2003. 40 Alison Prentice, “An Early History of Women in University Physics: A Toronto Case Study,” Physics in Canada, 52 no. 2 (March/April 1996), 96.

178  Notes to pages 103–9

41 Laura Rowles, “Long Experience and Happy Existence,” in Margaret Gillett and Ann Beer, eds., Our Own Agendas: Autobiographical Essays by Women Associated with McGill University (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 36. 42 Ibid., 39. 43 Stephen G. Brush, “Dynamics of Theory Change: The Role of Predictions,” in David Hull, Micky Forbes, and Richard Burian, eds., Proceedings of the 1994 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, University of Chicago Press, 2 (1994), 137. 44 Letter, Stephen G. Brush to author, 24 Sept. 2002; however, Yves Gingras, in Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), does not even mention Chalk’s research. 45 Rowles, “Long Experience,” 39. 46 Ibid., 42. 47 Ibid., 45. 48 Alison MacKinnon, Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 150–82. 49 Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 92. 50 According to University of British Columbia (UBC) archivist Christopher Hives, it is “not clear from the appointment card whether this figure increased during the decade.” Christopher Hives, personal communication with author, 6 Nov. 2001. 51 Letter, Gertrude M. Smith to author, 11 Nov. 1985. 52 Michiel Horn, “Tenure and the Canadian Professoriate,” Journal of Canadian Studies (autumn 1999), 268. 53 Nicole Morgan, The Equality Game: Women in the Federal Public Service (1908– 1987) (Ottawa: Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1988). 54 Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 [Vol. I] (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 195. 55 Judith Fingard, “Gender and Inequality at Dalhousie: Faculty Women before 1950,” Dalhousie Review, 64 (winter 1984–85), 689–90. 56 Malcolm MacLeod, “Faculty Development at Memorial University,” in Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, eds., Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 140. 57 Esther Fraser, “Silver and Other Organisms,” New Trail, 32 no. 2 (winter 1976), 6; Eleanor Dowding, conversations with author. 58 Fingard, “Gender and Inequality,” 697–703. 59 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Last in the Field? Canadian Women Natural Scientists, 1815–1965,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 25–62. 60 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Gendered Careers: Women Science Educators at Anglo-Canadian Universities, 1920–1980,” in Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, eds., Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 248–70. 61 Marianne Ainley, interview of Dixie Pelluet, 1986. 62 Letter, Dixie Pelluet to A.E. Kerr, 25 Nov. 1952, Dalhousie University Archives (DUA), MS-1-3-C-381. 63 Dr John Farley, personal communication with author.

Notes to pages 109–15  179

64 MacKinnon, Love and Freedom, 161. 65 Canadian Federation of University Women, Report 28–29, National Archives of Canada (NA), MG 28 I 196, vol. 10, file 6. 66 Report of the Administrative Chair of the Honorary Advisory Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, 1926, 15, National Research Council Archives (NRCA). 67 F.C. MacIntosh, “In Memoriam: Kathleen G. Terroux,” Physiology in Canada, 15 no. 3 (Dec. 1984), 111, referred to her position in the Zoology Department as assistant professor. Based on research in the McGill University Archives, I believe this is incorrect. 68 Everett Hughes, French Canada in Transition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943). 69 Steven Shapin, “The Invisible Technician,” American Scientist, 77 no. 6 (Nov.– Dec. 1989), 554–63. 70 Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, “Women Sociologists in Canada: The Careers of Helen MacGill Hughes, Aileen Dansken Ross and Jean Robertson Burnet,” in Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed., Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1990), 152–76, and “Sociologists in the Vineyard: The Careers of Helen MacGill Hughes and Everett Cherrington Hughes,” in Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 220–31. 71 “Mrs. Fantham,” n.d. typescript attached to a letter from L.W. Douglas to J.J. O’Neill, 21 Feb. 1938, RG 2, C63, Zoology department, 1938–39, McGill University Archives (MUA). 72 Hanna Papanek, “Men, Women, and Work: Reflections on the Two-Person Career,” in Joan Huber, ed., Changing Women in a Changing Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 90–110. 73 Letter, Annie Porter to H.R. Raikes, 12 April 1938, Biographical Collection: Fantham File, Central Records office, University of Witwatersrand. 74 Karen Kelly, “Animal Instincts: Zoology at the U of T Has Come a Long Way in 150 Years,” University of Toronto Magazine (summer 2003). www.magazine.utoronto.ca/03summer/animal.asp. 75 Alison Prentice, “Bluestockings, Feminists, or Women Workers? A Preliminary Look at Women’s Early Employment in the University of Toronto,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, new series, 2 (1991), 231–61. 76 Helen Sawyer, conversations with author. 77 Helen Sawyer Hogg, “Shapley’s Era,” in J.E. Grindlay and A.G. Davis Philip, eds., The Harlow Shapley Symposium on Globular Cluster System in Galaxies (Cambridge, MA : IAU, 1988), 11–22. 78 Helen Sawyer, personal communication with author, 28 April 1992. 79 Morgan, The Equality Game. 80 Helen Hogg, “Memories of the Plaskett Era of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, 1931–1934,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 82 no. 6 (1988), 328–35. 81 Peggy A. Kidwell, “Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin: Astronomy in the Family,” in Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987),

180  Notes to pages 115–20



82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90 91 92



93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105 106 107 108

216–38; K. Haramundanis, ed., Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, An Autobiography and Other Recollections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Hogg, “Memories.” Letter, Helen Sawyer to author, 28 April 1992. Ibid. Hogg, “Memories.” Marianne Ainley, interview of Helen Sawyer, 25 June 1991. Letter, Helen Sawyer to author, 28 April 1992. Letter, Helen Sawyer to author, 19 July 1991. Ainley, “Marriage and Scientific Work in Twentieth-century Canada,” in Helena Pycior, Nancy Slack, and Pnina Abir-Am, eds., Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 143–55. While Sawyer and Hogg had a common interest in science, they worked in different areas of astronomy and became internationally recognized experts in variable stars and spectroscopy, respectively. Their different research areas precluded competition, but ensured continued intellectual discussions. Margaret W. Rossiter, “Women’s Work in Science, 1880–1910,” Isis, 71 (1980), 391–8; also John Lankford and Rickey L. Slavings, “Gender and Science: Women in American Astronomy, 1859–1940,” Physics Today (March 1990), 58–61. Helen Sawyer, conversations with author. Helena M. Pycior, “Marie Curie: Time Only for Science and Family,” in Marelene F. Rayner-Canham and Geoffrey W. Rayner-Canham, eds., Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1997), 41. Helen Sawyer, conversations with author. Invitation to “Dedication Ceremony,” 19 June 1992, UTA . Letter, Judith A. Laroque to Helen S. Hogg, 30 Nov. 1992, Sally Hogg MacDonald. Letter, Sally Hogg MacDonald to author, 28 March 1993, Ainley family. Rose Sheinin, quoting Manery, in “Jeanne Manery Fisher: Scientist, Feminist, and Model of Excellence,” Canadian Biochemical Society’s annual meeting, Winnipeg, 23 June 1987, 5. Jeanne Manery Fisher, “Biochemical Teaching and Research: Her Story of the Ions by One Who Was Born 40 years Too Soon and of the Wrong Sex”; quoted in ibid, 5. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. J.M. Fisher Papers, Box 86-0035/0025, UTA . J.M. Fisher, Retirement Speech. Rose Sheinin, quoting J.M. Fisher’s remarks, in “On the Subject of the Establishment of the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Canadian Biochemical Society,” 5 Dec. 1980. Jeanne Manery Fisher, 1981, quoted in ibid., 9. Ibid., 10–11. Ibid., 13–15. Marian Packham, “Biochemistry at the University of Toronto – a Short History,” www.biochemistry.-utoronto.ca/department/history.html.

Notes to pages 120–32  181

109 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “Norah Toole (1906–1990): Scientist and Social Activist,” in Sharon Anne Cook, Lorna R. McLean, and Kate O’Rourke, eds., Framing Our Past: Canadian Women’s History in the Twentieth Century (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 308–10. 110 Marianne Ainley, interview of Brigid Toole, 8 Aug. 1990. 111 Janet Toole, interview of Norah Barry, 10, 17, 24 Feb. 1983. 112 UNB Calendar 1887, 23: “Women are now admitted to the university on the same term as men,” Marianne Ainley, research notes, University of New Brunswick Archives (UNBA). 113 University of New Brunswick, Senate Minutes, 1927–43, 291; later “she accepted an important appointment in Jamaica,” ibid., 293. 114 Ibid., 263. 115 Janet Maclellan Toole to author, 20 Sept. 2006. 116 Norah Toole, Curriculum Vitae, 3 Sept. 1946, UNBA . 117 Marianne Ainley, interview of Brigid Toole, 8 Aug. 1990. 118 Eleanor Clarke Hay, “Change and Changing,” in Joy Parr, ed., Still Running: Personal Stories by Queen’s Women Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marty Scholarship (Kingston: Queen’s University Alumnae Association, 1987), 7. 119 Althea Warren Macauley, personal communication with author. 120 Janet Toole, interview of Althea Warren Macauley, 9 Nov. 1982; unless I note otherwise, all information derives from this interview.

Chapter Five





1 Nilima Mandal Giri, “South Asian–Canadian Women in Science in Montreal,” in Dana Hearne and Marie Louis Lefebvre, eds., Equity and Justice/Équité et Justice in Women’s Studies and Feminist Practice, Proceedings of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association, 1995 (Montreal: John Abbott Press, 1997), 103. 2 Rose Mamelak Johnstone, “Feeling Outside on the Inside,” in Margaret Gillett and Kay Sibbald, eds., A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (Montreal: Eden Press, 1984), 209. 3 See essays in Pnina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, eds., Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 4 Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley and Catherine Millar, “A Select Few: Women and the National Research Council of Canada, 1916–1991,” in Richard A. Jarrell and Yves Gingras, eds., Building Canadian Science: The Rise of the National Research Council, 1916–1991 (Ottawa: CSTHA , 1992), Scientia Canadensis, special issue, 15 no. 2 (1991), 111. 5 See Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 1945–60,” Canadian Historical Review, 72 no. 4 (Dec. 1991), 471–504. 6 Giri, “South Asian–Canadian Women.” 7 Marianne Ainley, interview of Elizabeth Preston, 2007. 8 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963). 9 This is a term developed by the feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith; see Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).

182  Notes to pages 132–9 10 Thomas Nogrády and Leeson Morris, “Pyridazino[4,5-b]indole derivative,” Can-



11

12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21

adian Journal of Chemistry, 47 (1968), 199–203; and Thomas Nogrády and Aldo A. Algieri, “Charge-Transfer Complexes in Medicinal Chemistry,” Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (1967), 212–30. As Hubbard has stated: “The laboratory workers – the people who work with their hands – are the ones who perform the operations and make the observations that permit hypotheses and ideas to become facts. Often they are the ones who produce the substrata of observations out of which the new ideas emerge, that the laboratory chief then puts out as his, or occasionally her own.” Ruth Hubbard, “Facts and Feminism: Thoughts on the Masculinity of Natural Science,” Science for the People, 18 (March/April 1986), 16–20. Giri, “South Asian–Canadian Women.” Marianne Ainley, interview of Judit Szy, 28 Aug. 2007. See Steven Shapin, “The Invisible Technician,” American Scientist, 77 no. 6 (Nov. 1989), 554–63. Peter Twohig terms “laboratory workers” “those who toiled at the benches because that was what they were.” See Peter Twohig,“‘Local Girls’ and ‘Lab Boys’: Gender, Skill and Medical Laboratories in Nova Scotia in the 1920s and 1930s,” Acadiensis, 31 no. 1 (autumn 2001), 56, note 4; Nadia Fahmy-Eid et al., Femmes, santé et professions: histoire des diététistes et des physiothérapeutes au Québec et en Ontario, 1930–1980 (Saint-Laurent, QC: Fides, 1997); Lucie Piché and Nadia Fahmy-Eid, “A la recherche d’un statut professionnel dans le champ paramédicale: le cas de la diététique, de la physiothérapie et de la technologie médicale,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 45 no 3 (1992), 375–401. Margaret Rossiter also discussed women who worked in such positions in the United States, in Women Scientists in America [Vol. I]: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) and Women Scientists in America [Vol. II]: Before Affirmative Action 1940–1973 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). There is practically no archival documentation on industrial technicians in Canada, but some uneven and sporadic archival material on teaching assistants and demonstrators in university calendars. Unless I note otherwise, all the information about Mary Baldwin’s life and work came from my countless discussions with her over forty years as well as a formal interview on 9 July 1990. See Farley Kelly, ed., On the Edge of Discovery: Australian Women in Science (Melbourne: Text Publishing Company, 1993). Nessy Allen, “Australian Women in Science – a Comparative Study of Two Physicists,” Metascience, 8 (1990), 75–85; “The Contributions of Two Australian Women to Its Wool Industry,” Prometheus, 9 no. 1 (June 1991), 81–92; “The Sea Has Many Voices: Profile of an Australian Woman Scientist,” Journal of Australian Studies, 38 (Sept. 1993), 41–50; and “Textile Physics and the Wool Industry: An Australian Woman Scientist’s Contribution,” Agricultural History, 67 no. 1 (winter 1993), 67–77. Giri, “South Asian–Canadian Women,” 98. Ibid., 99. Mary Kinnear, In Subordination: Professional Women, 1870–1970 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995). Giri, “South Asian–Canadian Women,” 101. Ibid., 102–4.

Notes to pages 139–56  183



22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30



31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

52

Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams.” Johnstone, “Feeling Outside on the Inside.” Marianne Ainley, interview of Rose Mamelak, 20 Sept. 1989. Johnstone, “Feeling Outside on the Inside,” 200. Rose Mamelak, conversation with author, 8 Nov. 2007. Johnstone, “Feeling Outside on the Inside,” 201. Ibid., 201–2. Rose Mamelak conversation with author, 14 Nov. 2007. Marianne Ainley, interview of Dolores Pushkar, 23 Jan. 1995. Unless I note otherwise, all quotes are from this interview. Letter, Dolores Pushkar to author, 22 Jan. 2008. Letter, Dolores Pushkar to author, 16 Jan. 2008. Ibid. Letter, author to Delphine Wallace, 13 April 1987. Marianne Ainley, interview of Delphine Wallace, 19 Aug. 1988. Letter, Delphine Wallace to author, n.d. Kinnear, In Subordination. Marianne Ainley, interview of Elinor Kartzmark, 31 Oct. 2001. Unless I note otherwise, all quotes and information derive from this interview. Kinnear, In Subordination, 39–44. Marianne Ainley, interview of Dorothy Place, 26 July 1996. Unless I note otherwise, all quotes and information are from this interview. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic. Dorothy E. Smith, ed., Institutional Ethnography as Practice (Toronto: Rowan and Littlefield, 2006). Jill Vickers and June Adam, But Can You Type? Canadian Universities and the Status of Women, CAUT Monograph Series (Toronto: Clark, Irwin and Company, 1977), 101. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America [Vol. II], 123–4. Malcolm Macleod, “Crossroads Campus: Faculty Development at Memorial University, 1950–1972,” in Paul Stortz and Lisa Panayotidis, eds., Historical Identities: The Professoriate in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 141. Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, “A Woman of Integrity: Kathleen Gough’s ‘Career’ in Canada, 1967–90,” Anthropologica, 35 no. 2 (1993), 235–43. Letter, Molly Snowden to author, 20 Feb. 1995. Autobiographical notes by Kathleen Gough, c. 1989, courtesy of the late David Aberle. Ibid. Ronald Frankenberg, “Obituary: Kathleen Gough Aberle,” Anthropology Today, 7 no. 2 (April 1991), 24. See, among others, A.E. Malloch, L.F. Kritjanos, and I.D. Paul, “Simon Fraser University,” CAUT Bulletin, 19 no. 1 (winter 1970), 59–64; A. Berland, “Simon Fraser University Dispute II ,” ibid., 65–71; Joseph G. Jorgensen, “Kathleen Gough’s Fight against the Consequences of Class and Imperialism on Campus,” Anthropologica, 35 no. 2 (1993), 227–34; and Ainley, “A Woman of Integrity.” Michiel Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

184  Notes to pages 156–63

53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 241. 55 Marlene Dixon, Things Which Are Done in Secret (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1976). 56 Kathleen Gough, “‘Anthropology and Imperialism’ Revisited,” Economic and Political Weekly (4 Aug. 1990), 1706. 57 Marianne Ainley, interviews of Susan Hoecker and John Drysdale, n.d. All information about the Drysdales comes from my numerous discussions with them about their lives and work. 58 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed. H.M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1953). 59 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. 60 Alice S. Rossi, ed., Feminist Papers: From Addams to de Beauvoir (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973). 61 Susan Hoecker-Drysdale, Harriet Martineau: First Woman Sociologist (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1992). 62 Marianne Ainley, interview of Fumiko Ikawa, 6 Oct. 1997. 63 Sigrid Kraus, On Campus News: University of Saskatchewan, 6 no. 12 (12 March 1999), 3. 64 Carmen Armenti, “Women Faculty Seeking Tenure and Parenthood: Lessons from Previous Generations,” Cambridge Journal of Education, 34 no. 1 (March 2004), 65–83; L. Grant et al., “Revisiting the Gender, Marriage, and Parenthood Puzzle in Scientific Careers,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 1 and 2 (2000), 62–85. None of this literature was written by historians of science. 65 Grant et al., “Revisiting.”

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index

Aberle, David, 153–7 Aberle, Kathleen Gough, 139, 150, 153–7 Abir-Am, Pnina, 29, 36 academic perceptions, 74 Acadia University, 48, 83–5 activism. See social activism administrative positions: power of men in, 80–1; women scientists in, 40–1, 65, 80–9, 125, 137 agency, 6, 14, 91 Ainley, Marianne Gosztonyi: academic positions, 39–41; archival work, 26, 33–4, 38–9, 41–2; book reviews and editing projects, 37–8; doctoral work at McGill, 15–23, 33; employment in chemistry, 12, 131–4; fellow at Simone de Beauvoir Institute, 26–30, 33; focus on feminism, 12–15, 18, 26–8, 32–3, 134; grants and fellowships, 21, 23–32, 35–7, 40; growing up in Hungary, 9–11; immigration to Canada, 11; marriage and motherhood, 131, 133–4; MS c at Université de Montréal, 13–15; papers and book chapters, 17, 20, 26, 35, 39–42, 108; research on women in science, 16–22, 26–30, 42–7, 51; writing of William Rowan biography, 23–4, 26, 34, 38, 41, 74 Allin, Elizabeth, 65, 68–70 American Ornithologists’ Union (AOU), 16, 20

Anne Molson Gold Medal, 77, 85, 103 Annetts, May. See Smith, May Annetts Annie Jump Cannon Prize, 114, 117 anthropology, women in, 73–6, 139, 152–7, 159–61 assistants. See research assistants Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 153 astronomy: amateurs in, 14; women in, 87, 113–18 Australian universities, 135 Bailey, Florence, 122 Baldwin, Mary Pitman, 12, 26, 36, 129, 134–7 Barber, Louise, 66 Barclay, May, 49, 76–7 Barry, Norah Vernon. See Toole, Norah Vernon Barry Battle, Helen, 50, 63, 67–8 Benson, Clara Cynthia, 42, 48–9, 56, 59–61 Benston, Margaret (Maggie), 16, 77, 79–80 Berkeley, Alfreda. See Needler, Alfreda Berkeley Berkeley, Edith Dunington, 92, 94–5 bias: in history of science, 5, 27; in scientific information/research, 3, 18; of university administrators, 113 Bill 65 (Quebec), 45–6, 72 biochemistry, women in, 59, 78, 118– 20, 162; at McGill University, 134–7, 139–42. See also chemistry

194  Index

biology, women in, 66, 107–8, 124–6, 138, 143. See also cytology; marine biology Biss, Irene. See Spry, Irene Biss botany, women in, 66, 76, 83–5, 106, 108, 129–31; morphological, 57–8 Bridges, 35 Briggs, Jean, 70, 73–6, 149 Bronson, Merle Colpitt, 96 Brooks, Harriet. See Pitcher, Harriet Brooks Brush, Stephen G., 103 Bulman, Eileen, 96 Calkin, Lilian, 48 Cambridge University, 86, 108, 154 Canadian Association of University Teachers, 156 Canadian Biochemical Society (CBS), 119–20, 142 Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW), 84, 106–9 Canadian universities: academic freedom, 156; administration, 105, 107, 153, 156–7; admission of women to, 47–9, 55; American scientist couples at, 153–61; archival information, 38, 46, 95–6, 139; difficulties experienced by scientists at, 7, 26; immigrant women scientists at, 137–9; part-time work for science graduates, 56, 95–6, 101; recruitment of American academics, 75; research and teaching demands of, 7, 55, 62–3, 76; science degrees obtained by women (1880–1928), 48–50; women physics students, 68–9. See also nepotism/anti-nepotism practices; specific university Canadian Woman Studies, 24 Chalk, Mary Laura. See Rowles, Mary Laura Chalk chemistry: Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC), 39, 42, 121; food, 42, 59–60; graduates of, 48–51; history of, 39–40; Marianne Ainley’s experiences in, 10–12, 131–4; Nobel

Prize winners for, 45; physical, 59, 88, 98, 123, 128; women in, 79–80, 97–9, 120–3, 135–7, 148–50. See also biochemistry, women in child care, 124, 129–30, 136; day care, 133, 159; household help, 116, 119, 136, 138, 162; husbands’ role in, 131, 144, 161 Clarke, Eleanor. See Hay, Eleanor Clarke Code, Lorraine, 91 comparative studies, 4, 8, 52–3 competition, 48, 61 Concordia University, 133, 158. See also Loyola College; Sir George Williams University Crocker, Frances, 122 Curie, Marie Skłodowska, 10–11, 51, 94, 96 Currie, Sir Arthur, 112 Curzon, Edith May, 59 cytology, 83–4 cytotaxonomy, 66 Dalhousie University: employment for women graduates, 56; first woman student, 48; hiring and anti-nepotism practices, 107–9, 153; women in administrative positions at, 88–9 Dawes, H.F., 66 Depression: hiring practices and job retention during, 100, 102, 104, 111– 12; postgraduate degrees in Canada before, 49–50; women’s options during, 64, 66, 78–9 Derick, Carrie, 45–6, 48–9, 56–61 discrimination, 7, 12, 68, 119, 138; at McGill University, 72; at Memorial University, 107 Douglas, Allie Vibert, 31, 69, 81, 85–7 Dowding, Eleanor Silver. See Keeping, Eleanor Silver Dowding Drysdale, John P., 153, 157–9 Drysdale, Susan. See HoeckerDrysdale, Susan Dunbar, Max, 145, 147

Index  195

Dunington, Edith. See Berkeley, Edith Dunington Dyck, Lillian Eva Quan, 139, 161–2 Eastcott, Edna, 76–9 economics, women in, 70–1, 83, 158 Eddington, Arthur S., 86–7 Ekler, Kurt, 136–7 Eskimo Curlew, 15 externalism and internalism, 13 family life. See child care; married women scientists; motherhood Fantham, Annie Porter, 107, 111–13 Fantham, Harold B., 112 Fedoruk, Sylvia, 51 feminism: Marianne Ainley’s focus on, 12–15, 18, 26–8, 32–3, 134; second wave, 20. See also feminist literature; feminist scholars; women’s movement feminist literature, 5, 29, 53, 105–6 feminist scholars, 4, 6, 21–2, 32, 36, 105–6; biographers, 90–1; sociologists, 152, 159; women’s studies programs, 158 Ferguson, Elizabeth C., 49 fictionalized women’s lives, 90 Fingard, Judith, 52, 55, 107–8 First Nations, 44, 67, 122–3, 144; women scientists, 139, 161–2 First Scientific Revolution, 4 Fisher, Jeanne Manery, 107, 113–14, 118–20, 124–5, 142 Fisher, Kenneth, 118–19, 125 Ford, Norma. See Walker, Norma Ford Foster, John Stuart, 103–4 Frankenberg, Ronald, 155 French-Canadian women scientists, 7, 48–9 Fritz, Madeleine A., 49, 56, 81–2 Gage, Matilda J., 3 Gaiser, Lulu Odell, 50, 65–7 gender: and access to funding, 39–40; assumptions, 18; bias or discrimination, 18, 72, 103, 109, 113, 138; and

power, 4, 47; relations in science, 5, 14, 17, 22–3, 42–3; traditional roles, 90 gender-specific challenges, 6, 26, 52–4, 57, 69 genetics, women in, 58, 60, 138 geology, women in, 54, 81–2 German university model, 62, 76 Gillet, Margaret, 45, 55, 58, 98, 103 Gingras, Yves, 68, 83 Giri, Nilima Mandal, 129, 138–9 Godwin, Kathleen. See Terroux, Kathleen Godwin Gold, Dolores Pushkar, 139, 142–5 Grant, William F., 66 grants. See National Research Council (NRC); Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Halliwell, Janet, 39 Haraway, Donna, 14–15 Hatt, Rona, 49 Hay, Alden W., 123–4 Hay, Eleanor Clarke, 123–4 Hayes, Dixie Pelluet, 50, 72, 106–9, 120 Hayes, Ronald, 72, 108–9 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., 105–6 Hemmeon, Ellen, 109–10 Henderson, Nancy, 65, 70, 72–3 history: of Canadian science, 5, 8–9, 19, 33, 37, 43, 134; of chemistry, 39–40; feminist and women’s, 4–5, 13–14, 17–25, 29–30, 52, 163; oral, 34, 36–7, 64, 69, 72, 97; of ornithology, 13–17, 20, 26, 41; and sociology of science, 3 Hoecker-Drysdale, Susan, 26, 72, 153, 157–9 Hogg, Frank Scott, 114--17 Hogg, Helen Sawyer, 113–18 Howell, Margaret, 81–2 Hughes, Everett, 111 Hughes, Helen MacGill, 111–12, 127 Hughes, Winnifred, 49, 76–8 Hunter, George, 63

196  Index

Huntsman, Archibald G., 52, 63, 68, 145

Loyola College, 133–4, 137; Women’s Studies program, 158

Ikawa-Smith, Fumiko, 153, 159–61 immigrants: American scientist couples, 153–61; South and East Asian women scientists, 132, 137–9 immigration policy (Canada), 138 Innis, Harold, 70, 101 Institut d’histoire et de sociopolitique des sciences (IHSPS), 13 International Federation of University Women (IFUW), 87, 109 International Women’s Year, 23–4, 120 invisibility: Marianne Ainley’s feelings of, 9, 18, 39; of research assistants, 48, 127–9, 132–3; of women in science textbooks, 4, 52

Maass, Carol Anne Robertson, 97–8, 110, 128 Maass, Otto, 97–8 Macaulay, Althea Warren, 107, 122, 124–6 Macauley, J. Aileen, 50 McBride, Dorothy, 122 MacCallum, Archibald B., 59 McCullough, Lily A., 96 MacGill, Helen. See Hughes, Helen MacGill McGill University: access to nominative information at, 45–6, 72; administrative positions held by women, 83–8; admission for women, 49; Anthropology Department, 160–1; Biochemistry Department, 141–2; centennial celebration of women, 24, 45; first women science graduates at, 49–51; hiring and retention of married women, 110–13; History Department, 15, 33; institutional environment of, 33; Macdonald College, 104, 111, 124, 130–1; Marine Sciences Centre, 147; nepotism/ anti-nepotism practices at, 153; part-time work for women graduates, 56; research demands, 55; Royal Victoria College, 81, 83, 85–8, 93; scientist-spouse secondary salary law, 104–5; Zoology Department, 110–12 MacKinnon, Alison, 105 MacLean, Annie M., 48 Maclellan, Delphine Wallace, 139, 145–8, 152 McLeod, Jack, 71 McMaster University, 65–6 McPherson, Anna, 69, 76–7 male scientists: in administrative positions, 80–1; documentation on, 19; marriage to former students, 92;

Jackson, Adella G., 48 Jamieson, Alberta, 50 Japanese-American scholars, 159–61 Jarrell, Richard, 27 Johnston, Charles M., 66 Johnston, Harriet, 49 Johnstone, Rose Mamelak, 139–42 Jones, Barbara, 138 Kartzmark, Elinor, 139, 148–50, 152 Keeping, Eleanor Silver Dowding, 107–8 Keeping, Fred S., 108 Kelly, Karen, 113 Khaki University of Canada, 85 King, Marion P., 31–2 Kingston Standard, 99 Kinnear, Mary, 52, 138, 148–9 Lankford, John, 14 Lee, Doris, 99 Lee, Vera, 81 Levi, Mattie. See Rotenberg, Mattie Levi life-course changes, 6–8, 91 Limoges, Camille, 14 Lin, Hsey-Er, 138

Index  197

science history and, 19, 54; as teachers, 55 male-stream histories, 4–5, 18–19, 43, 52 Mamelak, Rose. See Johnstone, Rose Mamelak Manery, Jeanne. See Fisher, Jeanne Manery marine biology, 63, 67–8, 100, 145–8 Marrelli, Nancy, 35–6 married women scientists: abandoning/quitting academe, 91–4, 96, 126; expectations to resign, 6, 94–6, 143; experiences during wartime, 8, 63–4, 94–5, 101, 113, 119, 122–4; fellowships awarded to, 109–10; and full-time employment, 106–26; hiring and job retention of, 97–106; with husbands in science field, 100, 103–5, 107–23, 152–61; National Research Council (NRC) funding for, 110. See also motherhood mathematics, women in, 48–9, 99–100, 102, 135; at McGill University, 77, 85, 103 “Matilda effect,” 3 “Matthew effect,” 3 Mawson, Elinor, 145 Mead, Margaret, 105 Melburn, Myrtle, 70 Memorial University, 73–5, 107, 120 mentoring, 54–5, 61–3, 106 Merton, Robert, 3 Messing, Karen, 16, 25–6 Miller, Lash, 78–9 motherhood, 96, 101, 124–6, 136, 141, 144; divorced/single mothers, 146, 148, 151–2; stay-at-home psychology and, 160. See also child care Mounce, Irene, 49 Mount Allison University, 48–9, 55 Mount Holyoke, 114–15 Nagarajan, Mallinga, 138 National Research Council (NRC), 63, 84, 110

Neatby, Hilda, 70 Needler, Alfreda Berkeley, 51–2 nepotism/anti-nepotism practices, 55, 105, 107, 153–4; at Dalhousie University, 107–9, 153; at McGill University, 153; at Oxford University, 155; at University of British Columbia (UBC), 156; at University of Toronto, 113, 116, 153 Newlands, Etta Reid, 97, 99–100 Newton, Margaret, 50–1, 67 Nice, Margaret Morse, 16, 20 Nogrády, Thomas, 131–3 Norrington, Annie, 49 Norris, Vera, 48 oral history, 34, 36–7, 64, 69, 72, 97 Order of Canada, 51, 71, 87, 117 ornithology: history of, 13–17, 20, 26, 41; women in, 16–17, 19–20, 32 Outram, Dorinda, 29 Paine, Robert, 75 Parnis, Elizabeth Preston, 128–31, 134 Passamaquoddy Bay (NB), 146–7 Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia, 115 Pelluet, Dixie. See Hayes, Dixie Pelluet Penhallow, David, 57–8 physics: development of discipline in Canada, 68–9; graduate students, 50–1; women in, 85–8, 96, 101–5 physiology, women in, 72–3, 110–11, 118 Pitcher, Harriet Brooks, 45, 49, 51, 69, 92–4 Pittman, Mary. See Baldwin, Mary Pittman Place, Dorothy. See Smith, Dorothy Place Plaskett, John Stanley, 115–16 Porter, Annie. See Fantham, Annie Porter power relations, 4, 14–15, 44, 47 Preston, Elizabeth. See Parnis, Elizabeth Preston promotions or advancements: importance of research for, 62; influence

198  Index

of Depression on, 78, 100; student recommendations for, 156; for women scientists, 5–6, 89, 119–20, 125, 148–9 psychology: child, 160; women in, 125, 142–5 Pushkar, Dolores. See Gold, Dolores Pushkar qualitative research, 22, 40, 43 Quan, Lillian Eva. See Dyck, Lillian Eva Quan Quastel, J.H., 140–2 Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey, 68, 92–3 Rayner-Canham, Marelene, 68, 92–3 Reid, Etta. See Newlands, Etta Reid research assistants: graduate students as, 55–6; invisibility of, 127–9, 132–3; salary of, 116, 129, 141–2 research demands, 55, 62–3, 76 retirement, 66–7, 79, 109 Reynolds, Helen, 81, 87–9 Richardson, Laurel, 18 Richardson, O.W., 104 Robertson, Carol Anne. See Maass, Carol Anne Robertson Robinson, Lucy Winnifred, 101 role models, 18, 87, 142, 154 Roscoe, Muriel, 46, 50, 64, 76, 83–5, 88 Ross, Aileen Dansken, 65, 70–2 Rossiter, Margaret, 25, 27, 107; on “Matilda effect,” 3; Women Scientists in America [Vol. 1]: Struggles and Strategies to 1940, 24–5, 29, 31, 48; “Women’s Work in Science, 1880– 1910,” 16–17 Rotenberg, Mattie Levi, 50, 97, 101–2, 105, 110 Rowan, William, 7, 19, 35, 63, 78, 108; Marianne Ainley’s biography of, 23–4, 26, 34, 38, 41, 74 Rowles, Mary Laura Chalk, 97, 102–5, 110–11, 124 Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 86–7, 116

Royal Ontario Museum, 82 Royal Society of Canada, 71, 76, 82, 117, 142 Rutherford, Ernest, 45, 51, 86, 93–4 Ryan, Joan, 148 salary: demotions and low pay, 7, 32, 92, 119, 132, 147; inequality of, 69–72, 78, 95, 99, 136; for research assistants, 116, 129, 141–2; for teaching positions, 77–9; of women scientists with husbands in academe, 108–9, 116; work without pay, 112, 116, 128 Sawyer, Helen. See Hogg, Helen Sawyer Schiltz, Frances, 49, 51 Scientia Canadensis, 27, 37, 40 scientific experiments, 55, 103; administrative support for, 63, 84; expenses and funding, 76, 83 sex, 97 sexism, 12, 44, 103, 106, 135, 156 Sheinin, Rose, 16, 119 Shiel, Margaret, 51 Shils, Edward, 74 Simon Fraser University (SFU), 153, 156 Sinclair, Adelaide Macdonald, 100 single women scientists, 6, 64, 68–76, 89, 94; adoption of children, 148–50; National Research Council (NRC) funding for, 110 Sir George Williams University: merger with Loyola College, 134, 137, 154; Psychology Department, 144; Working Women’s Association, 145. See also Concordia University Slavings, Ricky, 14 Smith, Dorothy Place, 139, 150–2, 154 Smith, Fumiko. See Ikawa-Smith, Fumiko Smith, Gertrude May. See Watney, Gertrude May Smith Smith, May Annetts, 97, 102, 105 Smith, Philip, 153, 159–61 Snowden, Molly, 154

Index  199

social activism, 79–80, 88, 120–3, 129; in Aboriginal affairs, 162; Vietnam protests, 157–8 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC): Marianne Ainley’s applications to, 21, 23–32, 35–7, 40; stipends for independent scholars, 39 social scientists, 25, 71, 139, 152–3; Japanese and American, 159 societal expectations, 55 sociologists, 159; American, 139, 152, 155, 157; of science, 3, 15 South and East Asian women scientists, 127, 129, 137–9 Spry, Irene Biss, 97, 101 Stebbins, Robert, 14 stereotypes: of male scientists, 92; of women and science, 22–3, 35 Sterling, Keir B., 20 Stewart, Grace Anna, 81, 108 Stewart, Harriet Starr, 49 Street, Jessie Lillingston, 105 Strong-Boag, Veronica, 97 suffrage, 94, 110 Szy, Judit, 132 teaching: expectations of Canadian universities, 7, 55, 62, 76; materials, 26, 36, 63; objections to women in, 113; personnel shortages during wartime, 94, 104; research interests/conflicts with, 57–60, 65–75; women scientists combined in administration, research, and, 81–9; women scientists with preference for, 77–80 technology, 63, 80, 90 Terroux, Kathleen Godwin, 110–12 Thacker, Julie, 91 Thompson, Louise, 122, 125 Timlin, Mabel, 70–1, 73–4, 101, 149 Toole, Janet, 72–3 Toole, Norah Vernon Barry, 107, 120–4, 128 Toronto Daily Star, 78–9

Torrey, Elizabeth, 50 Traweek, Sharon, 18 Turner, Alice, 50–1 Tuttle, Gwyneth, 49 Tweedie, Audrey, 128 Twohig, Peter, 132–3 United States: anthropologist positions in, 155; exclusion of women in science in, 48; foreign policy, 75, 152–3, 158; household science profession in, 59; scientist couples from, 152–61; social scientists from, 139, 152–3, 155; women science graduates (1922–27), 50 University of Alberta: first women science graduates, 49; women science teachers, 107–8 University of British Columbia (UBC): appointments to married women, 95; first women science graduates, 49; hiring and retention of married women, 99 University of California at Berkeley, 151 University of New Brunswick (UNB), 49, 56, 101, 120–5 University of Saskatchewan, 49, 51, 70 University of Toronto, 45, 56, 59, 82, 100–1; astronomy, 116–17; nepotism/anti-nepotism practices at, 113, 116, 153; Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), 151–2; Physics Department, 69, 101–2; research and teaching expectations, 55; women with postgraduate degrees (1896–1927), 49–50; zoology, 113, 118–19, 125 Walker, Norma Ford, 113 Wallace, Delphine. See Maclellan, Delphine Wallace Wansbrough, Paddy, 154 Warren, Althea. See Macaulay, Althea Warren Wasteneys, Hardolph, 118–19

200  Index

Watney, Gertrude May Smith, 106 women-centred research, 4, 43 women in science: first degrees obtained by (1880–1928), 48–50, 93; geology students, 81; historical literature on, 29–30; qualitative information on, 43; reasons for entering sciences, 63–4; reasons for leaving academe, 6, 50–1, 126; representation for, 120; scientific societies for, 120; work opportunities for graduates, 50–2, 55–6. See also research assistants; women scientists women scientists: in administrative positions, 40–1, 65, 80–9, 125, 137; archival material and documentation on, 19–20; authorship credit and joint publication, 111, 113, 128; compared to male scientists, 4, 52–4; Donna Haraway’s work on, 14–15; external/internal influences on, 55; first permanent faculty

positions, 56–60, 65, 70, 96, 122; French-Canadian, 7, 48–9; history of, 5, 18–19, 23–4; immigrants, 132, 137–9; life-course changes of, 6–8, 91; literature on, 27; Margaret Rossiter’s studies on, 31; mobility of, 134–7; private lives of, 56, 61, 64, 97–8; professional lives of (after 1950), 139–62; radical, 157; recognition for, 19, 52, 79, 128; as role models, 18, 87, 142, 154; of single status, 64, 68–76, 89; South and East Asian, 129, 132, 137–9. See also married women scientists; motherhood; single women scientists women’s movement, 4, 106, 151, 158, 163; suffrage, 94, 110 zoology, women in, 50, 67–8, 78, 106, 108–9; at McGill University, 110–12; at University of Toronto, 113, 118–19, 125