Science

As the Museum of Women in Science and Technology shows, women have long played a part in scientific advances. Hypatia, an Egyptian woman who lived during the Fourth century BC, was a renowned mathematician; Marie Curie pioneered radiotherapy as a cancer treatment during World War II.

Unfortunately, until recently, women's involvement in the scientific community was sporadic as a result of barriers erected by the male-dominated profession. Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom, would be appalled to learn that her sex was not considered intelligent enough for science.

For the past few centuries, Western women cared for the home and family while the men worked to support them. Girls did not have the same educational opportunities as boys and therefore were not usually given the chance to demonstrate their intelligence in ways that would impress the scientific community. Boys were pushed into science and math -- regardless of their inclinations -- while girls were pushed into home economics.

But these two paths are not mutually exclusive. In high school, one of our writer's mothers received the Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year Award and the Bank of America Science and Math Award in the same year.

People often forget that traditional homemaking involves many scientific principles. Cleaning house requires a basic knowledge of chemistry; for example, don't mix ammonia with bleach and don't use window cleaner on finished wood. Cooking is pure chemistry, combining certain ingredients with certain properties in certain proportions. Before the advent of mass food production, cooking on the individual level was even more scientific than it is today. Women used to make the family's soap, candles, medicine, bread, wine, and other common household items by hand.

Of course, women succeed in the "real" sciences as well. Jane Goodall's groundbreaking study of gorillas, Margaret Mead's anthropological observations, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell's discovery of the first four pulsars have brought women's scientific abilities to the fore. And the sciences are becoming more open to women every year.

Women have often been pigeonholed as intuitive and right-brained, lacking the logical, left-brained thinking that science often requires. Men have been assigned left-brain qualities and denied intuition. Such theories lack the complexity of real working minds and science may be more right-brained than we realize. In any case, women can and do excel at science. As we raise our children we must remember to encourage them to pursue whatever they are interested in, whether that be science or art -- or both.

Recommended Links on Science:

iVillage Computing Channel