Challenging Science as Usual: Women's Participation in American Natural History Museum Work, 1870–1950

Abstract

This article uncovers examples of women scientists' attempts to challenge American science from within, to democratize it by making scientific knowledge accessible and its practice comprehensible to a broad audience. It posits that natural history museums are important locations for understanding both the opportunities for and the barriers to women's professional engagement with the public understanding of natural science in the United States. Using a feminist standpoint approach as an entry into these scientists' world, this article explores the work of freelance naturalist and museum founder Martha Maxwell, carcinologist Mary Jane Rathbun, agrostologist Agnes Chase, and botanist Alice Eastwood. While Maxwell's and Rathbun's lives illustrate two women's strategic and situational assimilations to scientific "best practice" and institutional bureaucracies during their particular historical periods, Chase's and Eastwood's lives provide feminists with more timeless models for crafting a democratic science.