Despite the Odds: Women Biologists Who Succeed

Abstract

A recent article in The New York Teacher (Callaci 1993) pointed out 'I ... why girls (and boys) need lessons about heroines. The discussion emphasizes the findings of the American Association of University Women's report, How Schools Shortchange Girls, which recommends that girls and boys must see women and girls reflected and valued in the materials they study. Curriculum and bulletin boards must begin to reflect women's starstudded history. It's time unsung and unknown heroines share center stage with the well-known heroes. It's time to give girls back their right to dream (p.10). A discussion follows of the lives of six women from different temporal periods who have made significant contributions to the biological sciences. The women chosen for inclusion are: Hildegard of Bingen, Maria Sibylla Merian, Jane Colden (Farquhar), Elizabeth (Lizzie) Cabot Cary Agassiz, Alice Hamilton, and Jewel Plummer Cobb. These women were selected because their lives illustrate that women can and do achieve despite many obstacles put in their paths. While discussions of their accomplishments are important, it behooves us to examine their motivations to succeed. What forces influenced them in their careers? Analyses of this type may help future women biologists in their quests to envision themselves as successes. In the early years women were limited to acceptable biological studies such as folk medicine, botany, entomology, ornithology, and later ecological studies, which they wove into their daily lives. The fact that at first women were not career biologists is reflective of the status and attitudes towards women during those periods. Subsequently, many women branched into the fields of medicine, medical research and literature, while at the same time commencing biological investigations. Hildegard of Bingen (also called Hildegardis de Pinguia)