Title:
A lab of one's own : science and suffrage in the first World War / Patricia Fara.
Author:
Fara, Patricia, author.
Publication Information:
Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2018.
©2018
Call Number:
D639.W7 F37 2018
Abstract:
Female scientists, doctors, and engineers experienced independence and responsibility during the First World War. Suffragists including Virginia Woolf's sister, Ray Strachey, aligned themselves with scientific and technological progress, and mobilized women to enter conventionally male domains such as engineering and medicine. Profiles include mental health pioneer Isabel Emslie, chemist and co-inventor of tear gas Martha Whiteley, Scottish army doctor Mona Geddes, and botanist Helen Gwynne Vaughan. Though suffragist Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly that "the war revolutionized the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free," the truth was very different. Although women had helped the country to victory and won the vote for those over thirty, they had lost the battle for equality. Men returning from the Front reclaimed their jobs, and conventional hierarchies were re-established. Fara examines how these pioneers, temporarily allowed into an exclusive world before the door slammed shut again, paved the way for today's women scientists.
Edition:
First edition.
ISBN:
9780198794981
Physical Description:
xiii, 334 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Contents:
Preserving the past, facing the future. Snapshots: suffrage and science at Cambridge -- A divided nation: class, gender, and science in early twentieth-century Britain -- Subjects of science: biological justifications of women's status -- Abandoning domesticity, working for the vote. A new century: voting for science -- Factories of science: women work for war -- Ray Costelloe/Strachey: the life of a mathematical suffragist -- Corridors of science, crucibles of power. Scientists in petticoats: women and science before the war -- A scientific state: technological warfare in the early twentieth century -- Taking over: women, science, and power during the war -- Chemical campaigners: Ida Smedley and Martha Whiteley -- Scientific warfare, wartime welfare. Soldiers of science: scientific women fighting on the home front -- Scientists in Khaki: Mona Geddes and Helen Gwynne-Vaughan -- Medical recruits: scientists care for the nation -- From Scotland to Sebastopol: the wartime work of Dr. Isabel Emslie Hutton -- Citizens of science in a post-war world. Interwar normalities: scientific women and struggles for equality -- Lessons of science: learning from the past to improve the future.
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