Journal Article

Author

Carey, Jane

Title

No place for a woman?: Intersections of class, modernity and colonialism in the gendering of Australian Science, 1885-1940

In

Lilith: A Feminist History Journal

Imprint

vol. 10, Australian Women's History Network, Penrith, New South Wales, 2001, pp. 153-172

Url

https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/informit.497703739503377

Description

Digital version made available through Informit on open access https://search.informit.org/toc/10.3316/LFHJ.2001_n010

Abstract

The apparent historic and continuing divide between women and science - between feminine nature and masculine objectivity and rationality - has been a prominent preoccupation of feminist scholars. Countless studies of dominant constructions of gender within Western cultures have catalogued the ways in which women's access to social power and authority has been undermined by this disjunction. Within the broad field of feminist, women's and gender history, science has generally been viewed as one of the most strongly gendered spheres of Western society. The perception of science as an arena which has been particularly inhospitable to women has, over the past thirty years or so, been the impetus for considerable feminist research into the history of women, gender and science, particularly in America and Europe. These studies have focused almost exclusively on the relationship between dominant discourses of gender and the barriers which have excluded women from scientific practice or severely limited their opportunities within this realm. In many ways, science is viewed as the sphere most resistant to female participation and one which has been most immutably defined as a masculine pursuit.

Related entries

Awards

• David Syme Research Prize, The University of Melbourne (1904 - )

Corporate Bodies

• Melbourne University Science Club, The University of Melbourne (1888 - 1960s)
• The University of Melbourne (1853 - )

People

• Berry, Richard James Arthur (1867 - 1962)
• Dornwell, Edith Emily (1865 - 1945)
• Ewart, Alfred James (1872 - 1937)
• Laby, Thomas Howell (1880 - 1946)
• Little, Leonora Jessie (1865 - 1945)
• McLennan, Ethel Irene (1891 - 1983)
• Spencer, Walter Baldwin (1860 - 1929)
• Sweet, Georgina (1875 - 1946)
• Turner, John Stewart (1908 - 1991)