Women in Modern Science

It is hard to find scientific work done by women in during the time period of the scientific revolution. Some may wonder why this is? Some explanations for this is that most women were not allowed to have official education. The schools were mostly reserved for men. The only women that did get educated were the ones that were very well off. Of the women that did have the opportunity to become educated and were interested in getting involved with science, again it was difficult. The prestigious scientific organizations such as the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge were restricted to just men. This further limited the involvement of women. This does not mean that they were not involved however. There are scientific documents that were found to be translated by women. There is also the large possibility that the work that women had done was taken and then published by men. There could be lots of scientific discoveries that could really have been achieved by women but the men were only recognized for it because the women were not able to. (Watts).

Women in modern science are obviously much more involved than during the Scientific Revolution. However, science is still a field with a majority of its participants that are male. This reason for this is much harder to explain than during the scientific revolution. Most of the reasons for women not being involved during the scientific revolution have been resolved such as women not be allowed to be educated and women not being allowed into scientific organizations. Lawrence Summers, ex-president of Harvard University, had a couple of controversial theories that he stated in a speech that he made that got people in an uproar. The most controversial idea that he had was basically saying that women were not equal to men when it came to science based on genetics. This ideas does not make sense because there are plenty of women are highly advanced in scientific fields and that would not be possible if Summers was correct. We may never know why there are fewer women in scientific fields and maybe at some point it will not be that way. Here is a link to an article about the controversy that Lawrence Summers stirred up.