Women and Science

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of women and science, both as practitioners and subjects of scientific enquiry, from the late eighteenth century through to the first decades of the twentieth. It introduces the processes by which science acquired a masculine culture and describes the ways in which male-focused histories of science have misunderstood the landscape of science and, as a result, ignored women’s scientific contributions. Feminist scholarship has rendered visible the ways in which women negotiated access to science, became part of scientific networks, collaborated as peers and made significant contributions to scientific knowledge. This essay also discusses the ways in which scientific women of the past made their own feminist interventions to counter their exclusion.