Tuesday, October 21, 2008

17th Century Women in Science

We recently read and discussed the abstract from the article, "Gender, Science and Modernity in Seventeenth-century England", which answered the question "where were all the women?". I think this is a great article that discussed why women were not heard of during the scientific revolution when it came to new ideas and discoveries. The article talked about the different reasons why we never heard of a lot of, if not any, women scientists in England during that time period.
Even though I am not a scientist, reading the article still made me upset to hear about the different reasons why women could not come forth with their ideas. When I think about our society today, and how much women have progressed it makes me appreciate the fact that I have the ability to say what I want to say without having to worry. Reading that women feared being hung if they came right out with their ideas, because they would of been considered witches, really disturbs me. Another point the article made is the lack of equality in England during that time. Women were not as well educated as men were because they simply were not allowed to get as good of an education. Their "job" was to take care of the house and the children, it was so uncommon for a women to be smarter and of a higher status than a man.
This made me very curious and think about the women that were in fact able to get their ideas out there and how they were able to do so. In an article I found titled, Scientists Anonymous, by Asha Gopinathan, she discusses one major way women found a way to get their thoughts and ideas out there to the world. One of the main points she discussed is how women disguised themselves as men in order to say what they wanted to say. This fact makes me think in two different ways. My first thoughts are, "good for them", they found a way to get what they wanted to say out there despite the many challenges holding most other women back. Then I think about how disturbing it is that women had to pretend to be men.
Even if women were able to get their ideas out there they still had to degrade themselves by pretending to be men. Overall the challenges women had to face were extremely unnecessary and pretty upsetting.

Works Cited

Gopinathan, Asha. "Scientists Anonymous." Current Science 90 (2006): 1175. 21 Oct. 2008 .

Watts, Ruth. "Gender, science and modernity in seventeenth-century England." Paedagogica Historica. 2005. 41, 1, 79-93. ISSN: 0030-9230.

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