Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Engineering Diversity General Engineering, Engineering Science History of Science and Technology |
| Special Topic(s): |
Women and Information Technology Women Inventors |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Article/Document |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Patricia Fara |
| Description: | Book description: "'Had God intended Women merely as a finer sort of cattle, he would not have made them reasonable.' Writing in 1673, Bathsua Makin was one of the first women to insist that girls should receive a scientific education. Despite the efforts of Makin and her successors, women were excluded from universities until the end of the nineteenth century, yet they found other ways to participate in scientific projects. Because these were being carried out inside private houses, rather than in universities or industrial laboratories, experiments often involved the whole family. As well as collaborating in this home-based research, women corresponded with internationally renowned scholars, hired tutors, and even published their own books. They played essential roles in work that was frequently attributed solely to their husbands, fathers or friends. Women, in this way, have not been written out of the history of science: they have never been written in. If mentioned at all, they appear in subservient roles as helpless admirers or menial assistants. Historians always decide which facts to emphasise, and they generally choose to depict a vision of scientific progress that ignores women's activities." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | gender equity women and technology |
| Usage Tip | |
| Use of Resource: |
Patricia Fara lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and is the Senior Tutor of Clare College. She is the author of numerous books, including Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment and Newton: The Making of Genius. Her writing has appeared in History Today, New Scientist, Nature, The Times and New Statesman, and she writes a regular column on scientific portraits for Endeavour. |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
Very low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | July 2009 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pandoras-Breeches-Women-Science-Enlighten |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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