Science is for Ladies
“Girls don’t need fixing, it is the way we talk about science that must change.”
“As soon as I have got flying to perfection, I have got a scheme about a steam engine.”
Ada Lovelace
In October of 1877, the Preston Chronicle (England) reported that a woman by the name of Mrs. H.K. Ingram presented before the scientific community on the paper she authored, entitled “Atmospheric Concussion as a Means of Disinfection.” Using germ theory, she theorized that “by means of concussion produced by gunpowder explosion or other effective method, cholera and other epidemics could be effectually prevented or dissipated.” The ideas in “the curious paper” were “confidently advanced” by “the lady scientist”, who read her findings aloud before a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The website’s oil lamp logo symbolizes knowledge and the act of illuminating women in the history of science (though someone checking out my work over my shoulder suggested a nod to female genitalia. Do you agree?)
Lady Science is a magazine of writing intended to uncover the lives of lady scientists, especially those women in STEM who were marginalized and rendered further invisible by their gender intersecting with class, race, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, or physical disabilities. As with any medium that critically engages with a traditional subject (science) and juxtaposes it against questions of who is has been permitted to explore it and in what ways, the site achieves a level of empowerment for both “lady scientists” and the subjects of the papers to which the articles themselves offer empowerment. Female scientists, in many cases the authors of the articles and the researchers on the projects they write about, have not received proportional representation in the field, nor have female subjects been properly studied and represented in scientific scholarship. This website addresses this short shrift, while also illuminating topics of intersectionality, as they pertain to science, for the layperson browsing the site.
I was drawn to this site because there are very few sources like this – part scholarly, part entertainment – that focus on the experiences of women, and then drill down even further to examine the experiences of marginalized women. The site is very simple, and there is nothing particularly eye-catching about the interface. The fact that it is so simple speaks to one of the many problems with women and science: the lack of funds. The site was built and maintained entirely by volunteers and faced the elitist problem of not being taken seriously because it aimed to be accessible. They ran out of money and eventually folded (more on that later).
Screenshot of the journal interface. Simple, and to the point
This is one of those sites that can lure you down a rabbit hole very quickly. I can think of worse ways to spend an hour or two.
The choice of name speaks directly to the history of women in practices that were traditionally male:
The Data
Lady Science is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0, meaning they are accessible and shareable, provided attribution is provided and the articles are not altered in any way. In this way, it functions as any other scholarly publication not behind a paywall. It’s openly accessible and free. There are several levels of articles, including longer scholarly pieces, shorter commentaries, book reviews (such as this one titled Protecting your Digital Body), and a podcast. The materials focus on science but also examine topics of science through an interdisciplinary lens and spanning a range of theories, including those from history, queer studies, and feminism. The pieces are diverse and written from many perspectives and they aren’t just about “the sciences” in the traditional sense of biology, chemistry, medicine, etc., (though there are many articles that are). Several articles discuss how gender intersects data science, AI, and the digital world. For example, how facial recognition technology can make obtaining an abortion more dangerous, or how databases of competitive chess games help shape narratives, yet the accomplishments of female players are missing from the datasets. Data is, of course, a science, with the same social and cultural forces, including systemic gender bias, acting upon it.
What is sad and interesting about the site, respectively, is that 1) it is now defunct and 2) that although no new material is being created for this site, all the data has been transferred and archived in the Library of Congress (LOC).
This change of digital venue brings about further questions. In digital humanities we talk often about the long-term preservation of materials: What should be preserved? What will it cost? How does data change when it is moved from a platform or changes format? How will it be accessed? Obviously, the LOC is well-versed in data collection and preservation. This is where you can locate every significant book ever printed, or, if you’re feeling curious, half a million emails from Enron. One quarter of the LOC’s 173 million items in its holdings are scientific materials.
The move to the LOC made me wonder about the agency of those who originally contributed their articles to the site. The medium here is very much the message. What does it mean when the content moves off a platform dedicated to female empowerment in the sciences and onto a federally situated government library? In addition, the LOC Classification system is, along with the Dewey Decimal System, the most common classification system in the US. Its classification categories and metadata are how items are made discoverable in the collection. These systems have been interrogated by the discipline of Critical Cataloguing for the ways in which they “codify long-held prejudices through language and erasure.” Categories can be racist, sexist, misogynistic, and can perpetuate damaging stereotypes. There is also the question of rights. Do the former Creative Commons terms still apply to the materials, or do they now fall under the LOC’s Fair Use terms? This is not to say that the LOC is not a suitable place to archive a site like Lady Science. The site itself seems happy with its choice:
Being able to access writing that one has done is definitely crucial, and one I can speak to personally. When a magazine to which I contributed several articles suddenly changed publishers, the new staff removed all archived issues from their website, without warning and without informing its contributors. Links to articles that I had placed on my LinkedIn profile suddenly went nowhere. For writers in a digital space, not being able to link to their work is frustrating and potentially damaging. I don’t exactly seem digitally-literate to prospective employers when I hand them a paper copy of a magazine I once wrote for, or worse, a typed copy printed off my computer. Making their authors’ archived work available at the LOC to aid in the success of their writers is fully in alignment with the principles of gender empowerment foundational to Lady Science.
There is a link from Lady Science directly to the LOC, but I wondered how easy it would be for me to find the archive without it. As it turns out, very easy. I simply typed “Lady Science” into the search box on the LOC homepage and it was the first listing.
Curiously, the second listing is a book from 1800 called The alphabet of thought; or, Elements of metaphysical science, written by…” a lady”. Anonymous, nameless, and unknown. Oh, the irony.
Sources
“ITEMS FOR THE SCIENTIFIC AND THE CURIOUS.” Preston Chronicle, October 6, 1877. British Library Newspapers.