Noting that these women were in an era of time were women had no other role in life other than to converge families by marriage and bear children, they accomplished a great deal. One of my favorite women scientists that we discussed today was Mary Anning because of how she not only was the primary income for her household at age ten, but she discovered multiple species and she still barely made ends meet. Although not intended to be a feministic approach but more of a defense of self-pride, Marie Curie’s statement on how her personal life does not affect her intelligence really inspires me. I know it is more based on the fact that she was not French but I feel that it was and still is to an extent today an attack on her gender because of the false pretense in society that men are superior. The fact that some people believe that the one chromosome that is different changes the efficiency and capability of a person is absolutely ludicrous. I am appalled by the notion of how women, in general, were treated lesser than men. I am unsure if I would react the same way for gender equality in the same time period as her and all the other women if it was not considered a social norm. I feel if these women knew what we did now, they would have been more defiant in their time and history would have been altered to women making many of the world’s famous discoveries before man ever could. Still today, women are not given the same equal rights as men and it is especially hard for women in science because science is considered a man’s occupation–although history likes to disprove that. Although it is impossible to prove, I believe that if women were given the same standards as men from birth, we would be milestones ahead of were we currently are in our progress to upgrade our societies.
It is interesting to speculate, Alicia, as to how modern women would have reacted to the barriers of the past as well as how figures of the past would react to conditions of today. We say a lot in this class that it is not possible to judge people in the past by today’s standards. It seems obvious from today’s viewpoint that women are capable scientists and we have ample proof of that from many eras. Never the less, there still has to be some pioneers to break down barriers needed to achieve equity. In that regard, the women scientists of the presentation serve as good models.