Matilda effect

The Matilda effect is the denial of recognition of women’s achievements. It is particularly evident in various scientific fields where male researchers have taken or been given credit for work and discoveries made by women. The term was coined by Margaret Rossiter, a historian of women in science at Cornell University, and takes its name from suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose contributions in the fight for women’s rights were ignored by scholars. In many cases, women who conducted scientific research were barred from membership in science societies and prevented from studying in science programs, so male historians often missed information about them or were likewise biased and ignored their contributions. Marie Curie was the rare exception of a woman in science because her accomplishments were widely known, and she received two Nobel prizes for her work. However, many male research historians dismissed her as an assistant to her husband. By exposing the Matilda effect, Rossiter brought to light the stories of many women in science and kindled interest in women and girls pursuing careers in these fields.

Background

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) was an activist, author, editor, and lecturer who fought for the rights of women and Native Americans as well as abolition. Her parents made their home in Cicero, central New York, a station on the Underground Railroad. Her father taught her anatomy and physiology so she could attend medical school, but those institutions refused to admit her because she was female. She married and raised five children while helping people flee slavery, writing for newspapers, and working for women’s rights. She helped found the New York State Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and served as president for nine years. She disagreed with other women on what issues the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) should pursue. She wanted to tackle multiple problems while Susan B. Anthony and others were solely interested in getting the right to vote. Other prominent suffragists considered Gage to be too controversial. For example, she said that Christian denominations were patriarchal and revealed sexual abuse of children and women by priests. As a result, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton marginalized Gage and removed her as coauthor of a book on the history of woman suffrage. Gage consequently founded the Woman’s National Liberal Union (WNLU) in 1890. She often wrote about how poorly the federal government treated Native Americans and advocated for them.

Gage fought to ensure that women’s contributions were recognized, especially in science and industry. In 1870 she wrote the pamphlet “Woman as an Inventor” in which she criticizes the failure to acknowledge women’s work. She credits Catherine Littlefield Greene with ideas for the cotton gin, Ann Harned Manning with the invention of the mower and reaper, and Maggie Knight with the invention of the machine that makes flat-bottomed paper bags, and lists many other inventions created by women. She notes that the limitations placed on women—notably in education and politics—and the open scorn of women in general limit their opportunities to contribute to humankind through invention and other actions. Gage also points out that in many states, the law denied women the right to their own earnings. Therefore, even if a woman took out a patent on an invention, her husband or father would have the right to use it and profit from it.

Gage’s championing of women’s accomplishments led Margaret W. Rossiter to honor her with the term “Matilda effect” nearly a century after her death. Rossiter was enrolled in a Yale graduate program on the history of science in 1969. At an informal gathering, she asked the professors if women had ever been scientists, and they emphatically replied “no.” Even when someone brought up Marie Curie, these professors gave her husband credit for her work. After Rossiter completed her PhD at Yale in 1971, she continued to study the subject and began to publish her findings in 1982 with the first volume of Women Scientists in America. A glowing review in the New York Times soon followed. This success led the National Science Foundation to fund her work and in the latter twentieth century to fund efforts to increase the number of women in science and engineering fields.

Overview

In 1993 Rossiter attended a conference where researchers presented papers on women whose scientific work had been credited to men. Realizing that this subjugation of women’s status in science was extensive and required greater attention, she cast about for a name for the phenomenon. She learned about Gage for the first time and was mystified that so important a figure had been written out of the history of the suffrage movement. Later that year Rossiter published an essay in Social Studies of Science, “The Matilda Effect in Science.” She explains the Matthew effect, a well-known term in the field that describes the practice of attributing work by less visible scientists to those already renowned, such as Albert Einstein. She further says a new designation is necessary to address failure to recognize women for their work. In her writing Rossiter notes individuals whose identity or gender were deliberately obscured. An eleventh-century female physician named Trotula, for example, treated women’s diseases and wrote extensively on the subject. However, a monk in the twelfth century disbelieved the information on the grounds that no woman could be so accomplished and changed her name to a masculine form. In the twentieth century, medical historian Karl Sudhoff changed Trotula’s status from physician to midwife.

Rossiter has uncovered and described various forms of gender-based segregation. Territorial segregation describes systems that limited female scientists at women’s colleges. Hierarchical segregation involves preventing women from being promoted and assigning them tedious work typically in the realm of research assistants. She experienced the latter in her own career. Nearly two decades after obtaining her PhD and years after achieving success with her first book, she finally was awarded tenure at Cornell.

Many notable women have been victims of the Matilda effect. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, for example, was in the graduate program in astronomy at Harvard in the 1920s. She analyzed data on stellar spectra for her thesis, Stellar Atmospheres, published in 1925. Astronomers at the time believed that stars were made of the same materials as Earth, but Payne-Gaposchkin’s analysis found that stars contained a million times more hydrogen and a thousand times more helium than any other element. Henry Russell, director of the Princeton Observatory, had to approve the thesis for it to be accepted. He insisted that her conclusion about hydrogen was impossible. Payne-Gaposchkin felt she had no choice but to include the information with a statement that the hydrogen and helium volume was most certainly incorrect. Four years later, Russell published a paper in which he arrived at the same conclusion by another method. He cited her work but did not directly credit her with the discovery or admit that he had rejected her findings. Russell was widely credited with the discovery, and Payne-Gaposchkin’s work was generally ignored or unknown for many years.

Bibliography

Angelucci, Ashley. “Matilda Joslyn Gage.” National Women’s History Museum, 2021, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/matilda-joslyn-gage. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

Dominus, Susan. “Women Scientists Were Written Out of History. It’s Margaret Rossiter’s Lifelong Mission to Fix That.” Smithsonian, Oct. 2019, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/unheralded-women-scientists-finally-getting-their-due-180973082/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

Hafner, Katie. “Lost Women of Science, Episode 2: The Matilda Effect.” Scientific American, 11 Nov. 2021, www.scientificamerican.com/article/lost-women-of-science-episode-2-the-matilda-effect/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

“The Matilda Effect.” Canadian Association of University Teachers, Feb. 2019, www.caut.ca/bulletin/2019/02/matilda-effect. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

Perkowitz, Sidney. “Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: The Woman Who Found Hydrogen in the Stars.” Physics World, 8 Mar. 2022, physicsworld.com/a/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-the-woman-who-found-hydrogen-in-the-stars/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

Rossiter, Margaret W. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, no. 2, DOI: 10.1177/030631293023002004. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.

Steen, Tomoko Y. “Margaret Rossiter and the Matilda Effect.” Library of Congress, 25 Mar. 2020, blogs.loc.gov/inside‗adams/2020/03/matilda-effect/. Accessed 27 Dec. 2022.