When Women Gather

Gabrielle Birchak/ March 22, 2022/ Early Modern History, Modern History, Uncategorized


It’s Women’s His­to­ry Month, and this year, Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! is focus­ing on the amaz­ing women in sci­ence from the eigh­teenth century.

Mem­oir and Cor­re­spon­dence of Car­o­line Her­schel, the first female salaried sci­en­tist in Europe — By Joseph Brown — Pub­lic Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102329608

In eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe, there was an increase in women enter­ing the field of sci­ence, more so than in the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies. Between the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies, there was a slow devel­op­ment of women in sci­ence. How­ev­er, Europe expe­ri­enced a con­sid­er­able increase of women in sci­ence by the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, specif­i­cal­ly in Italy, France, Ger­many, Britain, Swe­den, Switzer­land, Amer­i­ca, and the Nether­lands. As a result, after the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, as the world entered an age of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the French Rev­o­lu­tion, and the New Impe­ri­al­ism, women had estab­lished a small foothold in sci­ence. Regard­less, they still did not stand on equal foot­ing with their male coun­ter­parts. On the con­trary, women were still sig­nif­i­cant­ly out­num­bered by men in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics, just as they are today.

What hap­pened with­in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry that set women up for suc­cess and pre­sent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties for them? Espe­cial­ly since, though some men advo­cat­ed for women’s edu­ca­tion, women still encoun­tered overt dis­so­nance from the male com­mu­ni­ty. Some­thing occurred across Europe that encour­aged women to read, ques­tion, and debate the study of sci­ence. Women were inspired by sci­ence. Maybe it start­ed with the print­ing press and the mass pro­duc­tion of books. Pos­si­bly it was the Enlight­en­ment and its influ­ence on empir­i­cal thought. How did women make so much progress despite the oppo­si­tion from a soci­ety that believed women should be at home and not involved with sci­ence? The answer is that they proved that there was pow­er in num­bers. They began to gath­er. Women gath­ered for intel­lec­tu­al con­ver­sa­tion in cafes, homes, salons, and boudoirs. Fur­ther­more, women invit­ed many oth­er women, regard­less of class or aris­toc­ra­cy. And because of this, across Europe, there was a sig­nif­i­cant uptick in the atten­dance of women involved in the stud­ies and obser­va­tion of astron­o­my, anato­my, math­e­mat­ics, physics, biol­o­gy, and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic fields.

Women who met in these schol­ar­ly gath­er­ings found sci­en­tif­ic inspi­ra­tion. These women empow­ered each oth­er at these meet­ings. They real­ized that they had human rights, aca­d­e­m­ic rights, and the right to be part of empir­i­cal sci­ence. More­over, though they faced back­lash for their efforts to edu­cate them­selves, they found strength and val­or through their gatherings.

What start­ed this move­ment in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry? Did it just “occur” in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, or were there fac­tors behind this devel­op­ment? We can answer these ques­tions by look­ing at the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies across Europe.

In the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, in 1543, Nico­laus Coper­ni­cus pub­lished his work On the Rev­o­lu­tions on the Celes­tial Spheres, which shook the Aris­totelian foun­da­tions of Catholi­cism. Then, in 1616, the Catholic Church claimed helio­cen­trism to be hereti­cal. With the advanced devel­op­ments in the tele­scope in the ear­ly sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, Galileo dis­cov­ered that the Earth is not the cen­ter of the uni­verse and stat­ed so in his pub­lished work Dia­logue Con­cern­ing the Two Chief World Sys­tems. Empir­i­cal sci­ence began to chal­lenge the author­i­ty of the Catholic Church, which had a foothold in academia.

In the late sev­en­teenth and ear­ly eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, John Locke pub­lished Essay Con­cern­ing Human Under­stand­ing and David Hume pub­lished A Trea­tise of Human Nature. These works stirred the empir­i­cal sci­ence move­ment. Men were meet­ing in cafes, pubs, and homes for dis­cus­sions on pol­i­tics, sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture, and art. Women were inspired by this and began to form their own gath­er­ings for sim­i­lar dis­cus­sions. Between watch­ing the men gath­er and watch­ing the church waver under the influ­ence of empiri­cism, women viewed the usurp­ing force of empir­i­cal sci­ence as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue schol­ar­ship with­out fear of the church’s authority.

Empiri­cism inspired them to progress in sci­ence through their gath­er­ings and dis­cus­sions on sci­ence. Addi­tion­al­ly, they also sought to gath­er with men in sci­ence as they pur­sued atten­dance at the men’s debat­ing soci­eties. How­ev­er, even when includ­ed in these mixed-gen­dered debates, the men were eager to insult them pub­licly. Mary Thale points out that the 1752 Drury-Lane Jour­nal not­ed that the only rea­son men includ­ed women in these mixed-gen­dered debates was that they were “shriek­ing, scream­ing, squeak­ing, squalling, hal­la-ing, and bawl­ing for admit­tance.” Fur­ther­more, even when men allowed the women to debate, these men saw their pres­ence as an “incur­sion.”[1]

How­ev­er, this did not dis­suade eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry women. They began to rec­og­nize that they had human rights and insert­ed them­selves into the male-dom­i­nat­ed world. In sci­ence, they start­ed by build­ing per­son­al lab­o­ra­to­ries, exhibit­ing their works, and pub­lish­ing their dis­cov­er­ies even though soci­ety believed that the realms of dis­cov­ery were reserved only for men.

The two areas of Europe that per­pet­u­at­ed the move­ment for women in sci­ence were Italy and France. In Italy, Lau­ra Bassi and Maria Gae­tana Agne­si obtained doc­tor­ates and posi­tions with­in the uni­ver­si­ty. These two women became the focal point of Ital­ian acad­e­mia. In 1731, at twen­ty years old, Bassi was the first woman in Europe grant­ed a degree in sci­ence and the first woman to become a pro­fes­sor in an Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ty. For Agne­si, Pope Bene­dict XIV offered her the hon­orary chair in nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy and math­e­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna in 1750.[2]

Gabrielle Émi­lie Le Ton­neli­er de Bre­teuil, mar­quise du Châtelet (1706–1749), French math­e­mati­cian and physi­cist — By Mau­rice Quentin de La Tour — Pub­lic Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29159624

In France, math­e­mati­cian Gabrielle Emi­lie le Ton­neli­er de Bre­teuil, mar­quise du Châtelet wrote six works. Her sto­ry is unique, even today. She had mul­ti­ple lovers, includ­ing Voltaire, and she loved to gam­ble. But she also loved mathematics.

Gabrielle pub­lished her first work Essay on the Nature and Spread of Fire, in 1737. Then, in 1740, she pub­lished Phys­i­cal Insti­tu­tions. With­in two years of its pub­li­ca­tion, this work had been copied, trans­lat­ed into mul­ti­ple lan­guages, and dis­trib­uted beyond Europe. The book looked at the physics and the mechan­ics of New­ton­ian physics. It was ground­break­ing and cre­at­ed a debate with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, as many endeav­ored to under­stand New­ton­ian physics. She also wrote a French trans­la­tion and com­men­tary on Isaac Newton’s Math­e­mat­i­cal Prin­ci­ples of Nat­ur­al Phi­los­o­phy, which, at that time, was the foun­da­tion to under­stand­ing the fun­da­men­tal laws of physics. How­ev­er, in 1749 at the age of 42, short­ly after giv­ing birth to her fifth child, she died before she had a chance to pub­lish it.

Nev­er­the­less, this work was pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 1756, and it became the stan­dard work on physics for France. Also, after her death, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert wrote about her philoso­phies, math­e­mat­ics, and sci­en­tif­ic writ­ings in their work known as Ency­clo­pe­die. As a result, du Chatelet, even after her death, inspired mul­ti­ple women to ven­ture into the world of math and science.

Then around 1760, while Italy was pre­sent­ing “think­ing” women as anom­alies in the world of acad­e­mia, women in France opened their home salons for oth­er women to meet and dis­cuss the sci­ences. These salons became a forum for edu­cat­ed French women to con­verse on many top­ics, includ­ing math­e­mat­ics, physics, pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, botany, and medicine. 

Though many of these afflu­ent women were patrons of the salons, these gath­er­ings did not mar­gin­al­ize oth­er women. Une­d­u­cat­ed women who were not aris­to­crats could also attend and dis­cuss the ideas of the Enlight­en­ment.[3]

Catharine Macauley — By Unknown author — archive.org, Pub­lic Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87188102

Soon, many of these gath­er­ings were tak­ing place across Britain. Some promi­nent women at these gath­er­ings includ­ed the first British female his­to­ri­an, Catharine Macaulay, whose promi­nent book Let­ters on Edu­ca­tion impact­ed edu­ca­tion. In her book, Macaulay appealed to the devel­op­ment of pub­lic edu­ca­tion for “all the sub­or­di­nate class­es of cit­i­zens” fund­ed through tax col­lec­tions.[4] Macaulay, along with sev­er­al oth­er women, became found­ing mem­bers of The Blue Stock­ing Soci­ety. This soci­ety encour­aged oth­er gath­er­ings among women across Britain. Fur­ther­more, the writ­ings of Macaulay served as an inspi­ra­tion to the author Mary Woll­stonecraft who in 1792 pub­lished her work A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Woman.[5] Woll­stonecraft was the moth­er of Mary Shel­ley, the infa­mous author who wrote Franken­stein.

In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, the foun­da­tions of inspi­ra­tion for women in sci­ence had been set. Though women were still not allowed into the lab­o­ra­to­ries and the uni­ver­si­ties, they found sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in all areas of sci­ence, includ­ing nat­ur­al sci­ence, botany, physics, math­e­mat­ics, and med­i­cine. They would hold gallery events that would dis­play their spec­i­mens and knowl­edge. They authored books. They per­suad­ed the schools to let young girls attend class­es. These women didn’t dab­ble; they worked hard to immerse them­selves in sci­ence. Still, soci­ety viewed these women as infring­ing on a men’s world, as they were derid­ed and insult­ed per­son­al­ly and pub­licly. Regard­less, these women did not give up as they con­tin­ued their work to make a change in sci­ence and soci­ety.[6]

In 1742 Count­ess Benigna von Zinzen­dorf estab­lished the first all-girls school in the Unit­ed States. In 1764, Cather­ine the Great of Rus­sia estab­lished insti­tu­tions to allow girls to receive advanced edu­ca­tion. In 1788, she estab­lished pub­lic edu­ca­tion for ele­men­tary and high school girls. In 1787, Swe­den and Den­mark estab­lished uni­ver­si­ties that allowed women to go to school.

Draw­ings by By Lydia Byam — Fruits of the West Indies — CC 4.0

Around the world, women were inspired. Amer­i­ca had hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist Martha Daniel Logan, biol­o­gist Jane Cold­en, and inven­tor Cather­ine Greene. Antigua had Lydia Byam, who was a nat­u­ral­ist. In Britain, his­to­ri­an Cather­ine Macauley wrote about the his­to­ry of sci­ence. Also, chemist Eliz­a­beth Ful­hame estab­lished a foothold in sci­ence in 1794. In Chi­na, Wang Zhenyi estab­lished her­self as an astronomer in 1788. France brought us botanist Cather­ine Jere­mie, anatomist Marie Mar­guerite Biheron, chemist Marie Lavoisi­er, and math­e­mati­cians Sophie Ger­main and Marie Ann Pigeon. In Ger­many, sis­ters Chris­tine and Mar­garetha Kirch flour­ished in astron­o­my in 1716. Car­o­line Her­schel, the astronomer, lived in Eng­land and Ger­many and became the first salaried sci­en­tist and won the Gold Medal of the Roy­al Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety in 1828. In Italy, Cristi­na Roc­cati was known for her accom­plish­ments in physics, Anna Moran­di Man­zoli­ni was known for her work in med­i­cine, and Maria Ard­inghel­li was known for her math­e­mat­ics. In Spain, Maria Andrea Casamay­or became known for her knowl­edge of math­e­mat­ics as ear­ly as 1720. Maria Christi­na Bruhn flour­ished as an inven­tor in Swe­den, and Elsa Bea­ta Bunge suc­ceed­ed as a botanist. In Switzer­land, Anna Bar­bara Rein­hart estab­lished her­self in the world of math­e­mat­ics. And in 1785, Jaco­ba van den Brande estab­lished the first all-female sci­ence acad­e­my in The Netherlands. 

E. Uswald. Jaco­ba van den Brande, 1794. Oil on can­vas. — By E. Uswald — Women and the Art and Sci­ence of Col­lect­ing in Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Europe by Arlene Leis and Kacie L. Wills in 2020., Pub­lic Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97844909

Though this list is long, it is not long enough. There are so many more worth not­ing who immersed them­selves in sci­ence and inspired oth­er women to join the won­der­ful world of dis­cov­ery. The fol­low­ing attach­ment lists all the women in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry that I have researched as of the writ­ing of this article.

https://mathsciencehistory.com/Women18centuryscience.pdf

These women inspired oth­er women. Germany’s Dorothea Erxleben even wrote about her inspi­ra­tions. She had sent let­ters to Lau­ra Bassi in Italy, telling her of her ado­ra­tion for women in sci­ence, espe­cial­ly Bassi. Soon, one by one, women began to tread the trail for oth­er women and sci­ence. That trail turned into a path that has become a well-paved free­way that invites women from every coun­try, every race, and every pri­or gen­der to join the world of science.

Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion and data gath­ered by Mag­dale­na Szmigiera, in the coun­try of Geor­gia, women encom­pass 56% of the sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics (STEM)-based work­force. In the Unit­ed States, 48% of the STEM-based work­force includes women. In the Unit­ed King­dom, women encom­pass 40% of the STEM-based work­force. In Aus­tria, the per­cent­age of women work­ing in STEM is 35%.[7] Fur­ther­more, the top five coun­tries that employ women in STEM include Mon­go­lia, Kiri­bati, Domini­can Repub­lic, and Cam­bo­dia. And though some of these num­bers look promis­ing, we still need more women in STEM. In Niger, only 10% of the STEM-based work­force includes women.

Addi­tion­al­ly, among 110 coun­tries, only 30% of female stu­dents choose to study STEM in high­er edu­ca­tion.[8] Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, only 34% of women work in the STEM work­force glob­al­ly.[9] Thus, there is no one-to-one ratio between women and men in science.

But I am opti­mistic and believe that these num­bers will con­tin­ue to grow. We have our strug­gles, and some­times we fall out of the STEM pipeline. How­ev­er, the doors will only be open as long as we keep them open and as long as we con­tin­ue to gath­er. Because when women in STEM gath­er, we share our most pow­er­ful attribute, which is knowl­edge. We empow­er, we inspire, and we moti­vate. Our his­to­ry is rich with stim­u­lat­ing sto­ries about women who have changed the world and have shown the world that when we gath­er, the world changes.


[1] Mary Thale, “The Case of the British Inqui­si­tion: Mon­ey and Women in Mid-Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Lon­don Debat­ing Soci­eties,” Albion: A Quar­ter­ly Jour­nal Con­cerned with British Stud­ies 31, no. 1 (1999): 33, https://doi.org/10.2307/4052815.

[2] Leigh Wha­ley, “Net­works, Patron­age and Women of Sci­ence dur­ing the Ital­ian Enlight­en­ment,” Ear­ly Mod­ern Women 11, no. 1 (2016): 187.

[3] Dena Good­man, “Enlight­en­ment Salons: The Con­ver­gence of Female and Philo­soph­ic Ambi­tions,” Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Stud­ies 22, no. 3 (1989): 329–50, https://doi.org/10.2307/2738891.

[4] Catharine Macaulay Gra­ham, Let­ters on Edu­ca­tion; with Obser­va­tions on Reli­gious and Meta­phys­i­cal Sub­jects (Dublin: H. Cham­ber­laine, 1790), ix.

[5] Mary Woll­stonecraft, A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Woman, Scott Library (Lon­don: Wal­ter Scott, 1891), 143, https://books.google.com/books?id=K1ZYAAAAcAAJ.

[6] Mar­garet Car­lyle, “Col­lect­ing the World in Her Boudoir: Women and Sci­en­tif­ic Ama­teurism in Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Paris,” Ear­ly Mod­ern Women 11, no. 1 (2016): 149–61.

[7] Inter­na­tion­al Labour Orga­ni­za­tion. “How Many Women Work in STEM?” Accessed March 10, 2022. https://ilostat.ilo.org/how-many-women-work-in-stem/.

[8] UNESCO and Iri­na Boko­va, Crack­ing the Code: Girls’ and Women’s Edu­ca­tion in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics (STEM) (Paris: Unit­ed Nations Edu­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Orga­ni­za­tion (UNESCO), 2017), 20.

[9] Burke, Amy, and Abi­gail Okrent. “The STEM Labor Force of Today: Sci­en­tists, Engi­neers, and Skilled Tech­ni­cal Work­ers.” Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion — Nation­al Cen­ter for Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Sta­tis­tics (NCSES), August 31, 2021. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20212.

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