by The field of science today is dominated by males. Since the inception of science there has been a lack of female involvement due to women not being given equal access to institutions of higher education and a general attitude of males that women were not meant to be in the sciences and should rather spend their time doing household chores and family management. This feeling of superiority in the sciences of males over females has also led to males not accrediting women for their contributions to their work. The most prominent example being the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by Watson and Crick who used the work of Rosalind Franklin to make their discovery. Women in the field of science are not given the same opportunity in the field of science and are not seen as equal to their male colleagues.
Evelyn Fox Keller discusses how her experience as a female member of science was unequal to the experience that her male peers and colleagues had. In graduate school, Keller discusses how her fellow peers and even professors used to watch her and wonder what a woman was doing in a graduate studies program in the field of science. They thought that women would go about undergraduate studies only to find a husband and beyond that was not necessary for any woman. Keller had to battle gender roles in a field that was dominated by males, making it difficult for her to succeed and find a voice in her studies.
Rosalind Franklin was cheated out of credit for her discovery of DNA’s structure due to the unequal gender roles of the time, and men believing that they could simply take a woman’s work without accrediting her. In 1951 at King’s College London, Franklin worked as a research associate using her expertise in X-ray diffraction techniques on DNA fibers (1). Franklin was able to generate amazing pictures of the structure of DNA and was on the verge of great scientific discovery about DNA. The most famous picture of hers was called photograph 51 (Image 1). But one of her colleagues Maurice Wilkins disclosed her discovery to competing scientists at Cambridge University, James Watson and Francis Crick. Francis and Crick got the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their discovery of the double helical nature of DNA without any credit given to Rosalind Franklin for her breakthrough imaging of DNA. The fact that Maurice Wilkins felt that he could simply give a researchers breakthrough work to a competing group of scientists shows that women did not have the same respect in science as the male colleagues. Also, scientists James Watson and Francis Crick not feeling the need to give credit for the image that they received from Wilkins shows how they did not value the contribution that a women scientist had made and felt entitled to use it as their own.
Image 1. Photograph 51, X-ray diffraction image of DNA (2)
Science is not an objective field. We must recognize that there is subjectivity to science, especially to who we credit discoveries to: Rosalind Franklin was cheated out of a Nobel Prize due to her male colleagues feeling entitled to take her work and use it as their own. Females in the field of science also do not feel the same entitlement that males do. Women need to feel as empowered as men in the field of science and I believe equality in the field has to start with more women entering the field. This will not only add more insight into science, but also ensure that women scientists do not feel out of place in a male dominated field.
Sources:
- https://www.biography.com/scientist/rosalind-franklin
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51