by Both World War One and Two, despite taking an atrocious toll on human lives, led to important technological and scientific leaps. In WWI the use of the telegraph and the telephone became widespread, and X-ray technology was developed. WWII saw major advances in medical technology including the mass production of penicillin. But in A History of Science in Society authors Andrew Ede and Lesley B. Cormack point not only towards the critical role that WWI and WWII played in shaping our tech-dominated 21st century, but the ways in which the wars altered culture and society. In “The Death of Certainty” Ede and Cormack declare, “In the wake of World War I, long-standing social, political, and economic standards were challenged and overturned… many democratic countries started extending voting rights to women: Canada in 19 I 7, Britain and Germany in 1918, the Netherlands in 1919, and the United States in 1920.” Yet, while WWI and WWII certainly opened up the “domestic sphere” by allowing (and even encouraging) women to take on new roles in the workforce, the patriarchal dynamics within the scientific field were hardly “overturned.” In fact, I would argue that wartime scientific ventures such as the development of the atomic bomb actually worked to solidify the Baconian view of science as a “male philosophy.”
In WWI and WWII as millions of men were away from home, women filled manufacturing and agricultural positions on the homefront and worked as nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and translators on the front lines. While these wartime periods of cultural shift bolstered global suffrage movements, and gave women a taste of independence, the women’s contributions (which enabled the country to pursue war effort) went largely underappreciated. After the wars ended women were largely reconfined to their previous role as “homemakers.”
The 1939 Manhattan project during WWII is an example of a wartime venture which despite relying on the work of women (who worked as secretaries, technicians, nurses, librarians, and scientific researchers), pushed the women to the margins. When learning about the Manhattan project, we often talk about the men that spearheaded it: Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves. Yet is was the female scientist, Lise Meitner, who discovered the nuclear fission while working with fellow chemist, Otto Hahn. Meitner, however, wasn’t named when Hahn was given the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work. Female scientist Leona Woods Marshall was the youngest member and only woman on Enrico Fermi’s team of scientists that created the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.
But on top of the under-acknowledgment of the women who worked on the Manhattan project, one could argue that the creation of the atomic bomb reinforced the Baconian view of science as “masculine venture.” Evelyn Fox Keller pointed towards the rhetoric used by the scientists in the making of the bombs. Keller points towards the metaphor of the bombs being called “babies” by its male scientist creators and likens the atomic bomb venture to the tale of Frankenstein – the story of the mad scientist down in his basement pursuing the creation of life without women.
The rhetoric was also severely gendered – the bombs with the thrust were called boy babies, and the bombs that were duds were called girl babies. Similarly, the first atomic bomb was called “Fat Boy,” and it was delivered from the womb of a bomber named “Enola Gay,” a female delivering a weapon of destruction.
Photos of the project encapsulate the “boyish culture” of the Manhattan project scientists, who reminded Keller of “boys in a schoolyard.” The lack of women in the photo depicts how women were pushed from the limelight and weren’t sought to be shown as part of this “masculine venture” to create a bomb. While the cultural shift that allowed women to work in wartime gave women a taste of independence, the Manhattan project is a clear example of how despite limited inclusion of women, wartime simultaneously reinforced the patriarchal culture of science.
Sources:
“The Death of Certainty” and “1957: The Year the World Became a Planet,” in Andrew Ede and Lesley B. Cormack, A History of Science in Society: From Philosophy to Utility, Second Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 295–348.
https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/women
https://www.energy.gov/articles/how-women-helped-build-atomic-bomb