Maria M. Ferreira

Ameliorating Equity in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering: A Case Study of an After-School Science Program.

(2002). Ameliorating Equity in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering: A Case Study of an After-School Science Program. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 43-49.

Context Factors Related to Women Attrition From a Graduate Science Program

Seeing that the average brain-weight of women is about five ounces less than that of men, on merely anatomical grounds we should be prepared to expect a marked inferiority of intellectual power in the former. (Romanes, 1887, p. 383) Arguments such as this one, seeking to bar women’s access to higher education, were still common in the popular science press by the end of the 19th century. Yet, in this unwelcoming climate, many women made important contributions to science (Rossiter, 1974). Some of them, Jane Colden (1724-1766), Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), and Mary Somerville (1780-1872), were mostly self-taught or learned science while helping their scientist fathers (Rossiter, 1974). However, many at the time dismissed these early women scientists as aberrations as illustrated by an article in an 1887 issue of The Popular Science Monthly: