Patricia Fara, professor of the history of science at the University of Cambridge has many things to say in her new book, “A Lab of One’s Own”, as she explores women and science and suffrage in the First World War era. “One of the main influences on the attitude towards women was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. That reinforced the long standing idea that women are intrinsically inferior to men...it gave the idea scientific validity...over the millinea men and women have been particularly selected to fit in the environment they were in...men have been selected for their intelligence and bravery and so on...women have been selected to stay at home look after the children and do all the cooking....”
Fara continues, “On the one hand science and physiology were being used to keep women in their place. But women were taking advantage of the technological innovations. One of the most important was the bicycle. Bicycles enabled women to move around freely...liberated them in a way that they had never been liberated before....”
One area which was greatly influenced with the use of this technological innovation was clothes! When women opted for slightly shorter skirts so as to be able to cycle, scandals were made, “...trousers, divided skirts, shorter skirts and suffrage women were thus opting for such clothes...in the conservative society of those times this was seen as scandalous.”
The issue of clothes came up again when Helen Gwynne Vaughan joined the Womens Auxiliary Army Core. Says Fara, “...women had to be dressed in clothes that went below their knees, they could not have chest pockets and so on...”
Fara relates how, “...women were held to be intellectually inferior so they will not be as good at it (at science and its study). Other thing, it would prevent them from playing their actual role in society which was to look after their children and husband. That argument diminished a little post-war because there were roughly ten women for every nine men because so many men had died in the war...surplus of unmarried women. Another argument was that their intellectual role made them tired...” Fara quotes a study which found they actually got healthier.
Fara recounts, “Few women went to University. Even when they did, some courses were deemed unfit for them. In the medical schools, particularly in London, there were few women...women were excluded from many classes...they rarely got a job. Often they were independently wealthy so worked without pay...Women doctors were mainly gynaecologists and pediatricians...and many went to India where they could practice because there women had to be treated by lady doctors...”
Fara says the War opened up work avenues for women and even as society in non-war times, holds tightly to the image of women as primarily care givers. Her book brings the inspiring and very less known biographical sketches of some of those who were harbingers of that change.
