pragmatist comments on Happy Ada Lovelace Day - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (65)
Political correctness of the sort I'm referring to is not co-extensive with support for gender equity. No doubt there were a number of intellectuals (although probably not a very large number) in favor of women having equal rights, but it doesn't follow from this that Curie's contemporaries would feel obliged to praise her scholarship even though they didn't think that much of it simply because she was a woman. I really doubt there was significant social pressure of this sort at that time. Perhaps a few of her colleagues exaggerated her gifts because they thought it worthwhile to promote a female scientist, but this effect would have been swamped by the opposite effect, I think -- people undervaluing her skill because of her gender. This is a time when the Royal Institute could refuse to let her give a talk simply on the grounds that she was a woman. The Sorbonne refused to allow her to have a lab until she threatened to leave. The French Academy of Sciences refused to admit her despite her being a Nobel laureate. In an environment where a significant number of prominent academics considered it acceptable to behave in an egregiously sexist manner, I doubt that people were socially punished for merely not overvaluing female scientists.
I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. Can you produce an actual quote wherein the Royal institute gave that reason?
It would be as suicidal to give that reason then, as it would be now.
Of course, in practice, people do tend to quietly assume that women tend to be idiots in certain fields, and might well not allow one to speak for that reason, but they don't say the reason out loud in plain words.
I don't have an actual quote from the Royal Institution, and I doubt that they specifically gave that as a reason in this particular case. This page from the American Institute of Physics biography says that "custom ruled out women lecturers". I concede that this might be a myth, but I don't think your skepticism is justified. The claim that this sort of reason would be as suicidal then as it is now is, I think, patently false. That sort of discrimination, often justified on the grounds of tradition, was pretty common in the early 20th century.
This is a period when women could not receive a degree at Cambridge, even though they could sit for the Tripos. When Hertha Ayrton was nominated to the Royal Society in 1902 (the first woman to be nominated), the nomination was rejected explicitly because she was a married woman. See here. From the Royal Society's response:
The relevant charters were only amended in the 1940s.
PC was already in effect in the late nineteenth century. When people said politically incorrect things, they were conscious of transgressing.
Really?
They said that was the grounds? Actually said such an unspeakable thing out loud? I find that mighty hard to believe.
Sounds mighty like the story that Tully was lynched for whistling at a white woman.
Now possibly the real reason that they did not have her give a talk was that she was woman, but no one would have dared say out loud "because she is a woman"