Chemistry Doctorates Awarded to Women in the United States A Historical Perspective Kenneth G. Everett and Will S. DeLoach Stetson University, DeLand, FL 32720 I t is now widely agreed that if the national pool of PhD chemists is to be maintained adequately into the next century, more women must be recruited into it. Yet the details of the historical patterns from which this development must emerge have heen largely unexamined. This is the more remarkable because, though they must he gathered from a variety of sources, considerable data exist. The study here presented represents a comprehensive attempt to assemble the most reliable information available and to compose it into forms amenable to analysis.
Table 1.
US. Doctorates In Chemldry Conferred on Woman In the NineteenthCentury
Year of Conferral 1894 1895 1896 1897
The 19th Century The definitive work on doctorates earned by women in the 19thcentury is a 1956 study by Eells ( I ) that was undertaken to remedy the absence of gender-specific data in the early doctoral production records of the United States Commissioner of Education. T o this end Eells returned to primary sources, namely the superb collection of college and university catalogs formerly in the library of the U.S. Office of Education, supplemented by alumni listings published by the various doctorate granting institutions. Eells lists the names of 229 women awarded doctorates in the 19th century, grouped by conferring institution, with field and date of degree noted for each recipient. Thirteen chemistry doctorates (Table 1) can be counted, the first ones being conferred in 1894--17 years after Boston University awarded the first U.S. doctorate (Greek drama) to a woman and 33 years after Yale University conferred the first US. doctorate. The 20th Centuw The oldest and best records for the first 15 years of the current century were compiled by J. McKeen Cattell, editor as annual reports in that journal of Science, and from 1698 through 1915 (2). His reports were the first t o present numbers of US. doctorates by field. Furthermore, in a period in which many abuses were still freely practiced in awarding the PhD degree, he made the first serious effort t o exclude from his figures any degrees of doubtful quality, in which respect a thorough analysis by Scates, Murdoch, and Yeomans (3) clearly establishes the superiority of Cattell's data over those r e ~ o r t e dfor the same period by the U S . Commissioner of ducat ion. Althouah Cattell did not tabulate his numerical data by gender, he appended to each report acomplete list of the full names and dissertation titles of all doctorate recipients in the sciences for that year, making i t possible, by scanning given names and dissertation titles, t o identify the women ihemists. Thirty-eight women doctorates in chemistry were thus found among the 2773 science doctorates Cattell lists for the~, vears 1901-1915. Onlv three cases of questionable gender or field identification were encountered, indicating less than a 10%error in the procedure.These resulrs, tugether with Eells'sdata for the years 1894-1900, are presented in Table 2. (For theoverla~pingyearsof 1898-1900, our counts from cattell and from ~ d l lagree.) s ~
Conferring lnstltution
Fanny R. M. Hitchcock Charlone F. Robem Many E. Pennlngton Martha Doan Charlone Fairbanks Florence E. Johnson
Univ. of Pennsylvania Yale University Unlv. of Pennsylvania Cornell Univerrily Yale University Unlv. of Woosleter (College of Waoster since 1914) Yale University Univ, of Pennsylvania Yale University Univ. of Chicago Univ. 01 Pennsylvania Columbia University George Washington Unlv.
Alice H. Albm Elizabeth A. Atkinson Martha Austin Elizabeth Jeffreys Lily G. Kallock Harriet Winfield Ernestine Fireman
1898
1899 1900
Table 2.
Name
US. Doctorates In Chemistry Conlerred on Women, 1894-1919
Women Tdal Total Women Doctorates Year 01 Chemlshy Chemistry Conferral Dactorates Doctorates (All Fields)
1894 1895 1898 1897
Eells(7I 2 1 2 1
-
estimated
NRC(W
6 5 0 4
115 108 75 55
ACE(S1 18 27 35 19
Grand Total Donorates (For All Fields)
-
-
ACE(S) 279 272 271 319
~
~
1916 1917 1918 1919
NRC(5) 81 73 65 79
611 664 558 371
Volume 68 Number 7 July 1991
867 699 556 395
545
Table 3.
US. Doctorates In Chemlslry Conlerred on Women,
1920-Presenta
Year
Women Chemisby Doctorates
Tom1 Chemisby Doctorates
Total Women Doctorates (All Fields)
Grand Total Doctorates (All Fields)
During the years surrounding U S . involvement in World War I. Science nublished no data on doctorate vroduction. Burg ( 4 ) published data for 1916, hut compilations for 19171919 were entirelv lackine until the 1920's. when Hull and West (5),of the National kesearch Council (NRC), updated Bure's work and filled thegar, (LO1920, when NRC began its ownwntahulations). ~ l t h o u g hmost agree (6, 7) that this work is the best available for the 1916-1919 period, it gives no figures by gender. T o estimate, therefore, the numbers of men and women represented in Hull and West's annual totals for chemistry doctorates, an on-line computer search of Dissertation Abstracts (8)for the nertinent vears was made. This vielded the names df 250 recilhents of &emistry doctorates: ?8 for 1916, 85 for 1917. 46 for 1918. 41 for 1919. An analvsis of eiven names indicated women recipients as follows: four in 1916, four in 1917, none in 1918, three in 1919. These numbers, of course, have no value as accurate totals of doctorates since not all dissertations of the period were abstracted. Assuming, however, that the abstracted work is representative in respect to origin by gender, it permits calculation of the approximate prooortion of women doctorates in each year. Applying these proportions to the totals of Hull and West gives the desired estimates of men and women; which, with the data of Hull and West, appear in Table 2. For vurooses of comnarison. Table 2 also includes n a n d totals ?or doctorates conferred in all fields, and t o t z s for women doctorates in all fields. For totals of women in all fields, as wellas grand totals of doctorates for those years not covered by Cattellor by Hulland West (NRC), data from the most recently published tables of the American Council on Education (ACE) (9) are used. The latter data, presented for the whole 1894-1920 period, appear t o have been taken from an original study by Eells (101, who necessarily relied upon early reports of the US. Commissioner of Educationwhich, as previously indicated, means they are probably inflated. From 1920 onward probably the best and most detailed data. varticularlv for the sciences. are those compiled bv the NRC:(FO~ a disdussion of their collection methods andkles, see ref 7.) Relevant NRC data on numbers of doctorates are presented in Table 3. Trends and Perspectives
The data of Tables 2 and 3 show that for men, numhers of chemistry doctorates increased steadily until 1917, when the effects of World War I caused a declining trend through 1919. Increases resumed in 1920 and lasted until 1941, when World War I1 caused a chasm in the trend line. A steep postwar recovery and then a static period from about 1950 to 1960 were followed by the post-Sputnik bulge, which, in turn, gave way to a pattern of moderate increase by the mid1970's. The corresponding data for women show a smoother trend. Numbers of women chemistry doctorates slowly increased t o 1932, whereupon they gradually declined through the years of the Great Depression and World War I1 to a minimum of only 11 doctorates in 1945. After a recovery in 1946, numbers again rose through 1951, held essentially constant over the next decade, and then, in about 1961, began a steady climb t o their highest level ever-497 doctorates in 1989. I t is noteworthy that, in contrast to the case for men, women's numbers do not show a significant off-trend response to the Sputnik era stimulus; they advance fairly smoothly upward through both the boom (1961-1970) and bust (1971-1980) phases of the men's bulge. .. Data far 1961-1963 and 1964-1966 period* horn W t w a t e Rscipienh l r m Uniled Sfsfes Univwmes 1958.1966, Pub. No. 1489: National Research Council: WashinDon, 1967: pp 5. 108. Data f a 1967.1969 horn annual issuer of Summary Repm series: National Research Caunoil: Washlngtan.
546
Journal of Chemical Education
Subfleld Dlstrlbutlon by Gender
In 1972 NRC hegan the practice of publishing all data on women doctorates in separate tables, allowing the distribution of women doctorates among the various suhfields of chemistry to he studied. Using NRC totals (11) for three
Flgure 1. D l s k i b u t i m of women d o c t a a t e s fields as a function of time, 1973-1989.
in chemlsby amow maim sub-
equi-spaced 3-year periods, Figure 1shows how progress of time has affected the distrihution of women doctorates across the four major subfields-analytical, inorganic, organic, and physical. The number of women has increased in each subfield, hut most markedly in analytical. Figure 2 compares men and women in a more detailed subfield breakdown, using data for the most recent 3-year ~ e r i o d 1987-1989. . Interestindv, it reveals that women are more evenly distrihuted over ihe major subfields than men, mainly because they show a significantly lower preference for organic chemistry than me
