The Employability of Women Chemists

In 1927, the Institute of Chemistry issued a book, The Profession of Chemistry, which included a chapter on women in professional chemistry. The author, Richard Pilcher, reviewed the options open to women, noting that, though in theory any position available to men was equally available to women, women sometimes were left taking any vacancy that they could find  

Some turn to secretarial work or to scientific journalism, but the majority take up teaching, for which they are often particularly suited.. .. For the trained woman chemist who has no vocation for teaching, appointments are occasionally 

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As part of the final chapter, we will revisit the issue of the employment of women chemists in the post-First World War era. 

As Horrocks noted,37 the two leading photographic companies, Ilford and Kodak, had positive attitudes to the employment of women chemists, and as a result gained two outstanding women researchers Frances Hamer and Nellie Fisher. 

Chapter 2 is the first chapter in which individual biographies of women chemists appear. We have endeavoured to place each biography in the most relevant narrative. In some cases, this is in the chapter of the institution from which the woman graduated in others, where she undertook research or became employed in others, in the context of her speciality or time frame. Where possible, we have cross-referenced the biographical accounts to linking locations in other chapters. 

In Chap. 10, we provide an account of the pioneering women pharmacists, some of whom had been active chemists. Even more than crystallography and biochemistry, pharmacy was a direction in which women chemists could find employment. In addition, the fight for the admission of women to... 

We give an overview of the different employment avenues for women chemists in the interwar period and choose exemplars for each. The chapter concludes with examples of women chemists who used the opportunities of the Second World War to develop career directions, though the effect of that war on women chemists seems to have been less momentous than that of the 1914-1918 conflict. The late 1940s seem to be an appropriate place to end the book, for as Evelyn Fox Keller has observed, the mid-20th century represented the nadir of the history of women in science. 11... 

Briefly stated, the position of those unfavourable to the admission of women is that, while gladly offering to those women who already have become chemists measures which would give them benefits derived from attendance at the meetings, they deem it inexpedient publicly to encourage women to adopt chemistry as a professional pursuit, since such a course would tempt them into a career in which they may ultimately not find employment in view of the already overcrowded state of the profession. 

Just as the memory of the women chemists of Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges have been forgotten, so has the important role of the London School of Medicine for Women prior to its absorption into the Royal Free Hospital. Not only did it provide a reliable conduit for the education of women doctors, but its chemistry department employed a series of talented women, a significant proportion of the chemistry graduates of RHC. 

With few exceptions, the end of the war resulted in the termination of employment for women chemists. The government closed the explosives factories, while the male chemists returned from their war duties and reoccupied their former faculty and research positions. The respondent to Agnes Conway from the Sheffield Steel Company of Thos. Frith noted On the signing of the Armistice most of the women were replaced by returning soldiers, but two [of 16] in the General Laboratory have become so proficient that their services have been retained. 35... 

In earlier chapters, we identified particular niches in which a select few women chemists could find employment academic appointments in women s colleges (see Chaps. 4 and 6), domestic chemistry (see Chap. 3), biochemistry (see Chap. 8), crystallography (see Chap. 9), and pharmacy (see Chap. 10). But what of the many hundreds of women chemists who graduated during the interwar period Obviously, we cannot cover each individual nevertheless, there were some specific career directions, and we will discuss them in this chapter together with biographies of women chemists who followed each of these paths. 

Nevertheless, despite the gloomy forecasts, Horrocks has shown that during the interwar period many women chemists did find employment in industry, particularly the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, textiles, and photographic industries.37 We will conclude this section with one case study, the life of Kathleen Culhane. For so many of the forgotten women chemists, scanty information remains on their life and work but for Culhane, we have a rich narrative that epitomises the struggle of women seeking an industrial chemistry career during the interwar period. 

A significant number of women chemists found employment in the food industry, as Horrocks reported ... 

We have shown above that certain companies were receptive to the hiring of women, but the majority were not. The Journal of Careers article on careers for women scientists in 1938 reported that many of the large companies employing chemists did not employ women and were very open about it, one firm replying that all applications from women scientists are automatically ruled through . 36 An Institute of Chemistry survey showed that of 963 available positions during 1935 and 1936, only 80 were open to women.71 In this section, we will provide a selection of other research career pathways followed by women chemists. 

The purpose of this monograph is to make chemists and those working with chemicals aware of the practical aspects—the existance and dangers--of chemical teratogenesis. Chemicals are unavoidable in the modern world. Chemical industry employs numerous women. 

If results were correlated with effort, women chemists would have changed academia a lot more by now than has been the case. Although important legislation was passed in 1972 affecting education and employment, a law is only as strong as its enforcement, and fighting powerful institutions in court can be a slow, expensive, and painful process. Nevertheless some women chemists have been quite active in this area. Recall Sharon Johnson, who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from MIT, was an assistant professor of biochemistry in the medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, and sued her employer... 

Though many feminists were opposed to academic Domestic Science, particularly domestic chemistry, women chemists had more opportunities of employment as lecturers of domestic chemistry at King s College of Household and Social Science and at the polytechnics, such as Battersea Polytechnic, than in mainstream chemistry. 

Though pharmacy is regarded as a distinct profession, many academic women chemists saw pharmacy as one of their few employment options. As we will show, several of the women were also associated with the Chemical Society and/or the Institute of Chemistry, and two of them were signatories to the petition for admission of women to the Chemical Society (see Chap. 2). 

Women chemists made up a significant proportion of the scientific workforce. Fortunately, the Women s Work Collection of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) has a significant amount of documentary evidence on the wartime women scientists. This useful material was compiled in 1919 by Agnes Ethel Conway of the Women s Work Subcommittee of the IWM. Conway circulated a questionnaire to universities and industries informing them that the Committee was compiling a historical record of war work performed by women for the National Archives. In particular, Conway added they [the Subcommittee] are anxious that women s share in scientific research and in routine work should not be overlooked. .. 13 Enough replies were received to provide a sense of the breadth of employment of scientifically trained women during the war. 

Women chemists were employed as analysts at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Their work, too, was mainly in the analysis of iron and steel samples for the Admiralty. It is noticeable, though, that 10 of the 12 Junior Assistants at the NPL were female while all of the Assistants, the Senior Assistants, and the Supervisor were male.41 The reports listing women s contributions, such as that of the NPL, provide only names and assigned duties. 

We have already discussed the work of May Leslie on the improvement of nitric acid synthesis (see Chap. 5), first at H. M. Factory, Litherland, Liverpool, then at H. M. Factory in Penrhyndeudraeth, North Wales.45 Isabel Hadfield was consigned to research chemical problems relating to aeronautics (see Chap. 2). In addition, we know that towards the end of the war, Millicent Taylor was appointed to H. M. Factory, Oldbury, as a research chemist.46 It seems likely that other explosives factories also employed women chemists, but they were not documented. 

One of the women chemists with the widest government employment was Lovelyn Elaine Eustice.50 Eustice was born on 6 August 1894 in Southampton, daughter of John Eustice,... 

Technical colleges also employed women chemists as Lecturers. Peggy Lunam32 attended Armstrong College, where she was Student Treasurer of the Bedson (Chemistry) Club from 1929 to 1930. She earned a B.Sc. (Durham) in 1930 and an M.Sc. (Durham) in 1932. In 1935, she was a part-time Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Chemistry at Constantine College, Middlesbrough. 

With regard to the prospects of scientifically trained women after the [First World] war my experience has led me to the conclusion that there will be practically no scope for them in industry. There is, and will continue to be for some time, a far larger supply of male Chemists than will be needed. Under such circumstances women with the same qualifications will stand the poorest chances of employment. As teachers and lecturers there is still some demand for such women, but in industry there is next to none. I have been led to this conclusion by my experience in endeavouring to obtain a fresh post myself. I do not stand alone in my opinion, Mr. Pilcher, the Registrar of the Institute of Chemistry whom I consulted on the subject told me exactly the same things as I learnt later from my own experience.35... 

The Second World War forced companies that, until then, had refused to employ women chemists into hiring them. Among these companies were Courtaulds, the polymer company, and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which the Journal of Careers singled out for special criticism ... 

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