The Woman Super-Chemist as Negative

The Woman Super-Chemist as Negative Role Model 

Some women chemists stood out as exemplars, but, in a way, they served as a discouragement. Margaret Rossiter described the effect of Marie Curie s visit to the United States as raising the bar for women chemists to unattainable levels  

The same phenomenon occurred in Britain. Ida Smedley (see Chap. 2) was used as a benchmark for women applicants for the Position of Reader in Chemistry at the King s College of Household and Social Science (see Chap. 3) ... it would be of great value to the Department to secure the services of a woman with the high scientific standing and personality of Dr. Ida [Smedley] Maclean. 17 

Smedley was not the only one to be chosen as the expectation for a woman chemist or biochemist. A 1929 article in the Journal of Careers18 held up Martha Whiteley (Chap. 3) as a role model while an article in the same journal in 193819 extolled Ida Smedley (Chap. 2), Marjory Stephenson (Chap. 8), Katherine Coward (see below), and particularly Dorothy Jordan Lloyd (Chap. 8) as the heights of careers to which women chemists and biochemists could aspire — but only those who were exceptional. 

During the interwar years, as we have mentioned above, teaching was the most common career for women science graduates.21 Dyhouse commented Teaching, then, be it a vocation, the only realistic option or a last resort, remained the fate of the majority of women graduates in this period [pre-1939]. 22 By the 1930s, there were more university women graduates than 

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