“A few years later,in a country still seething over the Dreyfus Affair(when the French army fabricated evidence of spying against a jewish officer named Dreyfus and convicted him of treason), the prestigious French Academy of Sciences rejected Marie for admission for being a woman( which was true)and a suspected Jew(which wasn’t)”
Women have been oppressed for many centuries. Especially in specific fields of study. One of those being Science, which has always been a male dominated field. This is because, for years, women were oppressed and were not encouraged to go to school. A woman's place, at this time, was in the home with the role of caring for children. Women were also not commonly educated because it was harder for them to be taken seriously. As time moved on, however, more women went against the status quo and began pushing out of their designated roles and moving into more male-dominated fields, such as science. When women entered the science field, they were under an immense amount of pressure and were often discouraged to continue. Some even had to go to insane measures to be able to publish their work.
Clara Immerwahr is a prime example of a woman who was oppressed and forced to follow social norms. During Immerwahr’s early life, she lived on on a farm as the youngest of four. In 1880, she lost her mother to cancer which caused the family to split. Her and her father moved elsewhere and her sister, Elli, and her husband stayed on the farm. Immerwahr eventually became a German chemist who graduated from the University of Breslau. She was the first woman to graduate with a Ph.D from the university. She later married Fritz Haber, a German-born chemist. Haber received a Nobel- Peace Prize for his Haber-Bosch process, which is still used for the large synthesis of things like fertilizer and explosives today. When Immerwahr married Haber, she faced the threat of being forced to give up conducting research of her own because, as a woman, the societal norms were to stay home and not allow for women to work. Instead, Immerwahr did not give up her work and decided to contribute to her husband's work without being recognized for it. Immerwahr later committed suicide, due to her dissatisfaction with her life that is shown in the quote at the beginning of the article.
Another woman who was oppressed in science was Marie Curie She applied to go to the very prestigious French Academy of Science and was rejected. This is ironic because, a year later, she was given the Nobel-Peace Prize, making her the first woman to be awarded this honor and the only person to be awarded twice in two different subjects. Curie’s early life consisted of many hardships, her family lost all their property when her parents participated in the Polish national uprisings. She was exposed to science her whole life resulting in her continued interest of the field. She eventually achieved the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physics in 1903 and 1911. Curie contributed many different works of science and broke many barriers for women. Marie was the first woman professor at the university of paris, the first woman to win a nobel prize, and the first woman to be greatly acknowledged in the field of science as a whole.
Women in science have been oppressed throughout history. Still, despite their many setbacks, the contribution women like Marie Curie and Clara Immerwahr have made will always remain very significant to the field of science.
