Beacon Broadside

by Renée Bergland

When I started my book on the nineteenth-century scientist Maria Mitchell, I expected to find that she had triumphed against impossible odds.  “Bias and Barriers” against women’s achievement in the science are pretty intense in the twenty-first century, and I presumed that the obstacles must have been much harsher nearly two hundred years ago. My presumptions were bolstered by earlier accounts of Mitchell that tended to emphasize her exceptional qualities and minimize the encouragement she received from her family and her community. The great surprise for me was that Mitchell faced relatively little bias. In her time, girls were thought of as naturally scientific—and science itself was considered a feminine pastime.

The shocks of history can be hard to parse. On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that there was a time (not that long ago) when a girl like the young Maria Mitchell grew up believing that there was nothing preventing her from achieving scientific greatness. On the other hand, it’s a bit discouraging to realize that when I was born in New York City in the late twentieth century, the odds were worse for girls in astronomy than they had been when Mitchell was born on Nantucket more than a hundred and fifty years before. To add to the depression factor, I worried that uncovering Mitchell’s advantages might make her achievements seem less impressive.

I’ve always liked stories of triumph against all odds.  In fact, I
think I may make them up for myself sometimes without even realizing
it. When I visited Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthplace in Atlanta, I
was disappointed by the grandeur of the big, yellow Victorian house
where he had grown up.  Unconsciously, I guess I imagined King’s
boyhood as desperately poor, almost (but not quite) impossible for him
to overcome. When I learned that his father and grandfather were
college-educated men, prominent preachers and community leaders, I felt
a little let down. Knowing absolutely nothing about King’s background,
I’d hazily imagined that he was an anomaly whose oratorical gifts
descended on him out of the blue. It had never occurred to me that he
might have grown up in a houseful of orators.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s privileges, like Maria Mitchell’s, tend to
diminish our sense of their accomplishments. The child who is
carefully nurtured and encouraged to be great will never seem as much
of a hero as the one who’s kicked in the teeth by fate, and who becomes
great anyway.

But the more I think about this, the more suspicious I become. There’s a problem with stories of triumph against all odds. As long as
we cling to the belief that truly great and heroic figures don’t need
encouragement or good opportunities, we’re giving our society
permission not to create opportunities. The realization that Mitchell
was encouraged by her family and by a community that was willing to
support her efforts to achieve scientific greatness shouldn’t be
depressing at all. To the contrary, it should push us to create
similar opportunities today. Many organizations are already hard at
work on such initiatives, for schoolgirls and for young
professionals. And they are meeting with success. Encouragement works.

Creating miraculous supergeniuses who could overcome all obstacles
would be near impossible.  It’s much easier to change the odds by
creating educational opportunities for girls and minorities, and
fostering networks that support and encourage women and students of
color to become scientists.  Throughout her career, Mitchell stressed
the importance of women being hired for professional jobs, paid fairly,
and encouraged rather than discouraged. Regarding the proportion of
women faculty, she once asked, “Do you know of any case in which a
boy’s college has offered a professorship to a woman? Until you do, it
is absurd to say that the highest learning is within the reach of
women.” Regarding pay, one of Mitchell’s students, Anna Brackett
commented, “The indignant protest” with which she “called for an equal
salary, was not a personal affair. She flamed out on behalf of all
women, and of abstract justice.” As for efforts to encourage women, the
New York Times reported in 1881, “The question of equality of the sexes
is one that does not naturally disturb such a woman. She merely says if
women are regarded as equals, in mental capacity, they should have
equal advantages, and if considered inferior, they should be given
better chances.” Her words hold true today, too.  Women need better
chances because, as Mitchell put it, “Science needs women.”

Mitchell’s 1875 remark could have served as an epigraph for the 2007
American Academy of Science report “Beyond Bias and Barriers,” which
concluded, “The United States can no longer afford the underperformance
of our academic institutions in attracting the best and the brightest
minds to the science and engineering enterprise…It is essential that
our academic institutions promote the educational and professional
success of all people without regard for sex, race or ethnicity.”

Ultimately, I think it’s quite encouraging to realize that we can do
this.  We can build supportive and encouraging schools, colleges and
professional workplaces that welcome everybody to science.  It won’t be
a miracle when more women and minorities become scientists—but perhaps
it will be something better.

Renée Bergland teaches English and Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons
College and holds a research appointment in Women’s and Gender Studies
at Harvard. President of the New England American Studies Association
and a former Fulbright scholar, she received a "We the People" grant
from the NEH for her work on Maria Mitchell. She is author of Maria
Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American
Romantics, The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects,
and co-editor (with Gary Williams) of Philosophies of Sex: Critical
Essays on the Hermaphrodite. She has also written for the Boston Globe,
L.A. Times, and Washington Post.

You may also enjoy reading Helen Deese on Caroline Healey Dall and Carl Elliott on Human Guinea Pigs.