Creating Complicated Lives
Women and Science at English-Canadian Universities, 1880-1980
Description
Why have Canadian women scientists been written out of the historical record? Who were they? What did they accomplish? What were their life paths? These are some of the questions answered in this authoritative work. Over decades of research, Marianne Ainley identified, tracked down, and interviewed surviving scientists. Creating Complicated Lives weaves the lives and work of these pioneers with the author's own experiences as an immigrant scientific technician and later a feminist historian. Ainley argues that we must look at the lives of women scientists through a new historical lens that takes into account both the advances of science and concurrent debates about the advancement of women. Rather than having linear career trajectories, many women shifted fields, coped with discrimination, and endeavoured to find niches in which they could make significant contributions. Never before has there been a survey of the lives and work of early Canadian women scientists. This nuanced study brings their stories to light, comparing, contrasting, and interpreting their very complicated lives.
Reviews
“It offers a comprehensive treasury of valuable biographical information, accompanied by many analytical insights, for anyone in¬terested in the history of women in science.” Historical Studies in Education
“Creating Complicated Lives provides an essential historical backdrop to the current debates about ‘‘women and science.’’ It is my hope that a new generation of scholars will pick up this research agenda and contribute to the expansion of the history of women scientists in Canada, a field to which the name of Marianne G. Ainley is inextricably linked.” Canadian Historical Review