October 20, 2020: Histories of Women in Science

Panel: Tracing Historical Pathways of Women into STEM

This panel features talks by three historians who have helped define the history of women in STEM as a field of research. Professor Sally Kohlstedt will open the session by sketching how historians uncovered the lives and work of individual women and patterns of their collective experience. Dr. Pamela Henson will speak about the history of women in science at the Smithsonian since the late nineteenth century, describing how they fought for full inclusion and contributed new insights. Dr. Peggy Kidwell will explore the creative ways in which women used instruments now in the mathematics education collection at the National Museum of American History to build successive generations of numerical expertise.

Panel: The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science

In this panel Dr. Shirley Malcom, Penn State Alum and Senior Advisor and Director of SEA Change at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, talks with three Smithsonian educators about her seminal 1976 report, The Double Blind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science, 44 years after its publication. In the report, Dr. Malcom and co-authors argued that the struggles to be scientists were greater for women of color than for white women or men of color. Panelists will discuss the historic, present-day, and future roles of women of color in science.

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