IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015 - 21

By
LEsLIE PrIvEs

Hidden History
DeS JarDinS chronicleS genDer Stereotyping

Julie Des Jardins

S

Science, technology, and engineering have obviously made substantial strides in the
last century, but the culture in which those accomplishments take place may not have
changed much at all as a result of ingrained gender stereotypes that stem from the
earliest days of when "scientist" became a profession. That's the argument made in
Julie Des Jardins' book, The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women
in Science (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2010) and the subject of talks she gives on the
topic, about which she's still asked to speak over four years after the book's publication.
"The 'women in science' problem is not a numbers problem, but a cultural one," says
Des Jardins. "Within science's culture, gender stereotyping is so thoroughly internalized
that you don't even see it. People who want to practice science make gendered choices in
order to do so. In the book, I show how that culture started and what's remarkable is that,
even though I'm talking about prior
generations, people still relate to that
cultural divide today."
This divide is illustrated through
the example of Marie Curie coming to the United States. Des Jardins
explains, "Her sponsor/benefactress,
Marie Meloney, knows that she has to
depict Curie in the press as this 'appropriate' woman, and so she paints her
as this perfect, domestic mother-ofthe-year figure who also happens to
be a scientist who wins Nobel Prizes."
Thus began the ideal of the woman
scientist so perfect both inside and
outside the lab that subsequent generations of women have found this to be
an impossible aspiration. "What happens in science is that men disqualify
women and women disqualify themselves because they think they have to
pull off this perfection in both realms
and, of course, Madame Curie was not
like that," explains Des Jardins.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MWIE.2015.2408711
Date of publication: 12 May 2015

Puzzle image licensed by graPhic stock. (curie image is Public domain.)

1942-065X/15©2015IEEE

JUNE 2015

iEEE womEn in EnginEEring magazinE

21



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015

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IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015 - Cover3
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