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Most of the money spent on invention was personal. Several women
had found employment in order to pay the costly aspects of invention
development: patenting, work with consultants, prototype building, and purchase
of business supplies. Only two loans and seven grants had been negotiated.
These women too were acutely aware of the time
spent on the inventions and of the value of that time. The estimated amount
required for an invention from idea to the marketplace is 5.6 years, calculated
according to estimates made by the women themselves. But they also indicated
that future inventions will not require so much time as a result of the
information and resource materials obtained in the training.
Conclusion
An important trend in the twentieth
century has been the relative decline of the "independent" as opposed to the
"corporate" or "institutional" inventor. Such professionalization has had a
particularly adverse affect on women. For example, as detailed by Shteir and
others, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the locus of scientific
activity was frequently the home, and women played important roles as both
practitioners and popularizes in many disciplines (5). As science became
professionalize, women were marginalized and their contributions belittled or
ignored.
Perhaps women inventor/entrepreneurs
today, often home-based, are the spiritual heirs to these "breakfast-room
scientists." They provide one model of women coping independently with
technology and hint at the type of transformation process suggested by Franklin
(6), Menzies (7), and others. In the words of one woman inventor, Deborah New:
"I went to an engineering department in Cambridge but they couldn't work on it
for me. So I decided to go ahead and learn enough electronics to do it myself.
And that's where it became a reality, on my kitchen table at home."
The Women Inventors Project is sponsored by the
Innovations Program of Employment and Immigration Canada, Science Culture
Canada and the Ontario Women's Directorate. The authors wish to thank Lisa
Avedon (Project Co-Director), Marie Le Lievre, (Office Manager) and the many
women inventors who gave generously of their time and experience. For more
information, see Resources, this issue.
Rachelle Sender Beauchamp, Ph.D., Co-Director of the
Women Inventors Project, is a biologist with a background in molecular biology,
occupational health and technology transfer. She is the co-founder of the
Canadian Association for Women in Science.
Carol Brooks, Ph.D., an educational consultant and a
partner in the London-based Quinta Consulting Group, has done extensive
research on women's learning styles. She is a founding member of the Big
Sisters of London and past Co-Chair of the National Steering Committee of CCLOW
Footnotes
- Amram, Fred. "The Innovative Women". New Scientist.
Vol. 102, 1984, pp. 10-12.
- McDaniel, Susan A, Helene Cummins and Rachelle S. Beauchamp.
"Mothers of Invention? Meshing the Roles of Inventor, Mother and Worker".
Women's Studies Int. Forum, Vol. 11, No.1, pp. 1-12, 1988.
- Colangelo, Nicholas and Barbara Kerr. "The Iowa Inventors
Project: A study of Mechanical Inventiveness". Presented at the Creativity -
A Tool of Production Conference, Iowa State University, August
28,1987.
- Brooks, C. Instructor's Handbook: Working with Female
Relational Learners in Technology and Trades Training. Ontario Ministry of
Skills Development, 1986.
- Shteir, Ann B. "A Connecting Link: Women. Popularization and
the History of Science". Resources for Feminist Research.. Vol. 15,
No.3, 1986, pp. 38-9.
- Franklin, Ursula. "Will Women Change Technology or Will
Technology Change Women?" The CRIAW Papers, No.9, 1985.
- Menzies, Heather. "Back to Grandma's Place: Democratizing
Science and Technology". Canadian Woman Studies. Vol. 5, No.4, 1984.
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