Rewiew by Beverly Boutilier

Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley, ed.
Montreal, Vehicule Press, 1990

The relationship of women to science and technology is a relatively uncharted territory within feminist historical and pedagogical scholarship in Canada. The publication of Despite the Odds: Essays on Canadian Women and Science is thus a welcome addition to Canadian women's history and the history of science alike.

While the book's subtitle promises a wider range of concerns, the majority of essayists in this volume confine their attention to either the personal and professional constraints imposed upon women in science or the relationship of women to science as the consumers and users of technologies such as photography, household electricity, and computers, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A sense of innovation and discovery pervades this anthology. Although the volume was originally conceived as a antidote for the lack of published reading materials for post-secondary courses about women, science and technology, its significance extends beyond its utility as a text. As editor Ainley notes, "publications on Canadian women in science and technology have been scarce, widely dispersed, and often published in obscure, hard-to-obtain, specialist journals" (p.18).

The danger of such scholarly isolation, as generation of "exceptional women" have understood, is that the experiences of individual women become particularized. As a result, women's collective achievement within non-traditional fields and the systemic patterns of discrimination confronted by them remain obscure. The collective and individual portraits of women in science assembled here by Ainley will help Canadian scholars compare and assess the experiences of Canadian women in science as a group.

Ainley divides the twenty-four papers that make up the collection into three sections: historical studies, biographical studies, and contemporary concerns. Although methodologically distinct, the essays in each section reveal a common concern with women elites within the Anglophone scientific community of central Canada, the career patterns of these women scientists, the impact of the institutionalization of science and technology on them (and, to a lesser extent, on Canadian women generally), and the generational experiences of women in science. Although the latter is only an implicit concern of this anthology, read as a whole the essays in Despite the Odds constitute a useful study of how, since the early nineteenth century when elite British women naturalists pursued their inquiries alongside equally untrained elite men, successive generations of Canadian women have faced and sometimes overcome the recurring problem of sexual discrimination within scientific institutions.

As might be expected, this survey of generations is both empowering and frustrating. The historical and biographical essays show that while some women have successfully scaled the scientific hierarchy to claim a place for their sex in science, the persistent designation of science as "male" and "unfeminine" continues to undermine the professional and pedagogical footing of contemporary women contemplating or pursuing careers in science. The prevalence of what Betty Collis describes as the "We can, I can't" attitude among young women towards their technological and scientific abilities is particularly disheartening (pp.280-82).

The historical studies and biographical sketches of the first two sections of the book examine the careers of women in fields as various as the natural and physical sciences, pharmacy, sociology, psychology, medicine, advertising, household science, and photography.