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Women in Science: Then and Now
“Gornick’s portraits demonstrate the driving force behind science.”— The Philadelphia Inquirer “Women in science stir the contemporary imagination. In their hyphenated identity is captured the pain and excitement of a culture struggling to mature.”— The Washington Post In this newly revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed writer and journalist Vivian Gornick interviews famous and lesser-known scientists, compares their experiences then and now, and shows that, although not much has changed in the world of science, what is different is women’s expectations that they can and will succeed. Everything from the disparaging comments by Harvard’s then-president to government reports and media coverage has focused on the ways in which women supposedly can’t do science. Gornick’s original interviews show how deep and severe discrimination against women was back then in all scientific fields. Her new interviews, with some of the same women she spoke to twenty-five years ago, provide a fresh description of the hard times and great successes these women have experienced.
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2009
6 people are currently reading
419 people want to read
About the author
Vivian Gornick
44 books1,145 followersVivian Gornick is the author of, among other books, the acclaimed memoir Fierce Attachments and three essay collections: The End of the Novel of Love, Approaching Eye Level, and, most recently, The Men in My Life. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 13, 2021
I know Gornick mostly because of people citing her book “The Romance of American Communism”. I recall Jodi Dean borrowed a story from Gornick in “Crowds and Party”. Anyway, this book was part of my concerted effort to start moving my reading towards STS in anticipation of starting school again in September. A book written by a ‘red diaper baby’ (who grew up in a communist family), that was focused on the intersection of gender and science seemed like quite the coalescence of themes.
I think one of the best things about this book is the wide spectrum of women Gornick interviews, and not all of them are people who you might sympathize with. When I say wide spectrum, I am sceptical if any of them were not white. I believe the interviewees largely had their identities hidden because they were revealing sensitive and very critical perspectives on academic institutions that could create scandal put their job or career advancement at risk. But there was a spectrum of women, some who were ruthless and critical of other women scientists who wanted to pursue a family life in addition to their scientific careers. And others who felt like they could be scientists without making science the fulcrum of their life. Some women scientists were elitist and looked down upon other women scientists from non-Ivy League schools. Some were laser-focused on the competition and outdoing other scientists, and others who were focused on collaboration and working to advance the cause of other women scientists. Gornick interviewed radicals and fellow travellers on the one hand, and other women scientists who were very sceptical about the women’s movement and radical politics.
All Gornick’s subjects were brilliant and fascinating people. Many came to see the importance of the women’s movement in advancing the place of women in science and the failure of scientific institutions themselves to create this change. All women faced tremendous difficulties, obstacles, and ceaseless condescension in their nearly impossible task of making a place for themselves in scientific academia. All were driven, curious, and remarkable people. Most worked very hard, though some were just brilliant and tried to be moderate about their workload. Some had supportive partners, most did not. Some of their partners felt threatened by their academic success.
One of the most disturbing things was how commonplace it was for male science professors to date and then marry one of their grad students. After marriage it was expected for these women to stop their scientific studies and basically become the male professor’s housewife or assistant. Women with the same academic qualifications as their fellow male scientists were almost never given professorships and research positions but were relegated to roles like lab technicians. They were the backbone of countless scientific experiments and studies. They were the ones that made the labs tick, often outperformed their male scientists, but weren’t given the time of day for anything.
It’s hard to imagine that Gornick was writing only a number of decades ago. Things have changed quite a lot since then, but I am very positive women and those of other oppressed gender categories on average face far more obstacles in STEM then cis-men. I was an engineering student and I still saw sexism while in school, sometimes very explicitly. I recall reading Ivan Coyote’s experiences as an electrician student having her toolbox urinated on by another male student. My dad early on in his life was an aircraft maintenance technician and saw other women in his field treated the exact same way. He saw one break down completely. I’m sure shit like this is still happening. There are lots of chauvinistic and misogynistic ideologies floating around now and it’s scary. All that being said, I’m hopeful for the future. I think science has flourished tremendously in the past few decades because we are moving closer and closer to a world where the whole sky is being held up high, and the light is starting to radiate in more and more.
I think one of the best things about this book is the wide spectrum of women Gornick interviews, and not all of them are people who you might sympathize with. When I say wide spectrum, I am sceptical if any of them were not white. I believe the interviewees largely had their identities hidden because they were revealing sensitive and very critical perspectives on academic institutions that could create scandal put their job or career advancement at risk. But there was a spectrum of women, some who were ruthless and critical of other women scientists who wanted to pursue a family life in addition to their scientific careers. And others who felt like they could be scientists without making science the fulcrum of their life. Some women scientists were elitist and looked down upon other women scientists from non-Ivy League schools. Some were laser-focused on the competition and outdoing other scientists, and others who were focused on collaboration and working to advance the cause of other women scientists. Gornick interviewed radicals and fellow travellers on the one hand, and other women scientists who were very sceptical about the women’s movement and radical politics.
All Gornick’s subjects were brilliant and fascinating people. Many came to see the importance of the women’s movement in advancing the place of women in science and the failure of scientific institutions themselves to create this change. All women faced tremendous difficulties, obstacles, and ceaseless condescension in their nearly impossible task of making a place for themselves in scientific academia. All were driven, curious, and remarkable people. Most worked very hard, though some were just brilliant and tried to be moderate about their workload. Some had supportive partners, most did not. Some of their partners felt threatened by their academic success.
One of the most disturbing things was how commonplace it was for male science professors to date and then marry one of their grad students. After marriage it was expected for these women to stop their scientific studies and basically become the male professor’s housewife or assistant. Women with the same academic qualifications as their fellow male scientists were almost never given professorships and research positions but were relegated to roles like lab technicians. They were the backbone of countless scientific experiments and studies. They were the ones that made the labs tick, often outperformed their male scientists, but weren’t given the time of day for anything.
It’s hard to imagine that Gornick was writing only a number of decades ago. Things have changed quite a lot since then, but I am very positive women and those of other oppressed gender categories on average face far more obstacles in STEM then cis-men. I was an engineering student and I still saw sexism while in school, sometimes very explicitly. I recall reading Ivan Coyote’s experiences as an electrician student having her toolbox urinated on by another male student. My dad early on in his life was an aircraft maintenance technician and saw other women in his field treated the exact same way. He saw one break down completely. I’m sure shit like this is still happening. There are lots of chauvinistic and misogynistic ideologies floating around now and it’s scary. All that being said, I’m hopeful for the future. I think science has flourished tremendously in the past few decades because we are moving closer and closer to a world where the whole sky is being held up high, and the light is starting to radiate in more and more.
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August 1, 2013Women in Science, Then and Now: 25th Anniversary Edition, by Vivian Gornick, Narrated by Madelyn Buzzard, Produced by Audible Inc., Downloaded from audible.com.
For some reason I find the narrator’s voice annoying, overly strident, in this book, although I have liked her in other books. In this one Vivian Gornick revisits in 2006 a subject she first studied in 1980, what happens to women who choose the profession of science? In 1980, there weren’t many women who chose to be scientists, and many of them felt they had to choose between being a scientist and having any other life. The women faced isolation, denial of their talents or their findings, lower pay, or no pay if they were married to a scientist and helped with his work, and many spent 20 years before being able to prove their theories because of so little support. The women were fascinating-all of them. In 2006, she re-visited the subject, interviewing women who were still alive that she had interviewed before to find out if their views had changed, and also interviewing women of the next generation. She found that women are more likely to take the chance now of combining a family and work, and there are more women in science these days. But the difference between how they’re treated, paid and respected is still fairly stark. A very interesting book.
For some reason I find the narrator’s voice annoying, overly strident, in this book, although I have liked her in other books. In this one Vivian Gornick revisits in 2006 a subject she first studied in 1980, what happens to women who choose the profession of science? In 1980, there weren’t many women who chose to be scientists, and many of them felt they had to choose between being a scientist and having any other life. The women faced isolation, denial of their talents or their findings, lower pay, or no pay if they were married to a scientist and helped with his work, and many spent 20 years before being able to prove their theories because of so little support. The women were fascinating-all of them. In 2006, she re-visited the subject, interviewing women who were still alive that she had interviewed before to find out if their views had changed, and also interviewing women of the next generation. She found that women are more likely to take the chance now of combining a family and work, and there are more women in science these days. But the difference between how they’re treated, paid and respected is still fairly stark. A very interesting book.
Read
August 13, 2015I found this slim read interesting for the most part; it's always informative to hear other women's perspectives, and Gornick's interpretation of the psychology of science and discovery is fascinating. However, I was disappointed that Gornick did not incorporate more modern and/or comparative material into her 25th anniversary book. Where did all the women who she interviewed in 1980 end up? Most of the book is spent rehashing what Gornick learned in 1980, and the parts that do deal with 2008 are mostly polly-anna in their optimism -- Gornick does not seem to adequately grasp that many of the problems that women dealt with in 2008 still indeed exist. Issues with work/life balance have not evaporated in the last 28 years as Gornick implies. What Gornick really got right was pointing out the research associate-ship problem that female scientists face: their husbands get professorships and they get research associate-ships. This is still absolutely the case today, and it is truly shameful. In my opinion as a feminist-scientist, it's essential that female scientists not "follow" their spouses but establish their own careers so as to prove that they are not reliant on their spouse to conduct good science, even if it means living apart for awhile.
October 24, 2021
I listened to the unabridged 6-hour audio version of this title (read by Madelyn Buzzard, Tantor Audio, 2021).
Having been written by a self-avowed feminist and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY, this book rubs some men the wrong way. It is the 25th-anniversary 2009 edition of a classic. For the updated edition, Gornick, an acclaimed journalist, added interviews with younger women scientists and follow-up stories on some of the women whose scientific work and life stories were included in the original 1983 edition, subtitled "Portraits from a World in Transition."
Not much has changed in the science arena over the past few decades. Many men in positions of power still think that women are ill-suited to doing science and that they will never make great scientists, even if they achieve at some level, but the heightened expectation by women that they can and will succeed is beginning to make a difference.
The book is filled with stories of women who sacrificed, willingly or due to family expectations and societal pressure, their own careers to support their husbands'. Many women with PhDs accepted research associateships in lieu of pursuing tenure-track faculty positions, as they followed their husbands from one institution to another. Quite a few women stayed at what are viewed as temporary, stepping-stone positions for their entire careers.
Besides not being hired into positions for which they were obviously qualified, women were, and, to some extent, still are, constantly bombarded with opinions about their ill fit to doing science. Even when they contributed to scientific research, they seldom received proper credit and, even worse, saw their ideas appropriated by male bosses/colleagues. In Nobel Prizes as well as in lesser honors, women are utterly under-represented. Until 2020, only 58 of the 934 Nobel honorees were women, and the fraction of women was even smaller in the sciences. The recently-announced 2021 Nobel Prizes, all but one-half of one going to men, did not improve the situation.
See the chart in my tweet of October 14, 2021:
https://twitter.com/BehroozParhami/st...
I consider this eye-opening book a great read for both women and men.
Having been written by a self-avowed feminist and published by The Feminist Press at CUNY, this book rubs some men the wrong way. It is the 25th-anniversary 2009 edition of a classic. For the updated edition, Gornick, an acclaimed journalist, added interviews with younger women scientists and follow-up stories on some of the women whose scientific work and life stories were included in the original 1983 edition, subtitled "Portraits from a World in Transition."
Not much has changed in the science arena over the past few decades. Many men in positions of power still think that women are ill-suited to doing science and that they will never make great scientists, even if they achieve at some level, but the heightened expectation by women that they can and will succeed is beginning to make a difference.
The book is filled with stories of women who sacrificed, willingly or due to family expectations and societal pressure, their own careers to support their husbands'. Many women with PhDs accepted research associateships in lieu of pursuing tenure-track faculty positions, as they followed their husbands from one institution to another. Quite a few women stayed at what are viewed as temporary, stepping-stone positions for their entire careers.
Besides not being hired into positions for which they were obviously qualified, women were, and, to some extent, still are, constantly bombarded with opinions about their ill fit to doing science. Even when they contributed to scientific research, they seldom received proper credit and, even worse, saw their ideas appropriated by male bosses/colleagues. In Nobel Prizes as well as in lesser honors, women are utterly under-represented. Until 2020, only 58 of the 934 Nobel honorees were women, and the fraction of women was even smaller in the sciences. The recently-announced 2021 Nobel Prizes, all but one-half of one going to men, did not improve the situation.
See the chart in my tweet of October 14, 2021:
https://twitter.com/BehroozParhami/st...
I consider this eye-opening book a great read for both women and men.
July 20, 2025
I'll read anything by Vivian Gornick. There are many passages that romanticize the allure and practice of science, but rather than obscure the meaning of this book, it organizes it. Gornick searches for evidence of romance, because romance dedicates a person to a difficult task, and romance organizes the book's contents: first we see a collection of women attracted to and actualized by science, and then we see these women struggling for autonomy and advancement in the context of the science profession, and then also adapting, reflecting, and shaping their fields in administrative or advising capacities, with political consciousness. This is the sexual-to-social arc: first the attraction, then the dedication & struggle, and then the socialization and politicization of that earlier attraction. Gornick always rejects the premise that romance obscures or antagonizes reality, and I'm always convinced she's right.
This book (originally written in the 1980s, and then re-issued in 2008 with several addenda) aged very well. I thought I'd be reading something dated, but that was far from true--it felt very relevant to my own life in 2025, which directly inherits the scientific and feminist progress tracked in this book. I was even surprised to find a good treatment of the wider context for the bloom of scientific research that took place in the latter half of the last century. Gornick really sets me up to be able to see my own life mapped and prophesized by this book--both my private interiority and my broader social context. I did long to be a scientist and an all-around higher-achieving and more focused and more lucky human being for like the first 80% of the book, but the last bit kind of affirmed where I am now: just a person among many in whose "hyphenated identity are captured the pain and excitement of a culture struggling to mature."
This book (originally written in the 1980s, and then re-issued in 2008 with several addenda) aged very well. I thought I'd be reading something dated, but that was far from true--it felt very relevant to my own life in 2025, which directly inherits the scientific and feminist progress tracked in this book. I was even surprised to find a good treatment of the wider context for the bloom of scientific research that took place in the latter half of the last century. Gornick really sets me up to be able to see my own life mapped and prophesized by this book--both my private interiority and my broader social context. I did long to be a scientist and an all-around higher-achieving and more focused and more lucky human being for like the first 80% of the book, but the last bit kind of affirmed where I am now: just a person among many in whose "hyphenated identity are captured the pain and excitement of a culture struggling to mature."
August 21, 2020
I was looking for a biographical book on women in science history, but found this instead. I don't blame the book for that since I enjoyed it. Vivian Gornick's Women in Science is a soft sociological examination of the inequalities women face in science, which doesn't conflict much with the scholarly articles I've read on similar issues. Women in Science is mostly qualitative research, interviews, though Gornick does sprinkle in statistics from time to time.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the issues women face in science. Gornick is a competent and engaging writer, and I found her descriptions of some of her interviewees to be almost poetic. If you are looking for something more biographical, I might recommend Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the issues women face in science. Gornick is a competent and engaging writer, and I found her descriptions of some of her interviewees to be almost poetic. If you are looking for something more biographical, I might recommend Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky.
February 11, 2024
Disappointed in this one. I thought the author was going to deep dive into some of these women's lives and show how they overcame the patriarchy with the science world. Instead it was more a shallow approach and blanket statements.
October 27, 2024
More interesting than brief biographies of the famous women in the history of science, each of them by definition exceptions to the rules, Gornick interviews working and retired women who did the grunt work of pushing up through the ranks of research and teaching advanced classes.
couldn-t-finish
August 9, 2021The writing style isn’t working for me, or maybe I have lost interest in the topic after months of study.
April 21, 2025
Audiobook
September 8, 2021
I guess this book is a bit dated but women still encounter many obstacles in science. And, in any caee, I feel the urge to read everything that Gornick ever wrote. I am impressed by her ability to write so well in so many genres. In this case, I just admire her ability to use dozens of interviews to create a coherent picture of a large topic: women in science. I was more impressed with her book on communism but it’s admirable than Gornick took on a topic she didn’t know much about before she set out.
May 30, 2009
From finding the effects of consciousness on perception to puzzling at the longevity of giant cacti, the women in Vivian Qornick's book take on flesh through the stories of their successes and their failures. There is a great sense of pain conveyed: women who have been left for affairs with grad student;, others who have been told from the start that they shouldn't aspire to make contributions to their field, but rather that they should be readying themselves to marry and assist their male grad student counterparts...
But it's not all loss and stymied ambition - the first third of the book is more about the contributions that women have made; in both tangible and intangible ways, they are changing the way the scientific community operates - they diversify it, challenge the competitive norms. They've made advances in research by objecting to commonly held assumptions: cognition is reductive; the brain and endocrine system are separate - wrong and wrong again.
I'll remember this book for the seeming ignorance of many of the male figures - husbands who asked their wives to not come in the lab anymore because the competitive work world would ruin their marriage. (It was that very denial which was ruining the self-respect of these women.)
It's also been good to hear the voices of the women themselves; the long quotes are much appreciated, but Gornick doesn't always color her subjects in the most sensitive light; she ends up taking some liberties that maybe compromise the trust of her subjects. In this light, Abbie Morris has become for her the otherwise crazy lady of the lab, otherwise because when put to task she is on the mark and eloquent: they talk of the male system and she waxes on about the exclusive men's club and her CalTech credentials seemingly being passed over (she was first in class). But when she has to answer more personally, apparently her eyes fill with that supposed "crazy lady glint". Gornick reads into another subject's head by telling of her hidden want for a man with power, one who would love her but be helpless to understand her proficiency, one who would be baffled in a way utterly pleasurable to the other.
Please, can we not pass too much judgment here? The shame is that the point itself wasn't actually all that illustrative. Well, oh well; it's a good book on the whole - a portrait of women, but a portrait of science as well - the field, if you can put a face on that, and I think she does.
But it's not all loss and stymied ambition - the first third of the book is more about the contributions that women have made; in both tangible and intangible ways, they are changing the way the scientific community operates - they diversify it, challenge the competitive norms. They've made advances in research by objecting to commonly held assumptions: cognition is reductive; the brain and endocrine system are separate - wrong and wrong again.
I'll remember this book for the seeming ignorance of many of the male figures - husbands who asked their wives to not come in the lab anymore because the competitive work world would ruin their marriage. (It was that very denial which was ruining the self-respect of these women.)
It's also been good to hear the voices of the women themselves; the long quotes are much appreciated, but Gornick doesn't always color her subjects in the most sensitive light; she ends up taking some liberties that maybe compromise the trust of her subjects. In this light, Abbie Morris has become for her the otherwise crazy lady of the lab, otherwise because when put to task she is on the mark and eloquent: they talk of the male system and she waxes on about the exclusive men's club and her CalTech credentials seemingly being passed over (she was first in class). But when she has to answer more personally, apparently her eyes fill with that supposed "crazy lady glint". Gornick reads into another subject's head by telling of her hidden want for a man with power, one who would love her but be helpless to understand her proficiency, one who would be baffled in a way utterly pleasurable to the other.
Please, can we not pass too much judgment here? The shame is that the point itself wasn't actually all that illustrative. Well, oh well; it's a good book on the whole - a portrait of women, but a portrait of science as well - the field, if you can put a face on that, and I think she does.
January 19, 2013
A little judgmental and preachy at times. I would have preferred a first-hand insider perspective, but the stories are nice. Worth picking up.
October 21, 2015
I've been reading this on and off for months - non-circulating library copy. V good. About women in science in the USA but quite a bit could be generalised I expect.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews