Words from the WISE: investigating women in science, 1830-2012

'Words from the WISE: women in science 1830-2012' is a research network which aims to stimulate cross-disciplinary (both academic and non-academic) debate of the position of women in science today. Although WISE usually refers to Women in Science and Engineering, in the context of this project we also include technology and mathematics (which with Science and Engineering make up the STEM subjects) and medicine.

The network will be composed of thirty or so participants who can bring a wide breadth of knowledge to the table, be they academic historians interested in how women first broke into the male enclave of science, to sociologists and policy makers concerned that women scientists still have a long way to go to achieve parity in representation at all levels. The aim is to generate new ideas concerning the application of an historical understanding of female scientists' experience of science, particularly through learned societies, to contemporary imbalances, with regard to participation of women in science, persistence in scientific careers and achievement.

The network will examine what might be learned through a better understanding of female scientists' historical interactions with learned societies, such as the Royal Society and Royal Institution, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute for Engineering and Technology, or the Royal College of Physicians, to name a few. It is, after all, through these prestigious organisations that the fruits of imagination, argument, creativity, discovery and curiosity have largely been published, celebrated and rewarded, yet the history of women's interaction with them has not been fully explored and documented.

Our proposed network will bring participants together to discuss the theme from several perspectives, in a series of UK-based workshops. Participants will bring expertise in historical and archival research, the use of biographical and autobiographical sources (including oral history), and social science research methods. By sharing cross disciplinary methodologies we will explore what each group might learn from the other in a wider history of how gender affects authority, expertise, trust and engagement in science. A two-day conference is planned, to accumulate and share views from international participants to enable a cross-border and cross-cultural exchange of ideas.

The international perspective of this programme is reflected in the presence of scholars from Europe and the United States on the project's steering committee.

The key scientific figures, institutions and research questions identified during the network debates will form the basis of a large scale archival research proposal. If the position of women in science is to be improved (and current experience suggests that large pools of talent are being lost to science with a concomitant effect on the competitiveness of the British economy), such research is essential to understanding why it is happening and how to correct it.

The project will also produce more immediate outcomes which will have an impact on archival policies of the learned societies which participate, and a number of other short term outcomes. These are discussed in detail in the Impact Summary.

This is a collaborative project led by Kingston University with support from The Royal Society, The Rothschild Archive, London and Liverpool University. Individuals from a range of educational, public and professional institutions have already agreed to participate in the management of the project and in the network itself.

The proposed research network will produce a series of short and longer-term benefits for a diverse range of groups.

The network will bring together a group of contributors from a variety of disciplines (history, branches of science, engineering and technology, sociology and business), including early researchers and students, to exchange ideas and experiences of working on the subject of gender in science, be it from an historical or contemporary perspective. This will produce a fertile environment in which a vibrant exchange of ideas and methodologies can be moulded to develop novel approaches to research.

One group of beneficiaries will be the archivists at the Learned Societies. In an initial conversation, the archivist at the Royal College of Physicians commented, 'We have very little in our collections which is accessible via gender based searches ... the archives are very functionally organised ... deep research would be needed to pull out female personalities.' Discussions which take place through the network will stimulate archivists to ask what material their archives hold on the interactions of female scientists with their societies. Often this material is overlooked in cataloguing and difficult to find (as the quote above illustrates), frequently as a result of collection and cataloguing policies established years ago. The Learned Societies will discover from historians and policy makers the types of data needed to investigate the participation of women in science, helping to develop acquisition and cataloguing policies for the future, and revising existing catalogues. In doing so, they will be able to encourage more rigorous and efficient use of their archives by new groups of users.

Policy makers, fully aware of the great loss to British competitiveness which results from the low participation and persistence of women in scientific activities, are now looking to history to provide answers. The Athena Survey of Women in Science Engineering and Technology (ASSET) is generating contemporary data on participation of women in the sciences, but has identified a need for historical data to contextualise the findings. By engaging with the network as it develops plans for a large scale historical research project, policy makers will be able to influence the shape and form of that project, ensuring that it generates data appropriate to their needs. This data will feed into the datasets collected during the Athena surveys, thus supporting and informing policies designed to redress the loss to the British economy which results from poor representation of women in science training and poor persistence in work.

One obstacle to increasing female participation in science is the prevalent, socially-constructed idea of science as a male activity: this view is already entrenched when students are making important subject choices at secondary school. By engaging with groups such as WiSENET, this project will investigate how historical material (such as biographies of successful female scientists and female careers) can be used within schools to break down this obstacle to female participation in science. The project will also build contacts within further/higher education to encourage students and their teachers to think positively about employability post higher education, using examples of successful career paths and successful women scientists.