Rewriting the Story of Girls’ Education in STEM: Past Through Present

It was invigorating to watch this panel on the science education of girls in the United States. There was great synergy between the presentations of Kim Tolley and Natalie King. In this comment, I aim to continue that by drawing out two aphorisms that resonated with me: first, representation matters and second, science is everywhere. 
 
Both Tolley and King discussed the power of representation in science. Tolley shared an illustration from Juvenile Philosophy, an early nineteenth-century scientific textbook, depicting a white mother and her daughter doing a sink or float experiment. Tolley acknowledges the racial and class markers present in this illustration, with a carved mantel in the room and the use of a gold coin for the experiment. In this and other science textbook illustrations, girls of color “were missing.” Their absence meant that they were not represented as learners of science. In other texts like African American newspapers, however, African American girls were described as learners of science. For instance, the Colored American profiled Sarah Mapps Douglass’s female seminary in Philadelphia, where Douglass apparently taught her forty or so students mineralogy, a subfield of geology, using a hands-on approach: she had carefully selected, arranged, and labelled shells and minerals in a classroom cabinet for her students to examine. The editor of the Colored American described Douglass as possessing “a mind richly furnished with a knowledge of these sciences.”1 Though African American girls did not see themselves in science textbook illustrations, they did see in Sarah Mapps Douglass an African American woman scientist working as an educator. And even those African American children and youth who never sat in Douglass’s classroom could have read this newspaper article and gained encouragement. Douglass herself later studied at the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania; gave scientific lectures on subjects such as respiration, hemodynamics, and hygiene; and taught physiology classes at the Institute for Colored Youth.2 She must have influenced the young women whom she taught; one observer styled her a modern-day Socrates.3 Perhaps she even inspired some of her students like Rebecca Cole and Caroline Still to pursue their scientific and medical careers, though a dearth of sources make it difficult to document a direct connection. Nevertheless, as Natalie King said, “representation matters.” 
 
Tolley reminds us that, during the nineteenth century, some girls of color from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds had the opportunity to study science. Native American girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary in Oklahoma Territory took courses in botany, astronomy, and physics. In the North, some African American girls and boys studied geology, physics, and entomology at public and private schools. To add to this, I learned about an interracial female seminary, the Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary, where young African American women like Serena deGrasse and Mary Miles could study algebra, geometry, trigonometry, pure mathematics, and the natural sciences including astronomy (Figure 1).4 I then stumbled upon Serena deGrasse’s scientific drawing of a stone fruit (Figure 2). The site of this seminary in Clinton, New York boasted fruit trees, so Serena and her classmates likely blended their study of pomology, a branch of botany, with art. Mary Miles, an alum of this seminary, married African American abolitionist Henry Bibb before settling with him in Canada. There, she ran own school where she taught geography and physiology.5 Like Douglass, Bibb also practiced science by working as an educator.
 
During the audience Q&A portion of the panel, both Tolley and King declared, “science is everywhere.” In formal schools, science and mathematics should not be separate from the arts and humanities, but rather integrated. More importantly, science and math can be practiced, performed, taught, and learned outside of formal schools—perhaps at alternative sites or what Natalie King called “counterspaces” such as clubs and organizations like the Wagner Free Institute. In the nineteenth century, African American literary societies like the Phoenixonian Literary Society in New York City hosted scientific lectures that were open to the community. In February 1841, the Colored Americanadvertised white abolitionist and educator Nathaniel Southard’s lecture on astronomy, accompanied by all the requisite props including an orrery, “magic lantern and illuminated diagrams.”6 If attending a lecture were not possible, a community member could have borrowed a history, literature, or science book from the Phoenixonian Literary Society’s traveling library. 
 
What I appreciated too was the wonderful interaction between the audience and panelists. Toward the end of the Q&A, a mother posed a question about teaching science to her daughter, which made me think about the role of parents. Caroline Still, whom I mentioned earlier, became a doctor in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, but that path was a challenging one for her. It was her parents, particularly her father, the abolitionist William Still, who encouraged her. An eighteen-year-old Caroline must have shared some doubts about her mathematical abilities since her father wrote: 
 
You seem to be worried about your Mathematical studies. ‘Sphere’ or no sphere, I want you to work at it & master it.… I admit it is hard, yet, remember everything that is particularly valuable is not gained except by exertion. That you have the capacity to succeed fairly in this study I do not doubt…7
 
Whether it is the mother who sets up home scientific experiments with her daughter or the father who motivates his daughter to continue to work in order to “master” a subject, the point is that informal and formal science education for girls (and girls of color especially) is necessary and complimentary. Learning science through art, or math through cooking is not just a matter of useful knowledge, but also intellectual and character development.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1 “Editorial Correspondence [November 27, 1837],” Colored American, December 2, 1837.

2 “The Winter Lectures at the Institute for Colored Youth,” The Christian Recorder, March 30, 1861; “The Examination of the Pupils of the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth,” The Christian Recorder, May 11, 1861.

3 “Woman’s Department,” The Christian Recorder, June 27, 1878. Two scholarly books explore the work of Sarah Mapps Douglass: Britt Rusert, Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2017) and April Haynes, Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

4 “The Young Ladies’ Domestic Seminary,” Friend of Man, April 4, 1838. I discuss this seminary and African American girls’ and women’s education in my recent book, In Pursuit of Knowledge: African American Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America (New York: New York University Press, 2019).

5 “Boarding and Day School!! Mrs. H. Bibb,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, January 20, 1855.

6 “The Fourth Lecture…,” Colored American, February 13, 1841.

7 Letter from William Still to Caroline, April 30, 1866, William Still Collection, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA. http://stillfamily.library.temple.edu/stillfamily/items/show/188

It was invigorating to watch this panel on the science education of girls in the United States. There was great synergy between the presentations of Kim Tolley and Natalie King. In this comment, I aim to continue that by drawing out two aphorisms that resonated with me: first, representation matters and second, science is everywhere. 
 

In 1846, the educator Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps observed, “Females, in particular, are not expected to enter into the recesses of the temple of science.” As Phelps explained, “It is but of late that they have been encouraged to approach even its portals, and to venture a glance upon the mysteries therein.”i Although most education majors in my U.S. history classes are familiar with the early nineteenth-century educational reformer Horace Mann, few have heard of Phelps. Many students would be surprised by Dr. Kim Tolley’s research documenting the rise of “female academies” in the early nineteenth century, which provided girls with access to subjects such as botany, astronomy, physics, and chemistry. In their compelling lectures, Dr. Tolley and Dr. Natalie S. King interrogate a question that educators have been asking since at least the 1960s: “Why are there so few women in science, technology engineering, and mathematics?” Tolley and King highlight factors that hinder girls’ achievement in the sciences, including negative race and gender stereotyping, lack of opportunities for participation and employment, and lack of access to STEM subjects. Factors that facilitate young women’s participation in STEM include positive role modeling, offering specific career paths in the sciences, and providing institutional and community-based support for science education. King emphasizes the importance of helping girls to envision themselves as scientists and to maintain their hopes and dreams despite facing gendered and racialized barriers. Tolley and King’s findings support scholars’ assertions of the importance of historical role models for engaging girls in STEM. However, this begs an additional question for historians of science and medicine: “Why are there so few historical role models of women in STEM fields?”ii

 
As the scholar Patricia Fara contends, “Women have not been written out of the history of science: they have never been written in.” Fortunately, scholarship by Tolley, Jessica Linker, Susan Scott Parrish, Londa Schiebinger, and others have helped to fill the gaps in the historical record.iii Tolley’s research demonstrates that girls’ engagement in scientific education in the United States was an uneven process, beginning with significant access in the period from 1784-1850, followed by a restrictive backlash though the 1950s, and subsequent support of STEM education and careers that flowed from the 1960s Feminist Movement. Tolley’s work in the history of education makes it clear that the marginalization of women in the sciences was not inevitable. Indeed, women’s lack of confidence in the study of STEM subjects was culturally constructed, rather than inherent. Tolley notes that textbooks written by Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps and other early nineteenth-century women educators included images of girls performing hands-on experiments, which allowed young women to imagine themselves as scientists and innovators. However, these science texts privileged white middle class girls and marginalized girls of color. In her research, Tolley discovered that the Cherokee Nation schools and the Hampton Institute, which educated African American youth, included science curricula for girls in the mid-nineteenth century. Women such as the educator Charlotte Forten Grimké and the physician Eliza Ann Grier exemplify nineteenth-century African American women who surmounted barriers to higher education and medical school. Additional research and publications are needed to write women back into the history of STEM so that educators have ample resources for teaching the deep history of women in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine. 
 
Dr. Natalie King’s presentation also underscores the importance of both historical role models and contemporaneous mentors, particularly for women of color. Her exciting educational strategies engage girls with hands-on learning that facilitates their critical thinking and helps them to pursue community activism. King showcases a flexible science curriculum that can be deployed in formal educational settings, community and faith-based facilities, and home-based learning. I found it inspiring that King highlighted Dasha and Miala, students from Atlanta’s Coretta Scott King Academy, who presented themselves confidently as role models for their peers and for girls in their communities. Several studies have shown that girls whose peer groups promote their interest in science are more likely to pursue STEM classes and careers.iv Dasha and Miala might find additional encouragement from nineteenth-century role models such as Charlotte Forten Grimké and her aunt, Margaretta Forten, who recognized their Philadelphia churches and communities as sites of education, health reform, abolitionist agitation, and civil rights activism. Their friend and colleague, Sarah Mapps Douglass, who founded a school for African American girls, attended Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical College and taught her students anatomy, physiology, and personal health. Both King and Tolley’s work point to the importance of educating our young educators to include the history of women in STEM as part of science and humanities curricula.
 
A research study by Dr. Heidi Reeder and her colleagues at Boise State University confirmed the need to include women’s historical engagement in the sciences at all educational levels. The study provided a questionnaire to undergraduate students at three universities. When male and female students were asked to write down “as many famous or historically important scientists, inventors, or engineers they could think of,” over 95% of names listed were men. When asked to name important women in STEM, respondents named on average less than one woman. In addition, some of the women cited, such as Rosa Parks and Hillary Clinton, were not scientists. The top men’s names were Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Isaac Newton, while the few women’s names included Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Florence Nightingale. Reeder was surprised that after over half a century of historical research in women’s and gender history, college students lacked information on women in the sciences. In another study of one hundred and fifty secondary school physics teachers, the educators could name only one woman in STEM. Academic and public historians have opportunities to reach out to K-12 educators to work together to formulate engaging curricula on the history of women in science. As Reeder notes, “The transformative nature of [historical] narrative may be particularly powerful, not only in relaying women’s technological advancements, but also in helping people remember and relate to individuals’ lives and processes of discovery.”v Telling stories that enliven the struggles and successes of women of the past provide students with opportunities to imagine themselves as scientists and to formulate strategies to navigate contemporary barriers in STEM.
 
My own research pushes the narrative of women’s engagement in medicine and science even further back in time to reveal additional historical role models. Apart from a few foundational studies, women’s contributions to the healthcare labor force in early America are relatively invisible and their roles, practices, and authority remain understudied. In my forthcoming book, I construct case studies from the greater Philadelphia area to demonstrate that Euro-American, Native American, and African American women continued to play a central role in healthcare from the late seventeenth century to well into the nineteenth century. Doctresses, herbalists, and apothecaries participated actively in an unregulated consumer healthcare marketplace and created an arena where women could act with authority while resisting attempts at marginalization. However, recovering the lives and practices of women of this earlier period is challenging, because documentation is scarce. The Philadelphia merchant and healer, Elizabeth Coates Paschall, exemplifies an elite Euro-American woman whose mid-eighteenth-century healthcare practice was well respected by patients and physicians. Although none of her letters or diaries are extant, Paschall’s notations in her medical recipe book demonstrate that she was deeply engaged in Enlightenment experimental science. Paschall participated in transatlantic networks of botanical experts and she recorded chemical remedies from her brothers-in-law who were alchemical doctors. She checked out medical and scientific books from the Library Company of Philadelphia to inform the chemical, physiological, and anatomic basis for her treatments. Within her medical and scientific networks, Paschall shared medicines that were her “own invention,” and she positioned herself as a legitimate producer of medical knowledge. Like many colonists, Paschall also valued the expert knowledge of American Indian and African American healers. 
 
The eighteenth-century history of science often privileges the contributions of elite white males who were members or correspondents of males-only organizations such as London’s Royal Society. However, these scientists or “natural philosophers” eagerly sought information about medicinal herbs and pharmaceuticals from Native American and African American healing experts. Women of color were also respected medical practitioners in their own communities. If we view the production of scientific knowledge from a grassroots perspective rather than from the “top-down,” we widen the number of participants in the enterprise of science. Native American women healers were recognized experts at healing wounds, fractures, and infections. The Lenape healer Hannah Freeman and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) adept Molly Brant (also called Degonwadonti) both practiced as healers for over a half a century, treating colonists as well as people in their own communities. African American women brought unique medical knowledge with them during the brutal forced migrations of slavery. Sufferers valued their abilities to cure snakebite, poisoning, and smallpox. Anna Dalemoa Bellamy exemplifies a late-eighteenth century Philadelphia healing adept. According to one Philadelphian, Bellamy was known as “a woman of education—and called by some the black doctor.” Bellamy was skilled at bone setting, [therapeutic] bleeding, tooth drawing, and curing wounds.”vi The medical and scientific expertise of women of color have deep cultural roots. Girls pursuing medicine and science can place themselves within this long historical narrative. 
 
The recent movie, Hidden Figures, highlights the critical contributions of the black mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked at NASA during the Space Race of the 1960s. The film has generated the “Hidden Figures Effect” by revealing the importance of female role models in inspiring young women to enter STEM fields.vii Educators and historians can capitalize on this momentum to foreground the histories of women in science, technology, engineering, math, and healthcare at all educational levels. 
 

i Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps quoted in Kim Tolley, The Science Education of Girls: A Historical Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2003), 1. 

ii Alice S. Rossi, “Women in Science: Why So Few,” Science 148, no. 3674 (1965): 1196-1202; Catherine Hill, et al, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (Washington, D.C.: AAUW, 2010); Eileen Pollack, “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” New York Times, October 3, 2013.

iiiPatricia Fara, Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science, and Power in the Enlightenment (London: Pimlico, 2004), 24; Jessica C. Linker, “The Fruits of Their Labor: Women’s Scientific Practice in Early America, 1750-1860,” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 2017); Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Schiebinger, Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017). 

iv Catherine Riegle-Crumb, George Farkas, and Chandra Muller, “The Role of Gender and Friendship in Advanced Course Taking,” Sociology of Education 79, no. 3 (2006): 206-228; Jayne Stake and Shannon Nickens, “Adolescent Girls’ and Boys’ Science Peer Relationships and Perceptions of the Possible Self as Scientist,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 52, no. 1 (2005): 1-11; James Daniel Lee, “More Than Ability: Gender and Personal Relationships Influence Science and Technology Involvement,” Sociology of Education 75, no. 4 (2002): 349-374.

v Heidi Reeder, Patricia A. Pyke, Lynn Lubamersky, and Seung Youn Chyung, “Perceptions about Women in Science and Engineering History,” Proceedings of the 2012 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference (2012). http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/8/papers/3444/view.

vi Ann Parrish, Visitations of the Sick, 1796, Parrish Collection, box 5, bound volumes, #1653, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 

vii Jacqui Frost, “The Role of Female Role Models,” The Society Pages (February 22, 2017), https://thesocietypages.org/trot/2017/02/22/the-role-of-female-role-models/

In 1846, the educator Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps observed, “Females, in particular, are not expected to enter into the recesses of the temple of science.” As Phelps explained, “It is but of late that they have been encouraged to approach even its portals, and to venture a glance upon the mysteries therein.”i Although most education majors in my U.S. history classes are familiar with the early nineteenth-century educational reformer Horace Mann, few have heard of Phelps. Many students would be surprised by Dr.

At an academic conference on January 14, 2005, then Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers in his presentation to colleagues suggested that women may be innately less able to succeed in math and science careers. More recently, in 2017 Google fired a software engineer for disseminated harmful gender stereotypes through a lengthy internal memo. Both of these incidents and others that are less well known affirm that equity for women and diversity remain pressing issues within the STEM field. I commend The Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine for hosting "Rewriting the Story of Girls' Education in STEM." Drs. Kim Tolley and Natalie S. King provide a rich examination of female participation in STEM and pose intriguing questions that help us consider where we go from here.
 
I echo Dr. King response to the following question: Why are we emphasizing STEM education, particularly for women and girls of color? In examining this question, I present a K-12 educational contextual landscape of Black girls in STEM and assert that in order to sustain a thriving nation, the need for a diverse workforce that is literate in math and science, must be fulfilled. For the betterment of the U.S economy, all citizens must contribute their unique perspectives and skills. Unfortunately, women, specifically Black women, are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Although women make up more than half of the earned bachelor’s and master’s degree in most fields, men continue to dominate vocations such as physical and biological sciences, mathematics, and engineering, while women often pursue careers in the social sciences and humanities.
 
Society and schools through social reproduction perpetuate this trend by socializing young Black girls. Rather than fostering and nurturing their potential interests in math and science, gender-biased teaching practices contribute to the “miseducation” of Black girls, potentially implanting ideas of inferiority and traditional gender roles. In order to reverse this gender gap in STEM, a gap that is often blamed on innate racial and gender inferiorities, many educators must alter their teaching practices and strategies and re-educate these young girls, advocating math and science as equal opportunity endeavors.      
   
Given that Black female students’ achievement levels in math and science are lower than their White male and female counterparts, the STEM schooling experiences of these girls require greater attention. Indeed, as stated in Dr. King’s presentation many girls of color are losing interest in STEM as they enter middle school, suggesting that early intervention is vital to sustaining and increasing a pipeline of girls of color in STEM.  
 
One variable that greatly affects Black female students’ perception of math and science is their classroom teachers. Unfortunately, some teachers’ classroom instructions, void of culturally responsive pedagogy, are consciously or unconsciously influenced by embedded, societal stereotypes, characterizing women as emotionally driven, irrational, yet articulate, dependent followers. In contrast, men, who are supposedly more suited for math and science fields, are labeled as logical, rational, independent explorers and producers. Moreover, math and science classes traditionally do not accommodate a variety of learning styles, and research shows that teachers often engage boys more than girls within the classroom, asking boys more questions, providing feedback, encouraging problem-solving and discussion, and setting higher expectations. These classroom instructional practices are detrimental to Black female students’ progress and carry dire consequences. Due to lack of encouragement and gender-biased instruction within some K-12 classrooms, many Black female students may question their abilities and perceive that their identities are incongruent with STEM.
 
Educators at the front lines of STEM education
 
In an effort to increase the pipeline of Black female students pursing STEM careers, all educators must contribute to the effort. Black female students should not be passive partakers in class laboratories and problem-solving activities; teachers must employ culturally responsive teaching practices to undermine gender and racial biases and to improve gender imbalance and inequity in STEM. Below are a few simple suggestions educators can employ in their classrooms that may alter the trajectory of their Black female students in STEM. Granted, many phenomenal K-12 educators already employ many of these recommendations in their classrooms. This list is meant to serve as a friendly reminder to continue the “heart-work” of nurturing the interests of STEM in Black girls.
 
Strategies: 

• Provide words of encouragement and praise
• Introduce supplemental materials and images that display all genders and races participating in STEM fields
• Mention the contributions of men as well as women in science and math
• Invite all students to participate in class discussions, seeking answers from those students that are hesitant to speak 
• Encourage female students to take on leadership roles
• Push student thinking by asking higher-level thinking questions
• Give individual attention to struggling students
• Utilize cooperative learning groups (grouping students by gender and personality to prevent one gender or individual from dominating the activity)
• Actively monitor students during activities to ensure engagement   
• Make science and math relevant to students’ everyday lives
• Provide opportunities for exploration and reflection
• Allow students to construct labs or pose questions (give students ownership) 
• Promote a community of learners

At an academic conference on January 14, 2005, then Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers in his presentation to colleagues suggested that women may be innately less able to succeed in math and science careers. More recently, in 2017 Google fired a software engineer for disseminated harmful gender stereotypes through a lengthy internal memo. Both of these incidents and others that are less well known affirm that equity for women and diversity remain pressing issues within the STEM field.