Existing comment:
The Matilda Effect
* Kathleen Burke, editor, October 2019
* Margaret Rossiter, historian
* "The Matilda Effect," 1993
* Women Scientists in America -- 4 volumes from colonial era to the present
* MacArthur Fellow
* Huge impact on Women's Studies
Matilda effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Matilda effect is a bias against acknowledging the achievements of those women scientists whose work is attributed to their male colleagues. This effect was first described by suffragist and abolitionist Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–98) in her essay, "Woman as Inventor" (first published as a tract in 1870 and in the North American Review in 1883). The term "Matilda effect" was coined in 1993 by science historian Margaret W. Rossiter.
Matilda effect
Rossiter provides several examples of this effect. Trotula (Trota of Salerno), a 12th-century Italian woman physician, wrote books which, after her death, were attributed to male authors. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century cases illustrating the Matilda effect include those of Nettie Stevens, Maria Skłodowska Curie, Lise Meitner, Marietta Blau, Rosalind Franklin, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
The Matilda effect was compared to the Matthew effect, whereby an eminent scientist often gets more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is shared or similar.
Ben Barres (1954–2017), a neurobiologist at Stanford University Medical School who transitioned from female to male, spoke of his scientific achievements having been perceived differently, depending on his sex at the time. This offers one account of biases experienced from different identities, as perceived by one individual. |