Science on the Home Front

American Women Scientists in World War II

Author: Jordynn Jack

A critical assay of the rhetorical and cultural obstacles faced by women scientists

Cloth – $110

978-0-252-03470-1

Paper – $30

978-0-252-07659-6

Publication Date

Paperback: 09/23/2009

Buy the Book Request Desk/Examination Copy Request Review Copy Request Rights or Permissions Request Alternate Format Preview

About the Book

During World War II, women scientists responded to urgent calls for their participation in the war effort. However, the war produced few long-term gains in the percentage of women in the sciences or in their overall professional standing. In this book, Jordynn Jack argues that it was the very language of science--the discourses and genres of scientific communication--that helped to limit women's progress in science even as it provided opportunities for a small group of prominent female scientists to advance during the war. The book illuminates the broader limitations of masculine scientific culture and its discourses of expertise, gender neutrality, technical expediency, and objectivity. The study identifies key characteristics of scientific culture and rhetoric that continue to limit women's advancement in science and to stifle their unique perspectives.

About the Author

Jordynn Jack is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Also by this author

Reviews

"Recommended."--Choice

"Jack does an excellent job of expanding notions of genre, arguing that scientific genres not only regulated gender norms and determined access to knowledge and expertise, they also decided who could speak within the academy and whose work was considered valuable."--Rhetoric & Public Affairs

Blurbs

"Jordynn Jack is the first to tell in splendid detail what opportunities existed during World War II for scientific women, what they accomplished, and what barriers remained. No other books are comparable to this excellent text."--Londa Schiebinger, author of Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science

"Jack has worked insightfully through a wide variety of documents that have been less studied, and she introduces important women psychologists, anthropologists, physicists, and nutritionists whose stories have been neglected. A stimulating and compelling work about gender and genre in science."--Ann B. Shteir, coeditor of Figuring It Out: Science, Gender, and Visual Culture