American education in science and engineering has a gendered history. Nineteenth-century women's colleges graduated scores of chemistry, biology, and other science majors, but female employment and professional advancement remained limited.  Before WWII, schools such as Princeton, Caltech, and Georgia Tech remained primarily all-male. Many in American society considered it inappropriate or odd for women to pursue science seriously. But at land-grant colleges, female faculty developed pioneering home-economics programs, where ideals of domesticity justified teaching women chemistry, physics, nutrition, household-technology. Botany, veterinary medicine, and other land-grant departments gradually opened doors to women. A handful of early-twentieth-century women even entered engineering at Purdue, Iowa State, Cornell, Minnesota, California, and other land-grants. During WWII, land-grants helped both government and industry by training women in airplane design, drafting, explosives manufacturing, and more. Through recent decades, land-grants continued to address issues of gender and education, fostering important ongoing discussions about women, science, and engineering.

Chemistry, cooking, animal science, and airplanes: Women in land-grant science and engineering

244th National Meeting (2012)

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