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A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War Reprint Edition

by Patricia Fara (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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2018 marked a double centenary: peace was declared in war-wracked Europe, and women won the vote after decades of struggle. A Lab of One's Own commemorates both anniversaries by revealing the untold lives of female scientists, doctors, and engineers who undertook endeavours normally reserved for men. It tells fascinating and extraordinary stories featuring initiative, determination, and isolation, set against a backdrop of war, prejudice, and disease.
Patricia Fara investigates the enterprising careers of these pioneering women and their impact on science, medicine, and the First World War.

Suffrage campaigners aligned themselves with scientific and technological progress. Defying protests about their intellectual inferiority and child-bearing responsibilities, during the War they won support by mobilizing women to enter conventionally male domains. A Lab of One's Own focuses on the female experts who carried out vital research. They had already shown exceptional resilience by challenging accepted norms to pursue their careers, now they played their part in winning the War at home and overseas.

In 1919, the suffragist Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly that 'The war revolutionised the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free.' She was wrong: Women had helped the country to victory, had won the vote for those over thirty - but had lost the battle for equality. A Lab of One''s Own is essential reading to understand and eliminate the inequalities still affecting professional women today.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0198794991
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198794998
  3. Edition
    Reprint
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    November 1, 2019
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    8.4 x 1.1 x 5.3 inches
  8. Print length
    354 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"In short, in A Lab of One's Own Patricia Fara has done a great service to the memory of several leading female scientists in World War I...I would recommend it to scholars interested in learning more about the scientific work conducted by British women during World War I." -- Katie Baca, Harvard University, Nuncius

Book Description

A Lab of One's Own describes the experiences of some extraordinary but sadly neglected female scientists who tasted independence, responsibility, and excitement in World War One.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (November 1, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198794991
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198794998
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.4 x 1.1 x 5.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Stephanie De Pue Murphy
5.0 out of 5 stars Women Educated in the STEM Fields Succeeding During World War I
Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2018
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A lab of one’s own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War by Patricia Fara, British author, lecturer at world-renowned ancient Cambridge University, television personality. A history of science, centered on twentieth century women and their achievements.

Many well-trained female scientists, doctors, and engineers tasted real jobs, paychecks (although much smaller than the men's who had done the same work), independence and responsibility for the first time during the First World War (1914-18). In this meaty nonfiction book, Patricia Fara reveals how suffragists, such as Virginia Woolf's sister [by marriage] Ray Strachey, who had already aligned themselves with scientific and technological progress, mobilized educated women, during the dark years of war, to enter conventionally male domains such as science and medicine. That would be in addition to the millions of British women who went to work in their country’s farms, munitions factories, transportation, etc. Fara tells the stories of women such as mental health pioneer Isabel Emslie, chemist Martha Whiteley, a co-inventor of tear gas, botanist Helen Gwynne Vaughan. Women who were now carrying out vital research in many aspects of science: could their glory days last after the last shot was fired?

Suffragist Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly that 'the war revolutionized the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free.’ Still, the post-war outcome was disappointing. Women had helped the country to victory, won the vote for those of them over thirty, but lost the battle for equality. Men returning from the Front reclaimed their jobs; women were expected, once again, only to marry and produce offspring. Conventional hierarchies were hastily re-established even though the nation now knew that women were fully capable of performing work traditionally reserved for men.

Fara examines how the bravery of these pioneer women scientists, temporarily allowed into a closed world before the door clanged shut again, paved the way for today's women scientists. Yet, inherited prejudices continue to limit women's scientific opportunities.

Fara lectures in the history of science at Cambridge University, where she is a Fellow of Clare College. She is President of the British Society for the History of Science (2016-18); her prize-winning book, Science: A Four Thousand Year History ( 2009), has been translated into nine languages. In addition to many academic publications, her popular works include Newton: The Making of Genius ( 2002), An Entertainment for Angels (2002), Sex, Botany and Empire (2003), and Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment ( 2004). She is an experienced public lecturer who appears regularly in TV documentaries and radio programs such as In our Time. She also contributes articles and reviews to many journals, including History Today, BBC History, New Scientist, Nature and the Times Literary Supplement.

As befits an Oxford University publication, this book is very thorough: Fara must have done mountains of research. Rather than strictly concentrating on its avowed central interest, it is much more broadly focused, contains a great deal of information on the women suffrage movement, its more prominent figures, its connections to the co-existing in time literary circle of Bloomsbury (Think: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). It looks forward and back to pre- and post- World War I times. Mind you, some readers might feel themselves overwhelmed by all this material. Might be better suited with just a magazine length article strictly on the subject of women who had studied what we now call the STEM fields making their own ways in WWI. But I am quite interested in the women suffrage movement, which took three generations, grandmothers to granddaughters, to gain votes for women. I am more than happy to know more about it.
6 people found this helpful
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Jillian A.
4.0 out of 5 stars Educational, informative, but slow
Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2019
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While this book didn't have me furiously reading and turning pages, I did enjoy learning about the many women that contributed to science, medicine, and engineering during the wartime effort.

It did take me about 6 months to read, intermittently. (I usually read stuff in a month or less).

Overall, an educational read with a series of interesting biopics on wartime women women.
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James Gallen
3.0 out of 5 stars Hard For An American To Follow
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2018
Social upheaval brought on by World War I brought destruction for many and opportunity for some. “A Lab of One’s Own” is author Patricia Fara’s narrative of women’s advance in fields of science and suffrage in Britain during the First World War. She draws on the background of the status of women in the era leading up to the War and changes brought on during the War. The War created demands for industrial and scientific workers due to the termination of imports for Germany. The absence of men necessitated their replacement by women. The contributions of women to the war effort were recognized by Prime Minister Lloyd “Who works, fights’ and referring to women “(W)e have found that we could not carry on the war without them.” Faced with such evidence women were added to the voters’ rolls.

The title is drawn from “A Room of One’s Own” that the author identifies as the seminal feminist text of the early twentieth century. The author obviously regards this work as a feminist text of the scientific realm. She tells her tales through the lives of many scientific British women of the era who took their places during World War I.

I enjoyed the sections about the social world of Great Britain leading up to and during World War I and especially the supplemental including the cartoons, such as the one depicting the three classes excluded from voting, “Convicts, Lunatics and (in academic garb) Women. For me the greatest drawback is that the story line seems to lack consistency and I was unable to really follow the biographical details of the women included in the text. Perhaps as an American I am less familiar with them than would be a Briton. I think those are the reasons why I was disappointed in this book.
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Top reviews from other countries

Janie
5.0 out of 5 stars Good historical research
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book is thoroughly researched and sheds light on the roles of women in both Science and WW1.
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Londoner
4.0 out of 5 stars An historical-political analysis of women's suffrage but one that is unresolved
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2018
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
"A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War" is of an era when few women were accepted by universities; it was only 20-30 years previously that women had first gained entry to medical schools. It was also the heyday of women's suffrage and the author is attempting to explain the part it played in the changing roles of woman then and thereafter; many women did get electoral rights after 1918 but factors other than suffrage alone could be partly responsible.

With considerable numbers of men needed to fight and with increasing numbers of war casualties there were many vacancies arising in factories and other workplaces; it was women who often filled them, often undertaking tasks never previously thought appropriate. Doctors, engineers and other scientists were also much needed and those needs were also met by women. While their tasks were similar, it was men who held the senior positions. For those women actively involved in scientific development, much of it in the development of new explosives, was innovative for the time. This book investigates some of their stories and their issues.

The stories of women such as Edith Cavell and Mata Hari were published and widely read and their names remain widely known, but there are too few names other than theirs that are now quite as familiar with the general public. History may not have well-served most of those women and the efforts and sacrifices they made; many of the lessons learned were too quickly forgotten upon the cessation of war. After the start of World War II, attitudes towards female employment had dramatically changed and so had the roles sometimes suggested of them, perhaps dangerously close to the front or behind enemy lines. Women's roles further changed over the following decades and continues today but whether it was suffrage, the tide of events, society's attitudes, all of the above, or something else that was ultimately responsible for women's advances remains an open question.

There are a few low-grade illustrations but they are small and buried within the body of text. The book is published by the Oxford University Press and is presumably considered a serious, academic work. There is a sizeable list of chapter-relevant Sources and an equally large Bibliography section in the book that together provide its core information. This may be a book that some will purchase or read in the hope that it resolves various historical issues and illuminate some of history's darker corners; it does some but not all. The author's final few words offer a surprising conclusion.
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Jessie
5.0 out of 5 stars Ideal for all STEMinists
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 17, 2018
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This an interesting book and good to combine both history and science. Throughout history women in science have been ignored, their ideas stolen and worked for little or no money. This book delves deeply into some amazing triumphs of women in science.
Reading this gives you an idea of how far women in science have come and unfortunately how far they still need to come.
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Annabel Gaskell
4.0 out of 5 stars Untold stories of women's work during WWI
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 30, 2018
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In the year that acknowledges the centenary of the end of WWI, this is a very timely book that tells many of the untold stories of women's work during the war. It wasn't just in the factories that women were needed to work as the men went off to fight, but they were also needed as doctors, scientists and engineers too, and Fara uncovers the essential, and ofttimes grisly and dangerous work that many of the women who took on this work did.

As a graduate of Imperial College myself, I was particularly interested to read about Martha Whiteley, who diverted from her work on synthesising drugs to look at mustard gas, and went on to work on developing tear gas; she was forced to self-experiment. Unusually, she was awarded an OBE, an acknowledgement of her work most of the women were denied. Not everyone, men and women alike, were willing or could be persuaded to work on (vital) war-related research though.

Sadly, once the war was over, the declaration of suffragette Millicent Fawcett that war 'found them serfs, and left them free', wouldn't quite follow through, as the doors clanged shut again, and rules against married women working left many banging on the glass ceiling once more. This is a well-researched (as attested by the copious end notes and bibliography) exploration of women in science during this period, at times a rather dense read, but inspiring to read about the work of these ground-breaking women.
One person found this helpful
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mandynolan
5.0 out of 5 stars Have women progressed as much as they should have?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2018
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In the year which celebrates a century since some British women got the vote this is an interesting read.
Women helped with the war effort in World War One by going into the factories and labs..the male dominated aspects of society..to build the armaments...
Without them Britain would not have been able to fight the War...
This looks at women who at last got to be in possession of labs to lead on Science....
I really enjoyed this read....it’s added to my understanding of the period....but the question remains....Shouldn’t women have progressed even further by now?
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