This is a proposal for Science and Society (S&S) research funding to study systematically how American and British women contributed to the development of genetics as a scientific discipline. The long-range goal of this project is to combine this data with similar studies of women in Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia in a book entitled, Women in the Early History of Genetics, written by the Principle Investigator in collaboration with Ida Stamhuis (Vrije University, Amsterdam) and Elena Aronova (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). The immediate objective is to conduct extensive archival research to collect data on women, both singly and collectively, who worked in genetics in the United States and Britain, primarily focusing on major university programs and the two leading private genetics research laboratories, the Cold Spring Harbor Department of Genetics (Long Island, New York), and the John Innes Horticultural Institute (Merton and Norwich, England). The specific aims are threefold: (1) Historical: to provide new data and analysis concerning women's participation in genetics research and practice, thereby expanding the historiography of genetics and of women in science; (2) Sociological: to provide (a) a more complex picture of the role gender played in the organization of research programs and laboratory life in genetics and how this affected the work produced in the discipline, and (b) a key case study to test premises explaining women's greater participation in new disciplines--that is, whether such fields are initially welcoming to women when few men are attracted to such as-yet unproven areas of research, or whether the interdisciplinary character of emerging sub-disciplines attracts women by offering future alternative job; and (3) Cross-National Trends in Science: to compare and contrast the opportunities and challenges faced by women in genetics in different national contexts, by which to provide general knowledge about how various cultural, sociopolitical, organizational, and contingent factors may influence not simply "styles" but also "opportunities" in science. The rationale for this research lies in the fact that underestimating women's contributions to the history of genetics has important historiographic implications, portraying an overly masculine and elitist account of the development of the discipline. Moreover, exploring women's work within laboratory practices will provide a more sophisticated sociological picture of genetics, revealing the gendered nature of disciplinary structure--including patterns of institutional support, training, advancement, and segregation within experimental regimes. The intellectual merit lies in the fact that it will provide the first comprehensive assessment of the contributions of women to the study of genetics between the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity in 1900 and the end of the classical period of genetics circa 1935. The broader impacts of this project will be to substantially expand our understanding of critical sociological, institutional, intellectual, and transnational factors contributing to women's participation in science and provide a unique comparative context of the establishment of a scientific discipline that revolutionized modern biology. As a result of its dual focus--on genetics and on women and gender studies--the project results will rightfully claim a place as contributing to the history of genetics, social studies of genetics, women in the history of science, and gender studies, mapping previously unexplored and strategic intellectual terrain.
