WOMEN AND SCIENCE

Shannon News, 4 December 1928, Page 4

WOMEN AND SCIENCE

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To ask “Should women learn science?” is like asking the question, “Would you like to take poison or not?” There is only one answer that a man in his senses can give. The universal popularity of radio has dispelled the misunderstanding that science is a dull affair of facts and figures, and there is now a very genuine demand for “popular science.” The reasons why women should learn science are exactly the same as those why men should learn,, with a few others added. It is an appalling reflection on our ideas of education that women should be able to read Beowulf in the original, but be unable to tell their children why petrol makes a taxi ’s wheels go round. There are thousands who spend hours in a shop discussing dress materials without having the faintest knowledge of how they are made. They would probably be amazed if you told them that the artificial silk dress they were wearing is a near relation of newspaper and only a few months ago was part of a Canadian forest.

Although they prepare, or are supposed to prepare, three meals a day, they cannot tell you what happens to food when it is cooked, or why, when they are • boiled, an egg is hard and a potato soft. Who knows why we can eat rotten game, yet find bad mutton a danger? It is no good a woman asking her husband why the poisons in her lipstick do not make him a widower, because he, alas! does not know. He is even ignorant of the reason why the chlorine in salt does not affect him while chlorine at the fropt killed hundreds of men.

She will have to turn to science to satisfy her knowledge. I only hope that in this search for knowledge she will be more fortunate than Adam’s wife and Mrs. Lot!

There is an idea that women, for some reason, are incapable of learning science. Granted that the women scientists from Hypatia of Alexandria and Cleopatra the Learned to Mme. Curie and Krukowski have discovered little in comparison with their numerous male colleagues, But although one swallow does not make a summer, an ever-increasing number of swallows does indicate the approach of that season. Where thirty years ago there was one woman scientist, there are to-day a dozen, and it is probable that in future woman’s intuitive grasp which enables her to understand results will make her a dangerous rival/

In any case, I speak of a knowledge of popular science rather than a detailed knowledge of some particular branch! In motor schools I notice that women are sometimes more interested than men in the mechanical side of the tuition, and at exhibitions of inventions they may outnumber men by two to one. .Women totfust un<Borstand and hove science, because only through science can they achieve true emancipation* The comparative freedom of the modern woman is due largely s to the work of science in making housework easier. Science is a life in itself for any woman worthy of her salt.

The modern housewife does not have to get down at six in the morning to light the fire and put on the porridge because science . has given a gas fire and a patent porridge. She does not refuse invitations to parties because her hands are not fit to be Seen. s What is tho good of knowing that Nelson's column is half the height of all the Kings of England placed end to end? Is it not better by far to know why it is that oil smooths troubled waters or produces the colours of the rainbow when upset into a puddle by the roadside?