A New National Defense: Feminism, Education, and the Quest for “Scientific Brainpower,” 1940-1965

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository A New National Defense: Feminism, Education, and the Quest for “Scientific Brainpower,” 1940-1965 Laura Micheletti Puaca A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2007 Approved by: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall James Leloudis Peter Filene Jerma Jackson Catherine Marshall ©2007 Laura Micheletti Puaca ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii To my parents, Richard and Ann Micheletti, for their unconditional love and encouragement. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While working on this dissertation, I enjoyed the support and assistance of numerous individuals and organizations. First, I would like to acknowledge those institutions that generously funded my work. A Mowry Research Award from the University of North Carolina’s Department of History and an Off-Campus Research Fellowship from the University of North Carolina’s Graduate School supported this project’s early stages. A Schlesinger Library Dissertation Grant from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, as well as a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies, allowed me to carry out the final phases of research. Likewise, I benefited enormously from a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for Research Related to Education, which made possible an uninterrupted year of writing. I am also grateful to the archivists and librarians who assisted me as I made my way though countless documents. The staff at the American Association of University Women Archives, the Columbia University Archives, the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs Archives, the National Archives at College Park, and the Rare and Manuscript Collection at Cornell University provided invaluable guidance. In particular, I would like to thank Donald Glassman at the Barnard College Archives, Sarah Hutcheon and Jane Knowles at the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger iv Library, Tom Frusciano at Rutgers University’s Special Collections and University Archives, Deborah Rice at Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library, and Tanya Zanish- Belcher at Iowa State University’s Women in Science and Engineering Archives. Friends and family members who opened their homes to me include Fran and George Anderson, Sandra VanBurkleo, Jan and Neal Butler, Katya Varlamova, and Melissa Skwira Morencey. Their hospitality and generosity thoroughly enriched my research travels. My Spencer Dissertation cohort—especially Rene Luis Alvarez, Anna Bailey, David L. Davis, and Anne-Lise Halvorsen—pushed me toward new approaches and ideas, while providing much encouragement and wonderful company. In Chapel Hill, writing group members Katie Otis, Nancy Schoonmaker, and Tomoko Yagyu offered many thoughtful comments and constructive critiques, all while working on their own dissertations. Pam Lach read numerous copies of chapter drafts and has been a continual source of support since our days at Douglass College. Hilary Marcus also read each chapter and helped enormously, especially in the final stages of writing, to help me rethink and refine some of my core ideas and assumptions. Kurt Piehler, Linda Eisenmann, and Chris Ogren, who commented on early chapter segments as they appeared in conference paper form, provided wonderful feedback. Sylvia Hoffert and Michael H. Hunt also helped to direct the early phases of this project and I am thankful for their insights. Members of my committee—Jim Leloudis, Peter Filene, Jerma Jackson, and Catherine Marshall—have contributed significantly to this project over the years, both in informal conversations and through directed comments on drafts. I am grateful to them for sharing their expertise and for their guidance. My greatest intellectual debt is to Jacquelyn v Hall. Her close reading of every page, as well as her broader theoretical and conceptual suggestions, have enriched this project immensely. She challenged me at every step and taught me much about the craft of historical writing. Moreover, she has been a constant source of support, guidance, and encouragement, and always believed in me even when my own confidence faltered. Finally, I want to thank my closest friends and family for their unending support. My husband, Brian Puaca, not only encouraged me at every turn, but also read countless drafts. Likewise, Audrey Statelman, Janel Modoski, Deborah Puaca, Michael and Sally Puaca, and David and Elizabeth Micheletti, and Richard and Ann Micheletti, have continually bolstered me throughout this long process. Without their love, humor, and patience, the completion of this project would not have been possible. vi ABSTRACT LAURA MICHELETTI PUACA: A New National Defense: Feminism, Education, and the Quest for “Scientific Brainpower,” 1940-1965 (Under the direction of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall) Focusing on the Second World War and early Cold War Era, this study uncovers how female activists promoted women’s scientific participation as a shared solution to national security concerns. By appropriating the language and the cause of national defense, they presented powerful, sophisticated, and surprisingly familiar critiques of the pervasive cultural attitudes and discriminatory practices that discouraged women’s scientific interests and aspirations. Although these activists lacked the analytical tools to comprehend the deep- rootedness of women’s scientific subordination, they still conceived of it as the product of social forces. They realized fully that women’s exclusion stemmed from a series of cultural attitudes and deliberate choices regarding who could “do” science and who could not. But, in the context of the Second World War and early Cold War years when “scientific brainpower” was supposedly at a premium, they argued that this artificial and inaccurate distinction, along with all of its ramifications, was ultimately wasteful and unpatriotic. In an era that discouraged and even punished dissent, the language and cause of national defense provided activists with a culturally legitimated means for critiquing gender conventions and discrimination. The invocation of defense rhetoric, however, not only camouflaged but also compromised their agenda. Activists’ own implorations to “utilize” vii female intellect and stem the “waste” of scientific talent elided their interest in sexual equality. The militaristic and technocratic language in which they couched their demands, moreover, subordinated women’s rights to national needs and circumscribed their liberatory potential. Nevertheless, these efforts at expanding women’s scientific participation are significant because they set the groundwork for later feminist reform. In effect, this study reveals that contemporary feminist interest in science did not spring full-blown from the so- called “second wave” of American feminism but rather, had been percolating for some time. Reclaiming this early history complicates our picture of the mid-twentieth century as an era of domestic complacency, illuminates continuities between earlier efforts and contemporary feminist critiques, and calls into question the “waves of feminism” paradigm. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: An Overview of the Early History of Women in Science 15 Chapter 2: “Let Science Help to Win the War” 40 Chapter 3: After War, What? 100 Chapter 4: The Dawn of the Defense Decade 156 Chapter 5: “Scientific Womanpower” Enters the Sputnik Era 195 Epilogue 249 Bibliography 261 ix INTRODUCTION Audience members at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science watched intently as plastics engineer Betty Lou Raskin took the podium and began to address the crowd. The under-representation of women in scientific fields, Raskin insisted, “is not due to any intellectual incompetence or lack of creative ability on the part of women. It is the fault of our cultural conditioning and our poor vocational guidance.” Citing outmoded sexual stereotypes and social conventions as the most persistent barriers to women’s scientific success, Raskin then proposed a number of tactics, such as providing college bound “girls” with booklets about scientific careers, casting a popular actress as an aeronautical engineer in a romantic comedy, and showcasing a female scientist each month in a women’s magazine. “The longer we continue to ignore the scientific potentialities and skills of the women in this country,” she concluded, “the more we are hurting our chances for survival.” 1 What is significant about Raskin’s remarks is that she delivered them in 1958, at the height of what some scholars have termed “Cold War domesticity.”2 Of even greater importance is the fact that Raskin was not alone in her efforts to encourage and assist women 1 Betty Lou Raskin, “American Women: Unclaimed Treasures of Science,” paper presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., December 1958., reprinted in Goucher College Bulletin, 25, no. 4 (January 1959): no page numbers given, folder EC, carton 12, records of the American Council on Education’s Commission on the Education of Women (hereafter cited as CEW),Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (hereafter cited as Schlesinger).

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