Elena Serrano will talk about female strategies to networking and contributing to science
Networking: Las mujeres en las redes científicas de la Ilustración
19 November 2021, 12 h CET
Online: https://conectaha.csic.es/b/oli-53t-5ol-1kr
In-person: Aula de seminarios (1er piso) Institución Milá y Fontanals de Investigación en Humanidades (MFCSIC),
c/ Egipcíaques, 15, 08001 Barcelona.
Pre-registration needed: please, write to oliver.hochadel@csic.es by 18 November.
Summary: Gender is a key factor in the modern perception of professional and scientific networks:It is hotly debated, for example, whether men and women cultivate their networks differently, and whether this influences the salary gap. However, women’s networks are nothing new. As Londa Schiebinger acknowledged in The Mind Has No Sex, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, noblewomen were able to enter intellectual circles thanks to their networks of influence. The study of past scientific networks can further illuminate the role of present-day networks in legitimising women’s in legitimising women in their intellectual pursuits, their social aspirations and their ideals. This talk will focus on the period between 1720 and 1830, particularly interesting from a gender perspective in Europe. In the words of Anthony J. Lavopa, at this time there opened “lacunae free of the gender binaries, and spaces to slip by them,” from which women benefited.
What were the female strategies and how did networks enable, shape and circumscribe women’s contributions to science? The networks of María de Betancourt from Tenerife, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in England, Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier in Paris, or the women of the French physiocrat community will be some of the cases we will discuss.