Book Review

Canada and the United States

The story of Rosie the Riveter filling in for men on the production line during World War II is now a familiar one, but the richly detailed stories of four women scientists who did centrally important work in technically demanding positions relayed by Kathleen Broome Williams are just now seeing the light of day. These and other women like them also performed superbly in occupations normally filled by men and pioneered paths for contemporary women entering scientific fields closed to their gender by prejudice, custom, and lack of educational opportunity. Broome's profiles are inspiring and fresh, reminding us that women took serious steps toward integrating American society at all levels in a conflict that demanded mobilization of the entire home-front population if the war were to be won.	1
Flanking her individual portraits with contextualizing historiography of the gender discrimination that limited career paths for women, Williams brings to life four extraordinary achievers who found themselves at the cutting edge of oceanography, meteorology, computer science, and applied mathematics during the war and who went on to distinguished careers afterward. Although she emphasizes quite rightly that her subjects were atypical both before and after the war in their scientific training and continued professional employment, Williams reminds us that not all women lost their widened opportunities in the labor force when the war ended. A few pioneers remained to provide the slender bridge that connected temporary lowering of gender barriers "for the duration" with the substantial challenges mounted by feminists of the 1960s to break those barriers down for good.	2
This study has been published by the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, so it is not surprising that Williams puts the navy at the center of her analysis in many ways. She highlights the fact that three of her scientists were WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and that their military careers were as distinguished as their scientific ones. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the only women in the American military were nurses, but all branches of the service yielded to pressure from various sources to utilize women's talents more fully. The great exception to this integrative move, and one that Williams does not mention, is the continued racism that barred African-American women from the navy until the war was nearly over. The navy was arguably the most resistant branch of the armed forces when it came to race, and it was notorious for confining black men to service positions on board ship and forcing them into dangerous loading jobs at ports of call.	3
When it came to white women, however, the navy's record is much better. Mary Sears, Florence van Straten, and Grace Murray Hopper were all WAVES whose technical expertise and scientific training were valued by the navy, and all spoke highly of their experiences in uniform while on active duty and then as reserves. All enjoyed prestigious promotions, with Hopper serving into the 1980s and eventually appointed commodore and then rear admiral. Although they were frequently the only woman professional in their base of assignment, all worked with men who treated them professionally and respected their intelligence, work ethic, and capabilities. It is significant that all three were single, possessed of Ivy League Ph.D.s in the sciences, and found male and female mentors at crucial points in their careers. These factors undoubtedly eased their way into the military/scientific male world in which they flourished.	. . .