Educational Institutions. The largest number of women chemists, almost one-third, were employed in educational institutions, mostly in colleges, where they comprised 10 percent of the chemistry faculties, according to a 1939 survey by Ethel L. French (23). Their proportion was lower (8 percent) among full professors of chemistry and higher (17 percent) among instructors. The virtual requirement of graduate work for college teaching positions was shown by the fact that more than three-fourths of the chemistry faculty had their doctorates, and a meager 2 percent had only the bachelor's degree. The low proportion of women among graduate assistants and fellows, on the one hand (8 percent), and their equally low proportion among full professors, on the other, were related, but which was cause and which effect is debatable. The number of women teaching chemistry in high schools before the war is not known.

Table 2. Distribution of Men and Women Members' of the American Chemical Society by Type of Employer Reported in 1941

1 Excludes male chemical engineers. It was possible to exclude the chemical engineering group from the figures for men, since the male chemical engineers were reported separately. However, it is possible that a maximum of 7 chemical engineers may be included among the women members reporting 1941 employment.

2 Includes private firm, company, corporation, or organization engaged in activities other than those listed separately.

3 Laboratory, firm, or office.

Source: 1944 Study of the American Chemical Society (3).

Government.-Government ranked second to education and only slightly higher than industry as an employer of women chemists in 1941.

Principal employers were the State and local public health agencies and public hospitals, which employed women chemists in medical laboratories. About 50 women were employed in the Federal Government as "chemists or metallurgists," 3 percent of the total in that group, if statistics for the end of 1938 obtained from the United States Civil Service Commission are indicative (53). No woman was appointed as a chemist from Federal Civil Service registers in the year ended June 30, 1940, but 123 men were so appointed, many as junior chemists (42).

Most of the women chemists in the Federal Government worked in the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics laboratories, but a few were in the Food and Drug Administration, where they analyzed samples collected by field inspectors from factories and warehouses. The National Institute of Health also had a few women biochemists on its staff, and in the Patent Office several women chemists examined applications for patents. The National Bureau of Standards and at least one of the Army arsenals employed women in chemical laboratory work. A few women chemists were also serving as librarians or doing technical editing or writing in Government units specializing in scientific work. Industry.-Private industry ranked with Government in its employment of women chemists who were members of the American Chemical Society.

A picture of the industries and occupations which engaged women trained in chemistry before the war has been obtained by the Women's Bureau from more than 100 industrial firms, including 78 listed by the National Research Council as having research laboratories and 18 commercial testing laboratories (34). More than half of these firms, actually 55, employed women chemists prior to World War II. Fortytwo had women chemists in their laboratories at the outbreak of the war, although in seven of them women chemists were confined to desk work as technical librarians, patent searchers, chemical secretaries, or technical file clerks. Six additional firms had previously employed women in chemical laboratory or technical librarian work but had none on the pay roll just before the war. In fact, two of these had introduced women into their laboratories only during World War I and had replaced them with men as they left, in some cases long after the The exact numbers of women employed just before World War II were obtainable from only half the firms included in the Women's Bureau survey, but the number usually ranged from 1 to 10 in each establishment. Only a few of the larger corporations employed more

war.

than 25.

The firms which employed women chemists in laboratory work represented a variety of industries including such widely differing ones as: transportation equipment, textiles, leather, mail order, and machinery. However, more than two-fifths, 41 percent, of these firms were chemical manufacturers. Food manufacturing firms and commercial laboratories (which specialize in the testing of products for firms or individuals without testing facilities of their own) ranked next.

This predominance of the chemical and food industries in the industrial employment of women chemists was verified in the survey of the American Chemical Society. Fifty-eight percent of the 183 women

members reporting employment in industry in 1941 were with chemical or food firms. Petroleum and coal products ranked next, with 11 percent (3).

Other Employers.-Research institutions employed some women chemists before the war. The Rockefeller Institute, for example, had 19 women technicians with a bachelor's degree who had majored or minored in chemistry. The Carnegie Institution of Washington in its Department of Geophysical Magnetism employed one or two women as analytical chemists. The Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, too, had a small number of women chemists on its staff.

Type of Specialization

Although women were found in almost every type of specialization within the field of chemistry, they tended to concentrate in certain types. In this, their distribution differed from that of men chemists. Of 663 women members of the American Chemical Society who reported their 1941 specialization, the largest number, 123, were in

biological chemistry, sometimes called physiological chemistry. This has to do with the chemistry of the life processes in man or in plants and animals. Next in order were: organic chemistry (which deals mainly with carbon compounds), physical chemistry (which is concerned with the measurement of the physical properties of chemical compounds), general chemistry, foods and kindred products, medical chemistry, and pharmaceuticals. For men members, the largest

fields of specialization were: physical chemistry, organic chemistry, organic chemical technology, general industrial chemistry, petroleum and its products, foods and kindred products, and pharmaceuticals (3).

The greater tendency of women to specialize in biochemistry and organic chemistry was evident in teaching but only at the graduate level (23). Women teaching undergraduate courses in chemistry in colleges and universities had teaching assignments similar to those of men, with more than half in inorganic chemistry, more than onefourth in organic, and one-sixth in physical chemistry. In graduate schools the percent distribution for women was likewise similar to that of the men except in organic and biological chemistry which together. accounted for 48 percent of the women's and 36 percent of the men's teaching load.

Every one of the 8 women among 77 chemists who applied to the Lalor Foundation for a postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry in 1937 were biological chemists. Practically all were concerned with physiological or nutritional problems. This tendency for women to specialize in biological and organic chemistry may be due in part to the