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The nature or location of the work is sometimes given as a reason for not employing more women. A chemical employer says, "Our laboratory men have to climb into tank cars and get samples and we don't like to have women doing that." The United States Bureau of Mines, although it employs some women, reports that the laboratory men must go underground often and that much of the work is rugged and arduous. One oil company prefers laboratory men who are available for travel to rough and remote places, in other countries if necessary; another indicates that its plants are, for the most part, in isolated places, where women would not choose to work. Only one director mentioned that the work in the laboratory was too heavy for a woman, since the containers from which samples were taken had to be handled by the laboratory men.

Obviously, many of these reasons disappear if the laboratory itself is large enough for some specialization. As one director of research put it: "In a larger laboratory where jobs are broken down, contacts are within the division rather than with the sales department or the plant and one doesn't have to sling a wrench."

The obtaining of plant samples by chemists in industries in which the plant workers are usually all men, as in dye works, tanneries, paper mills, heavy chemicals, etc., is not an insurmountable handicap. to the employment of women. The wartime use of women in shipyards and steel mills indicated that men in the plant accustom themselves quickly to the presence of women in the plant. But it is easier for a woman who has had actual plant experience, engineering training, or comparable practical experience to handle the plant aspects under such conditions without self-consciousness.

The attitudes of men workers in the laboratory were also mentioned as a handicap to women chemists. Some employers reported: "The men don't like to have girls in the laboratory." However, the majority of the laboratory directors said that men and women worked well together. In one Government laboratory the men at first objected to the introduction of women during the war, but later their initial fears were soon forgotten. One head of laboratories in a drug company prefers a mixed laboratory where women and men complement each other. He says that women are more practical, neater in workmanship, not as bored with routine; that men are better housekeepers and better at the higher level jobs. One or two reported that the appearance of the laboratory and of the men had improved with the introduction of women.

Scattered comments on differences between men and women chemists were as follows:

Men are more temperamentally suited to the failure of tests, take their failures more objectively.

Women are not as imaginative and eager to do something new. They are less likely to present new ideas and when they do, are more likely to take a rejection of it personally.

Women are better than men on research involving extensive data-keeping and are more reliable, also, on routine tests.

Although women in general are believed to be more dexterous, the head of one of the principal Government laboratories says that women

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Figure 13.-Fine manipulations are required in a chemical laboratory. This college graduate weighs powder on delicate scales in a control laboratory.

are not as good at fine manipulations because they need training in laboratory mechanics. However, once they are trained, they always use the right tool.

The more varied choice of positions for men chemists, already mentioned earlier, and the fact that most of the women wanted to work within 25 to 50 miles of their homes are other reasons given for the relatively small numbers of women chemists in laboratory work.

The tendency for women to seek work near their homes limits their chances for employment, since opportunities are not equally good in all parts of the United States. How much of this preference is prompted by choice, how much by necessity is not known. But other studies of the Women's Bureau indicate that the responsibilities of single as well as married women for financial aid or for services to the other members of their families are considerable, often resulting in a lack of mobility which limits the individual's choice of jobs and makes her a less desirable employee on jobs where travel or transfer may be involved.

Some types of chemical work, of course, are done in every large community. Hospitals, medical schools, and public health laboratories, as well as such ubiquitous industries as dairies and bakeries employ chemists. However, quantitatively, because of the concentration of large manufacturing industries, there are greater opportunities in some parts of the country than in others.

Before the war, according to the Census, almost three-fourths of all chemists were employed in the Northeastern or North Central States; the South ranked third and the West last. The proportion of women among chemists in the various sections of the country was highest in the Northeastern States and lowest in the South (44). (See table 10.)

This prewar concentration of employment opportunities for chemists in the Northeastern and North Central States is confirmed in the 1944 study of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This study showed almost the same proportion (40.4 percent) of chemists in the Northeastern States as did the 1940 Census. The South's percentage was 3 percent higher than before, 20.1 percent. The proportion in the North Central States had declined to 29.4 percent and in the Western States

1 The regions as designated in the Census are as follows:

Northeastern States--Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont ;

North Central States-Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin;
South-Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi. North Carolina, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia;

West-Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon,
Utah, Washington, Wyoming.

to 9.1 percent. The State of New York alone employed 13.5 percent of all chemists, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois ranking next (44) (45).

Table 10. Distribution of Employed Chemists, Assayers, and Metallurgists, by Region and Sex, 1940

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Suggestions for Young Women Who Want to Become Chemists

In any occupation, one finds optimists, pessimists, and the realists whose experience and temperament enable them to evaluate the advantages in relation to the disadvantages. Because chemistry has been in the main a man's field, there are those who say, as one head of a chemistry department in a State college has―

Advise girls interested in chemistry to stay out. But if they insist, advise them to prepare for a field in which women have an advantage rather than a handicap. According to this advice, only the girl with a driving interest, combined presumably with ability in chemistry, should be encouraged to become a chemist, and she should be steered toward foods, textile, or cosmetics chemistry; biochemistry; analytical chemistry; or toward work as a technical librarian, patent searcher, or technical secretary. Spectroscopy and microchemistry are more recently emerging specialties in which women have an advantage.

A woman chemist, on the other hand, wrote optimistically in 1945:

The woman who enters the industrial chemical field today has just as much assurance as a man of obtaining profitable and interesting employment. Her career will be determined by the quality of her initiative and courage.

The majority of the employers, college representatives, and women chemists interviewed in connection with this study predicted a steadily increasing and widening opportunity for women chemists but stressed the importance of being well-qualified. By well-qualified they meant better qualified than a man would need to be for the identical job, in order to offset the handicaps already discussed. The basic qualifications for success in chemistry are fully described in publications of the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel (47) and

of the American Chemical Society (5). Only those mentioned as being especially important for women, therefore, are included in this bulletin.

The head of an important Government laboratory said that, if he were advising his daughter to prepare for work as a chemist, he would tell her that she:

must attain manual dexterity in handling equipment equivalent to the standards of men;

must learn to look at a problem in its broadest aspect;

must learn the habit of hard work in absorbing and thinking through concepts and formulae.

Two employers, one in Government and one in industry, likened the good chemist to a good cook. Imagination, the use of a variety of ingredients, exactness, the ability to keep many pots cooking at the same time, resourcefulness-all these are needed by cooks and chemists. The cook who lets the stew burn while she talks to her neighbor is like the chemist who can't set up and control more than one experiment at a time.

Women chemists almost all mentioned the desirable traits of cooperativeness, adaptability, and a serious attitude toward one's job as ranking equal in importance to training and experience not only in obtaining employment for oneself but in smoothing the path of those who come after.

A woman should not seek a research or other responsible job, if she does not intend to work for more than two or three years. On the other hand, if she is interested in chemistry as a career and intends to keep up with it come what may, she should give evidence of this interest through further study, through participation in professional organizations, through discussion with colleagues, through writing. Only in this way can she counteract the erroneous notion that all men show a more serious attitude toward their work than do all women. Whether she falls in the short-run or long-run interest group, she should maintain certain ethics in relation to her work.

The three women who left a laboratory in a foods company one after another after only a few months of service have closed that position to women as long as the present head of the laboratory is in charge. The technical secretary who left a metal products company without notice to take a 3-months' trip with her husband on his return from military service left in the laboratory a resentment that will affect the chances of women not only in her former job, but throughout the laboratory. Two women chemists who left a testing laboratory with only a few days' notice in 1945 were replaced by men, although the head of the laboratory was a woman. Women in scientific work must recognize the obligation not only to perform the job well but to accept the responsibilities that go with such employment.

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