curricula of the institutions in which they train, in part to the belief that biology may be more generally useful to women, and in part to a reflection of the demand for women chemists. One instructor of chemistry in a woman's college believes that women have a natural interest in medicine on the theoretical but not on the practicing side. Graduate work in biochemistry is therefore more to their liking than the study of medicine itself.

Prewar Demand and Supply

Eighty, or 4.6 percent, of the experienced women chemists in 1940 were seeking work, according to the Census, roughly the same proportion as those unemployed among the men (44). Although the rate of unemployment for chemists was less than that for all professional and semiprofessional workers, it prompted the American Chemical Society in its 1939 publication on Vocational Guidance in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering to state:

Chemistry today like all professional fields is overcrowded. It should be emphasized that steady employment is afforded to only the best qualified who achieve excellence by diligent preparation. Unemployment is found generally in the lowest levels, in spite of the increase in the number of new chemical industries and marked expansion of those already established (4).

In the same year, the research director of a large chemical corporation wrote in the Journal of Chemical Education:

our schools are turning out chemically trained graduates at a rate probably somewhat greater than the industry can absorb (29).

These statements describe an oversupply. Between the Census of 1930 and that of 1940, the number of chemists had increased by about 25 percent (43). In 1940, 4.374 senior students in more than 500 colleges and universities were expected to receive their bachelor's degrees in chemistry, and more than 1,000 were working toward their master's or doctor's degrees (14). (This did not include the more than 2,000 candidates for degrees in chemical engineering.) The total, 5,470, equaled almost 10 percent of all employed chemists in 1940; the bachelor group alone was equivalent to about 8 percent. By comparison, although the difference in length of training must be kept in mind, the 5,097 graduated by medical schools in 1940 equaled 3 percent of all practicing physicians.

At the doctorate level, too, the production of chemists was greater than in comparable fields. Actually, the number of doctor's degrees granted in chemistry in the decade ended in 1939-40 exceeded the number granted in any other single department, with those in education and English ranking next in order, according to an American

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 Members1 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.

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

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 war. 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

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