In the Federal Government, general biologists were also rare compared, for example, with bacteriologists and chemists. An oversupply at the beginning professional level in biology was indicated by the fact that almost 3,800 persons applied in 1940 for the junior professional assistant examination in biology, while only 117 persons passed the examination, and only 1 man was appointed that year. Only 5 of the 726 women who took the examination passed it. Biological statisticians, being fewer, fared better. Of the 167 who applied, 26 passed the examination for biometricians, and 7 of them were women. One man and one woman were appointed that year to beginning positions (23).

Annual Addition to the Supply

The annual number of men and women graduated with bachelor's degrees before the war with a major in general biology as distinct from botany or zoology or even for all these biological sciences together is not known. In 1941-42, the first war year, 4,629 bachelor degrees were awarded in all the biological sciences taken together, according to the United States Office of Education. Almost 2,000 of them, 43 percent, were awarded to women (43).

At the doctoral level, where more specialization takes place, degrees in the biological sciences were most often awarded in botany and zoology, with physiology, bacteriology, and entomology ranking next. Some 20 to 25 degrees were usually awarded each year in genetics (11). But only occasionally were Ph. D. degrees awarded in general biology itself. These were usually in microbiology, the study of the life of microscopic organisms.

Wartime Changes

In

Although some writers, in 1944, reported a decline in enrollments in the biological sciences, the 4,622 graduating in 1943-44 with bachelor's degrees in all the biological sciences combined was almost identical with the 1941-42 total. For the first time, however, more than half of those graduating were women (43) (44). The contradiction was probably due to wide variations in the trend in particular schools. general biology alone, the effect of declining enrollments in 1 school was apparently offset by increasing enrollments in another. Of 15 colleges which reported bachelor's degrees granted over a period of years to women with a major in "biology" (rather than in a particular biological science such as botany or zoology), 7 reported no appreciable change in the number granted in the war years as compared with the years just before World War II. Four, however, reported an increase. A west-coast school, for example, granted women 47 bachelor's degrees with a major in biology during 1943-45, compared

with 18 during 1939-41. An east-coast school granted 137 in 1945 as compared with 65 in 1939. Two of the 15 schools initiated undergraduate majors in biology during the war. Only two schools showed a definite decline during this period in the number of first degrees awarded to women with a major in biology. Fewer women in this field, however, went on to graduate work in science. (See table 9.)

Although the war did not result in an immediate and overwhelming demand for general biologists, as it did for chemists, physicists, and engineers, certain wartime research jobs required the particular expertness of biologists. Two women were employed directly by the Quartermaster Corps, for example, as biothermologists. A number of others worked on research projects financed by the Federal Government at various universities. In the WAC and WAVES a few women were classified and assigned as biologists. At least two WAVES who had majored in biology in college were assigned as instructors, one as an aviation physiologist, and another as biological instructor in connection with the low pressure and chill chamber. One also served both as an assistant bacteriology laboratory officer and as an instructor of corpsmen. Others, with sufficient bacteriological training although they had majored in general biology, were used as serologists or bacteriologists in penicillin and other laboratories.

Biologists also felt the repercussions of the tremendous wartime demand for scientists in other fields, particularly in medicine and chemistry. As one authority put it, "The colleges and universities have been stripped of many of their physicists, chemists, engineers, even mathematicians, but the biologists have been left to teach medical students or have been used in scientific studies of agriculture, health, and nutrition. Biology is in time of war less applied than these other subjects, but it is no less important” (8).

As men biologists were drawn into military service, the opportunities for women increased. The number of professional women, most of them trained in biology, employed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, for example, increased from 10 in 1940 to 35 during the war. One junior biologist there worked on the effect of DDT, the new insecticide, on wildlife. More biological aids were also employed, like the three women hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In industry, 2 additional firms of the 78 with industrial research laboratories visited by a representative of the Women's Bureau were added to the 4 which had employed women biologists before the war. One was a food company which hired a biologist as a technician; the other a manufacturer of containers which employed one in its central research laboratory. Meanwhile, the number of women trained in biology employed in the other 4 firms had increased, although exact figures for the two periods were not available.

The wartime demand at the laboratory technician and aid levels increased so much that some universities offered special 2-year programs to train women as biological aids or as medical laboratory aids. The programs included inorganic and organic chemistry, quantitative analysis, animal biology, English, mathematics, and biological techniques.

The wartime occupations of 94 young women who graduated with bachelor's degrees in biology during the war from 5 schools in the East, Middle West, and South indicate a decline in graduate study and an increase in industrial laboratory work, as compared with the prewar activities of a similar group. (See table 9.)

However, a considerable number of women who major in biology never enter scientific work, even under the pressures of wartime. A follow-up study in 1944, by a large eastern college, of 48 girls it had graduated 5 years earlier with a major in biology showed that almost one-third of them were married and not employed. One-fourth were engaged in business or clerical activities, including secretarial work, accounting, advertising, and retailing. Only one-fifth were using their scientific training directly in their work. Another one-sixth, however, were in occupations in which biology is useful as background, such as nursing, psychology, personnel, and social work.

Earnings and Advancement

The earnings of those trained in biology are similar to those described under zoology. (See p. 3-52.) Advancement depends largely upon graduate work which, in turn, means specialization in botany, zoology, or bacteriology. Occupations in the health services, which also require further training, offer alternative avenues for development.

Organizations

In 1946 the recently organized American Biological Society had 420 members of whom 47, or 11 percent, were women. Any professional biologist sponsored by two members may join this association.

There are a number of organizations which include zoologists, botanists, as well as general biologists among their members, like the Ecological Society of America and the American Society of Naturalists. The former, in 1947, had 51 women members out of a total of 700. Thirty-five of these women ecologists were employed in colleges and universities, 17 of them specializing in plants, 17 in animals, and 1 in both. Four were teaching both plant and animal science in high school. Twelve others were plant ecologists engaged in government or industrial research, or other activities. In 1946, the American Society of Naturalists, which elects to membership only

those who have made a research contribution in natural science, had 38 women members. Most of them had a doctor's degree in a field such as: embryology, histology, anatomy, botany, or zoology. The membership of the Genetics Society of America brings together plant geneticists as well as those who are interested in the breeding of animals and the heredity of human beings. Among its 604 members in 1946 were 69 women, divided about evenly between plant and animal genetics.

A number of societies which together include some 3,000 nutritionists, physiologists, endocrinologists, pathologists, immunologists, pharmacologists, and biochemists, constitute the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Further evidence of the efforts toward co-ordination in a rapidly developing field is the Union of Biological Societies, created to facilitate co-operation among more than 80 organizations in the biological sciences, among which there is, of course, much overlapping of membership as well as mutuality of interest.

The Outlook

The demand for college women who have majored in biology, as shown by placements in the early postwar period and scattered reports from college placement bureaus, will continue to be large from laboratories in medical schools, public health departments, hospitals, and medical research centers. One bureau reported that those trained in biology were difficult to place except in medical school or hospital laboratories or on occasional orders received from research foundations. As competition from industry for science graduates decreased at the end of the war, the hospitals and medical centers again became more exacting in their requirements for research laboratory jobs, preferring those with training in physics or chemistry as well as in biology. On high school teaching jobs, for which occasional requests were received, mathematics was the combination subject most frequently required. In some city school systems, a master's degree in education was required for a high school teaching position. A variety of science and training in mathematics and related subjects were usually preferred to pronounced specialization.

Although most of the girls preferred industrial laboratory jobs, there were only occasional orders of this type, usually from companies manufacturing biological products, including pharmaceuticals and foods. There was a continuing demand, however, for technical librarians and literature searchers.

The kinds of jobs held in 1946 by 95 young women who were graduated with a bachelor's degree with a major in biology during the war years reflected the decline in the demand for them in industrial labora

tory work. (See table 9.) The other noticeable difference was the apparent continued trend away from the study of medicine or nursing and a resumption of graduate study in science. But the numbers were too few to assume that these trends were general.

Figure 18.-A technician with a bachelor's degree in science using microbiological procedure in an industrial laboratory to measure pantothenic acid in feedstuffs.

Some of the women trained in biology who worked in industry were in chemistry rather than biological laboratories. This was especially the case during the war. However, biological techniques are required in some chemical companies, particularly in those manufacturing pharmaceuticals and in some engaged in food processing. In 1946, 39 women were found doing professional work under the title of biologist in the 78 firms having industrial research laboratories visited by a representative of the Women's Bureau. Three of these women were in microbiology. There was an even larger number, 57, employed as technicians or assistants on work for which a college degree was not required, but for which 2 or 3 years of college science including both biology and chemistry were preferred. Two women with bachelor's degrees in biology were employed in 2 of the 18 commercial