Opportunities for women in early genetics
There is an interesting historical piece in the current issue of Nature Reviews Genetics (8, 897-902; 2007) by Marsha Richmond of Wayne State University, Detroit, entitled Opportunities for Women in Early Genetics. From the abstract:
"Although women have long been engaged in science, their participation in large numbers was limited until they gained access to higher education in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900 coincided with the availability of a well trained female scientific workforce, and women entered the new field in significant numbers. Exploring their activities reveals much about the early development of the field that soon revolutionized biology, and about the role of gender in the social organization of science."
See here for the complete article.