How cool the female professor can be! Gender in the agricultural sciences
By Dr. Margreet van der Burg, Gender Studies Wageningen University - Maria Goeppert-Mayer Guest Professor, University Göttingen
Lecture in English
Entrance Free
Margreet van der Burg will show the range of strategies, hard lessons, losses and successes of the famous and rather unknown women scientists in the Dutch agricultural sciences. Their life histories show patterns and borderlines of juggling with multiple identities, of trying to fit into surrounding social expectations and of living their personal history led by their scientific mission and passion. The solid working boots of famous Ms Jekyll and the tall posture of the cigar smoking Professor Johanna Westerdijk have not led to a status of role model. The woman doctor who became professor after having married her professor was never presented as shining example. Copying bold behaviour of male colleagues showed to be a risk. How far did we go beyond the image of the gracefulness of English women tending flowers or the illustrations of fine hands of women working on experiments in concordance with their fine manners? What was actually meant with academia is not for sissies? How do our mental maps blur our views and actions? What do we consider as decisive, what do we think a woman doctor should do or leave in order to improve her chances, or act alike?
The anecdotes and biographical observations also reflect the other side of how gentle male professors and scientists can be. It will be all contextualised in recent research on gender and science, especially on the culture of scientific organisations. It will provide fascinating and challenging material for further scientific and personal exploration, comparison and discussion in the second part of the evening and after.
Dr. Margreet van der Burg holds a tenure position for rural gender history / studies at Wageningen University and is currently appointed Maria Goeppert-Mayer Guest Professor at the Georg-University Göttingen, Germany. She wrote the university wide-spread book on women students, graduates and scientists at Wageningen College/ University (1918-2003) in a project together with Marian Bos-Boers and former women students and scientists. Besides her (historical) work on representation, education and labour of women in agriculture, she is engaged in international (historical) research and activities concerning gender (mainstreaming) and the agricultural sciences.