00:02:42.500i was prepared to yeah i was prepared to twist your arm i didn't have to but i had like a
00:02:48.100powerpoint ready just in case you were like i can i can prove the justification for why we need to
00:02:52.300do this and then i was like oh you want to talk about a female female stem figure in history yeah
00:02:57.780let's do this and you were just like damn i didn't even have to use i know i was still ready that's
00:03:03.200what i did for being prepared is i never get to actually use it and then when i'm not prepared i0.58
00:03:07.000need it i know she's she's my the only person who keeps anything going like any projects going
00:03:11.840because she just makes spreadsheets for me to make sure everything gets it's done
00:03:15.080speaking of projects wink wink nudge nudge what we're working on at the moment you guys don't
00:03:20.760get to know about it yet yet maybe eventually uh but yeah so so we're working uh talking about
00:03:28.080mariah mitchell today uh was obviously a huge figure in the history of stem for women history
00:03:33.020of stem in general i hate to say like oh she's just a figure for women in stem because she's
00:03:37.460important just generally speaking but uh since i do talk about women's history here she is big in
00:03:44.620the history of women in stem um so yeah how did you end up becoming sort of fascinated with this
00:03:51.060particular woman as a hyperfixation so my thesis was on primarily the astrolabe which is this
00:03:59.100amazing um really the first kind of handheld analog computer um primarily using uh the celestial
00:04:07.920sphere and celestial navigation and and through that i studied a woman named hypatia of alexandria
00:04:13.920from the fifth century ce and and how she really just embodied women in astronomy
00:04:22.020and then kind of followed that line um because she you know not just her but
00:04:27.660she's one that we most know of um starts paving this way for for women in astronomy and I just
00:04:35.320kept following those threads uh which led me to Mariah Mitchell and I just instantly resonated1.00
00:04:42.300with her um and I think a lot of women do or will because she she achieved a lot obviously but she
00:04:50.740she was a woman who wasn't afraid to take up space and wear many hats um and her resume boasts
00:04:56.960things like astronomer and naturalist and writer and educator and activist um she wasn't afraid to
00:05:03.460embody all of those multitudes equally and i think so often women in the workforce and and it's
00:05:11.060completely justified um but we tend to get very focused on the importance of of picking the thing
00:05:16.520um and that becomes a way to define ourselves and and to prove that we deserve to be in the room
00:05:22.020so you know you may be like very ultra specific um of maybe you won't say like i'm just a historian
00:05:30.480but you will say i'm my research focuses on um which heck yeah wear those accolades i'm not
00:05:38.620saying that um but just the fact that i i feel like so often especially for me i i feel guilty
00:05:45.180if I have my hands in too many things right yeah which is it is really difficult sometimes so I'm
00:05:52.520right now working in an interdisciplinary department where like that's that is the
00:05:56.580title of our department is the interdisciplinary institute of the humanities which is like super
00:06:01.680confusing for people they're like we don't know what that means what do you do and it's like if
00:06:05.460a man introduced themselves saying they're working in that I don't think they would get the same
00:06:08.980pushback where it's like oh yeah I just I study things and I study how all this stuff is interconnected0.99
00:06:13.540connected and uh and amazing but when a woman does it they're like yeah but what do you study1.00
00:06:18.020and it it may it drives you a little crazy it's hard to it's hard to define what you study um1.00
00:06:24.240and you shouldn't have to like I study how the world is connected that's that's what I do uh
00:06:29.660which sounds vague but it's really not so yeah I like I like that I like that she did all of these
00:06:34.320different things and was all of these things at once or at least in one lifetime which is nice
00:06:40.060Yes. And she was proud of it and wasn't afraid to give herself those titles, which she deserved. And I think, you know, we put these limitations on ourselves, whether that's personal or societal, it's both. But it's just simply not true. Like, we can contain multitudes if we wish.
00:06:57.260yeah um now that to say like you don't have to collect titles you know to yeah to be worthy um
00:07:05.700but it's more of the sense that our possibilities as humans are endless yeah you can be more than
00:07:11.660one thing at once uh yeah we we can contain we can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time
00:07:16.640not everyone can so it's a skill it's a skill set put that on your resume put that on your
00:07:23.980linkedin i can yeah i can walk and shoot at the same time put that on a t-shirt but yeah so we
00:07:31.560were talking uh and when we previously recorded this we we were talking a lot about her upbringing
00:07:36.080um to start with which i think is really interesting for people who have been listening
00:07:40.120to the podcast prior to this uh because i have talked a lot about about quakerism uh and the
00:07:46.400the ideas of the of the quaker society in the you know the 1600s the 1700s in america and so
00:07:52.580she is a person who is born into a quaker family in the 19th century and that shapes a lot of of
00:08:00.060what she does through her life right yeah exactly um there's this cultural acceptance within the
00:08:07.080quaker society of um equality and education and beyond that um you know her her parents really
00:08:15.920walked the walk of of what they believed um as most Quakers did but her her father really takes
00:08:24.500her under his wing um and and trains her in this very mathematical um and academic mind and and
00:08:33.500educates her the same way that he would have educated any of his sons um so because of that
00:08:40.380at age 14 I mean this is 1830s she was being trusted to rotate chronometers for whaling ships
00:08:52.120so a chronometer was invented in the 18th century when sailors were having trouble calculating
00:09:00.600longitude and that can be just absolutely disastrous and it's this highly precise
00:09:06.340timepiece that's really vital for calculating a ship's position using celestial navigation
00:09:12.720and GMT together. So trusting a 14-year-old girl to ensure its accuracy is, it's no small thing.
00:09:21.840Yeah, trusting a 14-year-old to get dressed in the morning is a small thing sometimes. So
00:09:26.720certainly trusting her within the entirety of like the safety of a group of people trying to
00:09:32.820cross the ocean or trying to navigate the ocean is it's wild i i god bless them for giving her
00:09:39.080that opportunity she clearly knew how to do it so it wasn't a bad idea but you know not many people
00:09:44.640would probably give a 14 year old that chance regardless of male or female at this point
00:09:48.720exactly and when you think of it in terms of whaling ships i mean this isn't just
00:09:52.760the sailors lives that are depending this is this entire family livelihoods
00:09:57.860That that would have depended on her to get this right. So it's it's no small matter. And she obviously does it well. And it's incredibly evident that she's just.
00:10:11.760her mathematical mind is otherworldly it's it's impressive um and she contains this love of of
00:10:22.540pushing forward and and getting better and learning and i think to do what she does throughout her
00:10:28.840life you really have to have a love uh for her academia um yeah or it just would not have worked
00:10:34.360uh and and she takes that into even from um early adulthood really just wanting to make this
00:10:42.180accessible so she becomes um the nantucket anthony i'm's librarian and really opens up
00:10:50.640uh access to to knowledge um to her community and i think that that's that's such a beautiful thing
00:10:58.160that that one of her first jobs is this access to education and we'll see that string you know
00:11:05.780throughout her life yeah she really she wasn't just interested in the science or the math
00:11:10.940obviously was but so much of her life is dedicated to access and making other people have that
00:11:18.360ability to have that same educational ability and quite frankly sometimes academics are way too
00:11:25.500obsessed with like um keeping keeping control of those things because it makes them feel special
00:11:31.180yeah it's that you know we're not going to share this this knowledge we want it paywalled we want
00:11:35.660it kind of a little bit more um distanced from the public because it makes it feel special
00:11:41.120or makes my job feel special and i i don't get that but i know that there are some academics
00:11:46.360who feel that way so there's also this like huge distrust um in in community minds of well they
00:11:53.740wouldn't be able to understand it so we shouldn't give them access to it well of course i can
00:11:58.160understand it if they don't have access and you don't explain it to them i don't know the cycle
00:12:01.940the venn diagram is a circle um but yeah so she she from a very early start in her career
00:12:08.540is really laying this foundation of how she feels about the equality of education um holistically
00:12:16.260and then from there she ends up working with her father for the u.s coast survey
00:12:20.640and she's widely considered the first woman employed by the u.s government wow and this was
00:12:28.660they didn't do that often no and then this is the first woman within like an academic salary1.00
00:12:33.600position um so her job was to calculate astronomical tables for celestial navigation0.65
00:12:41.080so she's still working within that that navigation um area and she studied primarily venus
00:12:50.640which i think is so cool um and it's serendipitous in in a way because i mean venus is obviously in
00:12:58.820ancient mythology holds feminine power um but scientifically it's our third brightest celestial
00:13:05.880object in the night sky and because of that it holds very predictable patterns of motion and it
00:13:12.080makes it consistently reliable for navigation yeah i i'm gonna take the chance to make the same joke
00:13:19.120i made the first first version of this recording which is that i i find it awesome that venus the
00:13:24.300feminine uh celestial body is the one that's good at helping us navigate since men can't ask for
00:13:29.180directions it's a it's just a it's i don't know it's a very stereotypical joke but it's not wrong
00:13:36.980it's one that has to be made i mean everyone has to be thinking of it yeah you just have it would
00:13:42.780be a missed opportunity yeah and i always when i was saying but venus having feminine the feminine
00:13:48.140like attributes to it it always makes me think of that that book that came out like in i don't
00:13:52.080know it's famous like the 80s or 90s men are from mars women are from venus uh right it's just that
00:13:56.940this little thing goes together i think which is hilarious yes we're very much venus gets its uh
00:14:03.240very much is connected to the feminine body and the ideas of what women womanhood is uh so yeah
00:14:08.760i think it's it's very fitting that that's what she was navigating with it's dependable it's
00:14:13.780reliable it's consistent you can keep time for navigation yeah um you can calculate the altitude
00:14:22.600above the horizon um with it and from there you can get a ship's latitude um it's predictable
00:14:29.760pattern of motion it makes it a fantastic timekeeper um do with that what you will
00:14:36.660and it also it helped understand um a ship's lunar distance so it really puts into context
00:14:45.200that again that importance of mariah's work and in this capacity regarding data sets it's
00:14:50.640the they weren't just giving her like pencil pusher work yeah which like you might think
00:14:57.900that just because she's she's working with the same group their father is working with like oh
00:15:01.980they're like oh well he wants to give her a job so we'll give her some little like secretarial job
00:15:05.920just to make him happy no they they saw her skill set and they said ah let's give her a really
00:15:10.700important job she she can definitely handle this exactly exactly it it held incredible significance
00:15:18.000it wasn't a token position at all um so like an astronomical table for instance it facilitates
00:15:26.260the prediction of celestial positions um including those of like the sun and moon and planets
00:15:30.680against fixed stars so it's a data structure that's um commonly formatted within rows
00:15:38.500representing specific entities and then columns representing properties such as right ascension
00:15:44.180and declination which is our celestial latitude and longitude um and then also the magnitude so
00:15:51.180our our first that we have our our first example of this kind of astronomical table data structure
00:15:59.820is from ptolemy in the second century ce in alexandria egypt i mean this is this is like
00:16:05.340the og stuff this is what we've been using like we've been using this to to navigate for like
00:16:12.000since written history at the very least we know uh so she's she's doing like very important age
00:16:18.060old work that's been keeping people alive navigating for for centuries yes yes i love
00:16:24.880data sets you get to nerd i love it we're also we're also this is why we get along so well we're
00:16:33.500both just nerds we are both nerds fantastic and i love it i'm gonna make sure that this is still
00:16:39.200recording it is it is still recording we have to double check every now i keep going back to look
00:16:44.040i'm like i'm traumatized now we're so traumatized like just leave it leave it up to me to cause an
00:16:51.120entire hours worth of recording to just be poof we didn't even do it it's fine
00:16:58.620hitting back um so she's already doing this incredible work uh but it was october 1st 1847
00:17:06.860that arguably changes her life um and it's it's this turning point that really just solidifies
00:17:14.520her mark in in science um that night mariah mitchell identified what would become known
00:17:23.280as miss mitchell's comet she discovers a comet i love that i want to have something named after me
00:17:30.620but i don't know i don't think it'll be anything as impressive as a comet so and i think we've all
00:17:34.680seen i feel like we've all seen pictures of a comet so we're like oh that's cool but the
00:17:40.380significance of it especially um you know the fact that she's doing this before photographic
00:17:47.400astronomy is becoming standard it did exist but like before it was standard it's it's detecting
00:17:53.060a new comet i mean that required extensive familiarity with the celestial sphere and
00:17:58.780the ability to discern like extremely subtle deviations from known star fields i mean this
00:18:04.060is exactly what she's doing um when she's focusing on on venus uh with those data sets
00:18:11.840so she's already equipped to do this um and then can i like can i tell you what a comment is
00:18:18.780yes please share it again i love it okay i actually i actually do love i love this
00:18:23.700how excited you get about this please do it again comments are so cool okay yes they look cool
00:18:30.060but the way that they are formed is just it's mind-blowing okay so a comet is composed primarily
00:18:36.380of volatile ices like water and then frozen gases of carbon dioxide and methane and ammonia
00:18:42.660and that is mixed with dust and rocky material and in its dormant state far from the sun a comet
00:18:49.720is essentially a frozen nucleus typically only just like a few miles across but it's this in
00:18:57.500it's highly um elliptical orbit will bring it inward towards the sun and then when that happens
00:19:03.100something super cool happens the solar radiation heats the surface and then the ice begins to
00:19:11.020sublimate meaning it transforms directly from a solid state to a gas state and that releases dust
00:19:18.700forming a surrounding cloud and we call this the coma so that ionization of gases and then
00:19:27.280the pressure of the solar wind produce one or more tails you know that like very distinctive
00:19:33.100tail that we see coming off a comet and that tail this is the part that really blows my mind
00:19:38.780it will always stream away from the sun regardless what the comet's direction is
00:19:45.940um i think that's really really cool yeah i think that's so cool because it's it's a different like
00:19:51.260before you told me this I always thought of meteors and comets as kind of the same like the
00:19:57.780same concept and of course but a meteor it's like you know like it's the the tail of a meteor is a
00:20:03.960very different thing than what we're seeing with the tail of a comet because the tail of a meteor
00:20:07.460just follows which direction the meteor is is going right like when you're kind of seeing that
00:20:11.740and so it's a different different thing entirely and I had no idea that comets and meteors were
00:20:16.460that different so they're not even remotely the same thing completely not even not even a little
00:20:23.900bit um i'm not the science one we'll talk about meteors in another episode we'll do that a
00:20:29.380different time yes not the same thing um they're not even cousins not even cousins but i love that
00:20:36.980for you um yeah so i'm not the science one okay no one said i was the science one so i've learned
00:20:43.840something today uh about this so um so yeah so like the tail will always go away from the sun
00:20:51.260regardless of where it's traveling and so these features make comets uniquely identifiable
00:20:57.520and once their orbital path um are measured it it can allow astronomers to determine uh things
00:21:05.360like their velocity or their spatial orientation uh relative to earth okay very cool they're so
00:21:12.800cool and i'm not the only one who thinks they're cool um of course not of course not but the king
00:21:18.700of denmark also loved comets he loved astronomy period like it was a hyper fixation for him
00:21:24.280and so he awarded medals um within the scientific community for discoveries like this and he awards
00:21:31.880one to mariah mitchell and this was a distinction that was just usually awarded to male european
00:21:40.100astronomers so this really placed her firmly within the professional scientific circles at the
00:21:45.760time uh when women were rarely acknowledged as contributors period right i love that she was
00:21:53.180getting that like it was like this is a huge opportunity for her to be like ha i can do the
00:21:58.380same thing that you guys can do and uh and do it just as well or even you know possibly even better
00:22:02.840who knows uh but she's doing she's doing the same same work that that these men are doing and getting
00:22:07.800rewarded for. Exactly. It's so cool. And that trajectory just continues. Eventually, she's
00:22:15.740appointed as the first astronomy professor at Bassar College in 1865. And the significance of
00:22:23.120that goes far beyond just the personalized milestone, which is big in its own right. But
00:22:28.520at the time, Bassar was one of the very first institutions in the United States that was
00:22:33.920designed specifically to offer women an education on par with men's colleges like Yale um because
00:22:42.820Yale I'm if you don't know Yale was not always co-ed um it was a men's only institution most of
00:22:51.680most of our educational like the older educational facilities that we have in the U.S. or in Europe
00:22:56.940those were almost always male like male focused and even if they did allow women in
00:23:02.440they allowed them into very specific degree paths or or very specific types of training
00:23:08.480uh because it was the idea was like women are different than men so they are not going to
00:23:12.720succeed in the same fields that men go into they they only need to learn women's stuff
00:23:16.860uh you know like the idea of we go into like the idea like oh secretarial work we can teach
00:23:23.000them how to type but we're not going to teach them how to do anything more complicated than that
00:23:26.420because they wouldn't succeed in that anyway um so that very much is a major issue and so vassar
00:23:32.720being like hey we're just going to teach them all the same things at the same level that men are
00:23:36.960being taught it's pretty pretty wild for for a university to do that at the time yes exactly
00:23:42.940and then to focus specifically on women um because like the the harvard college observatory
00:23:48.620um eventually follows suit um but again just an entire college that was focused on the academic
00:23:57.480rigor for women is an experiment it was a social experiment of the time and and she
00:24:05.420plays a defining role in that um which is i mean so so cool however and we were talking i'm
00:24:14.960obviously we're talking about this because we tried to film this before. But even then,
00:24:19.320so it's this amazing thing in the equality of education and access to education and women's
00:24:25.880equality. But Mariah Mitchell is still fighting for equal pay. It's wild. It is an incredibly1.00
00:24:32.400wild thing. And when I was reading your notes, it blew my mind that you have a organization,
00:24:37.360a university specifically structured around the idea that women should have equal access to
00:24:42.400education, equity, and equality for women, and they're still paying the male professors more.
00:24:48.700And like I said before, I'm going to have a whole episode on the issue of women's pay gap0.90
00:24:53.920and how that's accumulated as a norm in society over time. So I'm sure I'll be revisiting this
00:25:00.800issue in that episode. But it is something that is just, it's so ingrained in our society that
00:25:07.500even a university at this level that is specifically created for the equality of women was0.97
00:25:12.800like oh yeah we just we won't pay the women as much it's that's just normal that's just the way
00:25:16.540that's just the way society is um and it's yeah it drives me insane but it's very baked into our
00:25:23.220culture yeah it's so systemic um but like yeah it's it's wild to think of that is that this
00:25:31.420this was supposed to be this incredible experiment and we're still dealing with these very deep
00:25:36.640rooted systemic issues um but it existed as as a liberal arts college which means that it was
00:25:45.560complete with laboratories and observatories and rigorous mathematics and philosophy
00:25:49.460and science was included and it's the farthest thing from a finishing school in these terms1.00
00:25:56.000which was what women's colleges were uh for the most part all the way through you know into like0.99
00:26:02.560the 1950s yeah um and and this meant that mitchell wasn't simply stepping into just a new role um0.85
00:26:12.720under her leadership at the vassar observatory she became not just a facilitator of a teaching
00:26:21.380space but was creating an academically rigorous research environment um so students were learning
00:26:29.140to calculate star positions and measure planetary transits and compare observational data the same
00:26:35.740way that their counterparts at men's colleges were expected to do they didn't get off easy
00:26:40.540she held them to that standard yeah absolutely I think that's such a I'm sure there were the
00:26:47.300occasional students who went into this college still thinking that it was going to be sort of
00:26:51.880an easy oh I took this for fun like I you know I'm literally just a girl I don't want to you know I
00:26:57.000don't want to have to do all this math and science I'm just doing this for whatever reason but I
00:27:02.340think it probably was probably a relief for some of them to go into a academic field go into an
00:27:07.420educational facility and not be talked down to or or condescended to or expected to do less just
00:27:15.340because they were a woman right because we still have that we still see that today where you know
00:27:19.780you go in and it's like well they're you know you're in the stem field but uh you know you're
00:27:24.840a woman. So you're not expected to succeed as much as the men at that level. So I can imagine
00:27:31.600a certain level of relief from the kind of women who would want to go to this university saying,0.99
00:27:35.940oh, okay, you're expecting something from me. I'm going to rise to the occasion.0.71
00:27:40.500Exactly. And to be seen as an astronomer, because most women who were able to break1.00
00:27:46.300out professionally within this field were computers. And that is amazing in and of itself.0.85
00:27:54.840uh being a computer like not computer um but but computing um mathematical mathematical equations
00:28:03.120um spectrographs which it's like a whole other thing with calculating um like light uh from stars
00:28:13.800um being seen as a whole just as an astronomer uh was was a big deal yeah you're not just somebody
00:28:22.920who creates data for real astronomers you are the astronomer yeah exactly exactly and what's crucial
00:28:30.040is that mitchell's scientific work existed alongside her her social principles and was
00:28:36.660not apart from them so her work in in activism is sometimes framed as like a side note to her
00:28:44.640scientific endeavors and it's a shame because like as we can see of her even just in her role
00:28:52.820um as a professor it it's central to how she understood her role in everything um yeah she
00:29:01.100didn't see education and science and civil engagement as separate realms and to her they
00:29:06.620were all connected by the same principle of intellectual equality and that really stirs back
00:29:12.100to her her Quaker roots yeah and and as I was saying before Quakerism it's not it is a full
00:29:22.060life philosophy it is not just something that you go to church on Sunday and and you know and sit
00:29:29.940there and listen to a listen to a sermon and then go home there isn't even sermons in a in a Quaker
00:29:35.340church uh you know it's it's the concept of what what quakerism is is completely different than
00:29:41.600than what any of us who grew up in like in christian backgrounds um would expect from from
00:29:47.220that angle but it is it's about learning to speak and to share what you believe and not just within
00:29:54.900the context of your meeting house but to go out and share those ideas with the world it's it's a
00:30:00.480is a huge part of why quakers got into so much trouble back in the day uh because they the entire0.50
00:30:08.000concept of it is if you want to just stay in your little quaker community and practice what you
00:30:12.780preach there um we can all ignore you we can pretend that you're just some weird cult over0.98
00:30:18.200there and not not deal with you uh the problem is is that quakers continuously came into society0.88
00:30:25.100and said you're doing this wrong uh you're you know slavery is wrong uh subjugating women and0.86
00:30:32.260making them second-class citizens is wrong this is not what should be happening in a in a christian
00:30:37.700society we don't believe in this and they would go into these go into into puritan areas or
00:30:43.900catholic areas and say hey you're not you're not very good christians actually uh and that
00:30:50.260head of tendency to piss people off unfortunately uh back in the 17th and 18th centuries so uh i
00:30:56.620mean she's just carrying forward a long-standing tradition within quakerism which is going into
00:31:03.340the public area and saying hey you're doing it wrong here's a better way let's you know let's
00:31:09.060focus on um having people who are skilled at a job do the job or do the education not just on
00:31:16.880uh focus on what's in their pants as a as proof of their intellectual capability um which i love
00:31:23.400i love that about quakerism i'm not a quaker but i do feel a very keen uh connection with with them
00:31:30.820on that level uh to the point where i'm planning a little bit of a little trip to the to to one of
00:31:36.080the quaker uh kind of holy sites here in england um probably at some point so one of the ones i
00:31:43.540talked about in my episode of on quakers um because it's huge this the mother of quakerism
00:31:49.120had uh is on the has her home uh on the on the west coast of uh of england i'm on the east coast
00:31:58.060so it's gonna be a little bit of a trek to go over there but maybe maybe over um maybe over
00:32:03.900spring break i don't know we'll see yeah yeah and you know obviously mariah mitchell focuses on1.00
00:32:12.380gender equality. But to her, equality would have been holistic and all-encompassing.1.00
00:32:21.740So the Mitchell family home participated in the island's abolition network. And then in the
00:32:27.760decades leading up to the Civil War, she attended and supported anti-slavery lectures, many of them
00:32:34.140hosted by figures like Frederick Douglass. So she really did have this understanding of
00:32:40.340of equality needing to be all-encompassing um but she does expand into the women's rights
00:32:48.900movement um as she becomes a prominent educator and and realizes that she's placed in in a position
00:32:57.880um where she can really let her voice be heard within this movement um especially regarding
00:33:04.960academic equality right yeah so she worked alongside women such as elizabeth katie stanton
00:33:14.420um and she argued that women's intellectual equality demanded political equality lucy stone0.93
00:33:20.740whose insistence on women keeping their legal identities and that resonated strongly with
00:33:26.480mitchell's own views on autonomy um and she collaborated with julia ward howell through the
00:33:34.060organizational networks that supported women's conventions and education reform um and these
00:33:40.600roles they weren't symbolic it was administrative and intellectual and persistent and she delivered
00:33:48.020talks at women's congresses and published essays on the necessity of women in scientific fields
00:33:54.320and she worked to create a model um for women's professional associations she pushed directly0.99
00:34:01.760for salary equity, like we talked about, and confronted the board when she discovered that0.92
00:34:07.980male professors earned more than their comparable work. I imagine that that was not a very fun
00:34:14.280conversation for the board, probably. That conversation did not go over well. They were
00:34:21.900like, oh no, we don't like being confronted on this, but she does not seem like a person who
00:34:27.680would have gone easy on them on this no i don't think so and and that was because1.00
00:34:31.860every time mariah mariah mitchell uses her position of power to push um and and advocate1.00
00:34:39.900for for women's rights she does it in a sense of um just like data um and and and looking at it1.00
00:34:52.060from this very rational point of view so she argued that if women are capable of rigorous0.98
00:34:57.620academic achievement then their labor deserves to be equally compensated it just is very black
00:35:03.600and white like hello this shouldn't even be a conversation if i'm doing the same job this guy
00:35:09.660over here is doing i should be paid more i should be paid the same amount he's getting there's just
00:35:13.840no excuse for that uh and it is it's it's for in academia there's nothing more shaming than
00:35:19.900somebody being like the data proves that you're wrong like the data you're doing you're doing a
00:35:24.940wrong thing based solely on you know social convention or what you think is normal not
00:35:31.640based on the data and i think that that's incredibly shaming in that in that arena of the
00:35:37.180world exactly i mean stan argues that women's exclusion from higher learning produces this
00:35:42.580false narrative of inferiority and that that was intentional and um stone insists that education
00:35:48.920and political rights were inseparable and so does mariah mitchell um we have writings of hers where
00:35:55.400she talks about denying women's advanced education dwarfs the mind and that suppressing women's
00:36:02.040intellectual growth was not just a loss individually but just society as a whole
00:36:07.860and so we have this this clear through line for mitchell where women must have full access
00:36:16.960to the tools of education and employment and community and civic voice and she understood
00:36:25.780that the academy can can either reinforce inequality or or become a site of resistance
00:36:34.260against it and and she chooses the latter um specifically for her and her observatory and
00:36:39.960she surrounds herself uh with those women who are doing the same and models that for her students0.64
00:36:46.500as well which is such a huge thing at modeling of that for students uh you know as i mentioned
00:36:52.980in my episode on quakers the ability for a a generational ability for people to learn to
00:37:00.840stand up and speak on equality is so important because you have like i mentioned in my episode
00:37:06.140on the quakers where a daughter sees her mother doing this she's going to naturally think that
00:37:10.980that's the way to do it like i'm i'm gonna do this same thing for a student who sees their
00:37:16.040teacher doing this work uh especially in politics and activism as alongside her her normal work in
00:37:23.120academia they're going to see that as the natural normal thing for them to do with their own careers
00:37:28.360and that's such an important thing to to you know it feeds into this generational change that we
00:37:33.800want we want to have happen so exactly and then mariah mitchell takes it a step further and and
00:37:40.860becomes a founding member of an organization called the association for the advancement of1.00
00:37:45.320women. And this is founded in 1873. And it wasn't like a social club or like a symbolic community,
00:37:52.300which I think a lot of people, like if you hear that big name, kind of think it's this kind of
00:37:57.520symbolic thing. But it was an early national organization. And it focused on expanding
00:38:03.280women's opportunities in education and science and industry. But they did it, again, through this
00:38:10.600rational way um and emotions and activism are they have their place um and there is an importance
00:38:21.020and there's a role in that uh but what this organization um really does is put a backbone
00:38:28.980to that of presenting data and research to back that up and it's so much i was saying before it's
00:38:36.500very important for that to be a factor because too many people that's that's the language they
00:38:42.380speak uh or at least it's the language they use to justify what they're doing and it's it's much
00:38:47.920harder for them to continue that justification of saying women shouldn't contribute or women
00:38:52.400don't contribute uh so we don't have to emphasize their education or their training or allowing them0.77
00:38:58.280to work in the public sphere because what's the point right uh when you confront them with the0.98
00:39:03.560data and say actually if you you can see that women are just as much a contribution to society0.92
00:39:09.140intellectually as men um it makes it a lot hard to justify keeping women out of out of these roles
00:39:15.540even if like it shouldn't we shouldn't need to justify that everyone should have access to these
00:39:20.140to these things uh because that's just common sense let people have equal access but the data
00:39:26.140is important for some people exactly yeah exactly a lot of times um especially in academia we think1.00
00:39:33.240numbers and by doing this it it bridged this this thing between the women's right move rights
00:39:41.680movement and then the emerging professionalization of women's intellectual labor so she was the
00:39:50.900organizations one of their most visible scientific voices and they would bring her on um with leading
00:39:58.980reformers across disciplines and this included you know the women that i mentioned before
00:40:05.100and including mary libermore and women educators from institutions across the country as well
00:40:13.140and it made it unusual for the time because by doing this there was this wide range of topics
00:40:20.780it wasn't just focused on women in science or women in astronomy they spoke on all issues
00:40:27.660Not even just suffrage. So they're looking at things like the inequality in public health, labor conditions, education reform, access to scientific training, property rights, and the representation of women in academic societies.
00:40:45.060And I think that that's incredibly important because it shows this understanding that it's all interconnected.
00:40:51.280yes there's so many systems that are created without women in mind or created intentionally
00:40:59.200to to keep women out of them uh and so much of our like we're still going through this today
00:41:03.940which is that women aren't taken seriously in medical by doctors they aren't taken seriously0.73
00:41:08.160when they're when they have complaints uh and things like just just the fact that crash test1.00
00:41:13.620dummies are created based on male male body types and shapes right where women aren't even considered
00:41:20.840in the research and it's mind boggling and just and anger inducing right uh because it's like oh
00:41:28.420we're just not even going to focus on women's existence in in major public issues uh because
00:41:34.500why would we do that men are more important we'll just we'll just focus the research around them
00:41:38.220yeah it enrages me it enraged these women in this time too and it's ridiculous that this is still
00:41:47.680something that we're still having to talk about um right we're we're 150 years ish out and it's
00:41:55.240like really we're still having to argue about this exactly i mean mariah mitchell put it perfectly
00:42:01.420that when women are diminished from scientific fields the field is diminished because you're1.00
00:42:10.780alienating and excluding half the population like it's just common sense um so she took that and1.00
00:42:19.280and she chaired committees and delivered papers and pushed for the idea that women should be
00:42:24.680recognized as contributors to astronomy and mathematics not because it was novel but just0.51
00:42:30.780because it was rational, just because it made logical sense. And so she centered her talks
00:42:41.120on the intellectual and economic consequences of restricting women's education, especially in0.99
00:42:47.760these fields. And she argued that women's scientific participation was not an aspirational
00:42:54.440concept. It was a practical necessity. So if society benefited from discoveries and innovation0.86
00:43:01.220and research, which we do, it would just prove to reason that excluding women from those endeavors1.00
00:43:07.680was a deliberate choice to impoverish knowledge. Yeah. More minds working on an issue1.00
00:43:15.360is better. They're coming at it from different angles. They have different perspectives,
00:43:20.700different different capabilities and that is going to improve the system overall and it doesn't even0.98
00:43:27.540have to be that they're working on women's stuff like that you know women's issues uh like obviously
00:43:32.360my focus is on women's history but women in any field in history contribute something different
00:43:38.560to to you know to looking at an issue and that's good we want that exactly and not just a bunch of
00:43:47.060the same people expounding on the same ideas over and over again um and so it stands to reason that
00:43:53.920the same thing applies to science i am no scientist but i would say it does cross it does and and the
00:44:00.420organization proves this uh the members compiled reports on women in industry and they would gather
00:44:06.040statistics on educational access and then they would take those findings because we talked about
00:44:11.260how it's important to know the language um and how a lot of times in like academia we think in
00:44:16.820numbers so they would they would take these reports and these statistics to lawmakers and
00:44:22.840institutions and then would distribute them to the public as well um they understood power in this
00:44:30.720approach it mirrored their scientific method they're showing yes we can think in this way um
00:44:38.060don't you dare call us you know overly emotional right we we understand science we understand data
00:44:44.820just as well as you do and we're going to use that david to prove our point to where it can't
00:44:50.420be denied um which is you know the scientific method is observe measure analyze and act
00:44:56.620and that is exactly what they can continue to do and it represents this activism grounded in
00:45:07.060evidence, which Mariah Mitchell was a huge advocate for. And it just created this environment
00:45:15.140of shared commitment to intellectual rigor. And they worked to normalize the idea that women1.00
00:45:23.000belonged, that they just simply belonged. Knowledge expands when barriers fall and access0.91
00:45:33.000only strengthens inquiry. And it's not even just access to education for women. It's the public0.91
00:45:40.680having access. So, you know, things like this podcast, creating and taking down those academic
00:45:47.840barriers and talking about complex topics in a way that is approachable and easy to understand
00:45:54.660so that people can further ask questions yeah that's the my entire purpose is if my job is just
00:46:03.840to like create data and and analyze things and you know write really really dense opaque reports or
00:46:13.460papers that never get read by anybody um it just i mean those things are important i'm not i'm not
00:46:20.580not knocking people who do that and that's their whole that's their whole career but i don't feel
00:46:26.140like it contributes as meaningfully in some ways as as explaining this to the public uh and like
00:46:33.680we were saying before about education it's not about teaching right it's not about teaching
00:46:39.380someone a set of ideas it's about teaching them to think about those ideas and ask questions about
00:46:46.200them so when you go into a situation after listening to my podcast it's something I hope
00:46:52.220people are asking themselves but why like why is it this way how did it get this way how do we stop
00:46:58.200it from being this way not just oh that's just the way it is uh which is how people tend to look at
00:47:04.640you know the world around them they just say oh well that's just you know I don't make as much
00:47:08.920money as a man that's just the way it is they don't think about why it is or or uh ask ask as
00:47:14.200many questions as they possibly could about it so i think it means a lot yeah there's power and
00:47:19.760curiosity i i always tell my students that my job isn't to to teach them what to think is to teach
00:47:25.340them how to think so equipping them with the foundation to ask questions um and to follow
00:47:33.140those questions and i think it's a real disservice and and mariah mitchell did too it's it's a
00:47:40.300disservice when we create a barrier um in access to education yeah we want more people asking
00:47:48.080questions not less exactly which you know we're dealing with a lot of people not wanting people
00:47:53.320to ask questions these days it's uh it's not a popular thing to ask too many questions sometimes
00:47:57.860yeah you can't separate academia as a whole but but in in terms of mariah mitchell you know she
00:48:04.600really believed that you couldn't separate your politics from from science um it's very
00:48:09.600interconnected because of the fact that so much of it is about observing data and asking questions
00:48:15.160um and when we when we do create those barriers or or we start distrust distrusting the public's
00:48:25.580ability to understand complex um topics we only feed into anti-intellectualism so even by being
00:48:33.760like I'm going to separate you are still feeding into you know the the greater political ideology
00:48:40.700so yeah that's I mean yeah that's why I'm obsessed with her
00:48:45.940I think it's a very good reason to be obsessed with her she really bridged that she did and and
00:48:51.700she didn't um there wasn't this like I'm this first and then I'm also an activist it was no
00:48:59.340they have to be one in the same in order for it to mean something and that's incredibly profound
00:49:04.900for me and and it paved the way for so many women after her yeah and you know in our first recording
00:49:12.720i was saying if if the work you're doing isn't meant to uh you know make the world a better
00:49:18.420place or or try to try to improve upon you know whatever our environment our political policies
00:49:25.300our education whatever what are you doing like what what is the point uh it's all just kind of
00:49:31.180self-congratulatory at that point which you know i'm not saying don't be self-congratulatory do
00:49:36.160things that make you feel good and make you feel like you're you know that you enjoy but i do want
00:49:41.040the work i do to mean something a little bit more than just you know publishing an article uh you
00:49:46.440know i want to do something else yeah don't stop at that make it make it mean something uh for for
00:49:52.520people outside of your field not just within your field so and i think mitchell is a good example of
00:49:57.320that for sure so i'm so happy i had you on to talk about her because you know i talked to the
00:50:03.320whole episode of matilda jocelyn gage same same time period same same ethos in a lot of ways um
00:50:09.920but it's just a person i didn't know that much about so i need to have more people on to talk
00:50:14.820about their hyper fixations i think because it's uh it's so much more fun to learn about it from
00:50:19.460somebody else who's you know really really loves the the person or really loves their history and
00:50:25.520what they've done um because i can only do so much with my reading and and things like that uh i i'm
00:50:31.200not i'm never gonna feel as much about a historical figure as somebody who's you know really focused
00:50:36.020on them for a while so yeah yeah i agree thanks so much for coming on thank you for having me0.96
00:50:42.000merida history history history history history what a bitch right1.00