Women of Science Navigating the Hierarchy of “Man"
- Lisa
- 9 hours ago
- 10 min read
by Nina Munteanu
Things About Hierarchy (2026) - 4
"Things About Hierarchy" is a thematic series of articles, sponsored by Reality Skimming Press. Pieces in the series run from Jul-Dec 2026. coordinator Lisa Van Gool at info@realityskimming.com. Query us about contributing for $25 CAD a post at https://facebook.com/relskim or by email at info@realityskimming.com"
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My historical fantasy The Last Summoner, follows the adventures of Vivianne, a fourteen-year-
old baroness in Medieval Prussia (Poland), struggling with her imposed destiny within the
Teutonic Order. Enforced by its ruthless knights, the monastic military state runs a tight, profit-
driven economy, levying heavy taxes and strict legal bonds on peasant labourers.
Despite her elevated position as a baroness, Vivianne has more in common with the serf than
with her ruling male counterpart. Powerless to prevent her arranged marriage by her
intractable father to a cruel foreign mercenary, Vivianne does what any intelligent woman
would do: she bolts. And is chased as a witch to burn at the stake for her ‘witchy’ ideas. A
medieval noblewoman isn’t meant to have original ideas—or choose her own husband or
destiny, for that matter. As a baroness, Vivianne is meant, at fourteen, to run an entire castle
while her knight husband is off warring and whoring and whatever else. But that is the extent of
her powers.
In medieval times, women weren’t considered sufficiently rationale or intelligent to manage
more than a household—even if it was a castle. Certainly not to be educated through the higher
learning of epistemology, phenomenology and philosophy. Erudite thought was considered
beyond their capacities. If women betrayed original or divergent thought—particularly if those
thoughts involved science—well, there was always the stake (the last time a woman was
executed by fire for witchcraft was in 1811 in Prussia).
Little in the hierarchy changed for centuries since the time of Descartes, Bacon, and Kant.
Women were excluded from universities and major scientific societies until the late 1800s; they
were only given the right to vote in the 1900s. “Historically, women in science have been
viewed as exceptions rather than as key players,” says Chiara Biscarini, water engineer and co-
chair of UNESCO Chair on “Water Resources Management and Culture” at the Università per
Stranieri di Perugia, Italy.
Science has favoured men over women for tenureship, authorship, and leadership. All too
often, well into the present day, women have been neglected for authorship in papers for
which they had often significantly contributed. I have witnessed this on several occasions with
women scientists I’ve known during my time in academia.
Women have still managed to make significant contributions to science and other
epistemological and phenomenological pursuits for centuries, receiving little to no credit for
their efforts. For instance, Rosalind Franklin received no recognition for capturing the X-ray
images of the DNA molecule that allowed James Watson and Francis Crick to decipher its
structure. NASA mathematicians—African-American women Katherine Johnson, Dorothy
Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, to name a few—solved the equations that guided the launch of
astronaut John Glen into orbit in 1962. Only after the release of bestselling book Hidden
Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, followed by the film in 2016, did their contributions come to
public light. The work of Canada’s ‘Jane Goodall of giraffes’ Anne Innis Dagg was ignored for
decades. She even lost her tenure at university—because she was a woman. Her work in the
1950s was only recently recognized. The ground-breaking theory of endosymbiosis promoted in
1969 by evolutionary scientist Lynn Margulis was dismissed by geneticist Richard Dawkins as
“outlandish” and “absurd speculation.” Until, decades later with her stubborn persistence, she
was proven right.
1856: The Climate Science of Eunice Newton Foote
Three years before Darwin published his ground-breaking Origin of Species, amateur scientist
Eunice Newton Foote discovered that greenhouse gases can warm the atmosphere. Foote’s
experiments were elegant. Using cylinders filled with different gases, Foote showed that water
vapor combined with carbonic acid gas (carbon dioxide) can raise atmospheric temperature.
Her studies inspired her to hypothesize that Earth would have been much warmer in the past in
an atmosphere with higher carbon dioxide. Yet her work—and contribution—went unnoticed in
the history of climate science.
1856 was dominated by a patriarchal hierarchy; women were harshly restricted by the “cult of
domesticity,” expected to focus on household management, marriage, and child-rearing. Rights
to property or wages were little to zero for women. A married woman’s legal personhood went
to her husband. Higher education was closed to women.
Though some acknowledged her work and inventions, Foote was still a woman and that single
fact prevented her from being taken seriously by the scientific community.
Recognizing the prejudice against her sex, Foote arranged to have male colleague Joseph Henry
read her paper at the 1856 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS). Foote’s work showing that carbon dioxide and water vapor modulated solar
heating was later refined by John Tyndall, who demonstrated conclusively that Earth’s
greenhouse effect originates from water vapor interacting with carbon dioxide to absorb and
emit thermal infrared energy, not visible sunlight. Tyndall credited Mathias Pouillet for his work
on the passage of solar radiation through the atmosphere—he didn’t mention Foote. Was she
unnoticed or simply ignored? Despite her lack of attribution, Foote ensured success in getting
her science out; and perhaps that was her greatest mission.
1962: The Environmental Science of Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson remains, for me, one of the most tragic casualties of the hierarchy of “man”: her
1962 book Silent Spring was a prophetic warning of ecological collapse, chemical pollution, and
humanity's fractured relationship with the natural world. Silent Spring cautioned burgeoning
ag-biotech companies (like Monsanto—now Bayer—Syngenta, Dow, and DuPont) who were
carelessly and flagrantly spraying fields with pesticides and herbicides. This would soon become
a GMO world where gene-hacked plants of monocultures can withstand the onslaught of killer
pesticides like neonicotinoids and cancer-causing Roundup.
Carson endured vulgar censure by opponents (virtually all men tied to corporate giants) who
viciously attacked her with vilifying stereotype and cruel innuendo. Men accused her of being
disloyal and unscientific, and ultimately of being a hysterical spinster. Despite her cruel
vilification, Carson has the last word: her book sold millions of copies and has remained on
several bestseller lists since 1962. Silent Spring increased public awareness of the dangers of
synthetic pesticides and was transformational for many readers. Her book was instrumental in
creating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and several regulations in the USA.
Today: Science and the Hierarchy of “Man”
In The Last Summoner, Vivianne flees her medieval witch-hunting oppressors through a time-
space tear, landing in an alternative near-future Paris. There, she discovers a fascist surveillance
state of corporate oligarchs who run a tight, profit-driven economy, imposing heavy taxes on
laborers and a strict code of behaviour—all brutally enforced by ruthless Teutonic Knights. For
Vivianne, little has changed. She is still in an oppressive androcentric world.
Today’s scientific community prides itself on conducting rational objective research in pursuit of
truth. Despite its dedication to discovery and truth, Science remains incredibly conservative and
resistant to change. And still dominated by a patriarchal hegemony of status quo. The spirit of
discovery is all too often quelled by the fearful force of conservatism and its ruling scientists.
The unfeeling soulless dog of René Descartes has been replaced by the selfish gene of Richard
Dawkins in a hostile dog-eat-dog world of publish or perish.
Under the patriarchal hegemony of the 1800s and even the 1900s, men decided that women
were less rational and more susceptible to mental and physical ailments. Medical reports and
scientific discourse frequently characterized women as inherently “weak-minded”, intellectually
inferior, and emotionally volatile—attributing these traits to a delicate or ‘feeble’ physical
constitution. ‘Female hysteria’ was a common diagnosis to explain behaviours in women that
made men uncomfortable with a compelling need to suppress.
How has this hierarchy of “Man” changed since then? I’m told that women make up nearly a
third of global researchers and hold over fifty percent of biology PhDs—an improvement from a
time when they were barred from universities, denied degrees and forced to work as
uncredited assistants. Women in science still face issues of discrimination, unequal
advancement, workplace bias and harmful gender stereotyping. Barriers to senior academic
and leadership positions persist, along with lack of attribution. The “Matilda effect” is still alive
and well…
Do behaviours in women still make men uncomfortable with a compelling need to suppress? I
find my mind straying to Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s pithy quote from a mere few
decades ago. You know the one…
Thriving Outside the Hierarchy of ‘Man’
To be an outsider, to walk a different path, to fulfill the ‘joker’ archetype may also provide a
unique freedom to experience life unshackled by convention. Finding a way to live outside the
hierarchy of science with impunity is the trick. There are some wonderful examples of women
scientists who have done just that.
Maverick botanist Monica Gagliano at the University of Western Australia has conducted
ground-breaking research in plant acoustics—phytoacoustics—that over the years has earned
her both accolades and censure.
In her book The Light Eaters, Zoë Schlanger shares that, “Gagliano has been heckled, at
conferences where men (they’re always men) have stood up to berate her, and in journals
where groups of botanists (again, men) have written letters in protest.” Schlanger notes that
plenty of men in academia have pursued more mystic routes without similar attack.
Unaffected by this male invective, Gagliano speaks regularly to packed audiences at
conferences and gives interviews to mainstream outlets. She writes papers in feminist theory
journals, and—citing Barbara McClintock’s patient methodology in her discovery of jumping
genes—advocates that scientists use more of a felt-sense in their methodology. “Who said that
science is the only way of knowing?” Gagliano said at Dartmouth College in 2020. “I think it’s a
beautiful way to describe the world. But it is not the only way.”
Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer met the blinkered gaze of “scientific absolutism” when, as a grad
student, she wished to effectively know why asters and goldenrod that often bloomed together
were so beautiful together; I can attest to their intoxicating visual show each September in
southern Ontario, where I taught university. Kimmerer’s advisor told her that her question
about beauty had no place in a botany department. Beauty was subjective, not objective. But
Kimmerer’s spirit of discovery endured; she patiently tabled her inquiry and later pursued as a
faculty member. Kimmerer investigated this common association by looking at the bees and
found something remarkable: yellow and purple are diametrically opposed on the colour wheel
and we respond more strongly when they are placed together than either alone. It turns out
that this is the same for bees and Kimmerer proved that more pollinators came when asters
and goldenrod were together than when alone. The bees were as enticed by the visual display
as she was; the beauty was on purpose. Her subjective sense of beauty had allowed her to
discover something important about plant and insect relations.
At a recent UNESCO webinar, environmental chemist and ecotoxicologist Thomais Vlachogianni
shared to aspiring woman scientists: “We are taught to think in a sort of a linear way, and then
we discover that life is definitely not linear, we might get disappointed and even crushed. But if
you keep your options open, you truly see your strengths and learn how you can use them.”
The future is already female; we’re just not evenly attributed.
References:
Carson, Rachel. 1962. “Silent Spring.” Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 368pp.
Foote, Eunice, 1856. Circumstances affecting the heat of the Sun’s rays: Art. XXXI, The American Journal of Science and Arts, 2nd Series, v. XXII/no. LXVI, November 1856, p. 382-383. https://ia800802.us.archive.org/4/items/mobot31753002152491/mobot31753002152491.pdf
Gagliano, Monica. 2013. “Green Symphonies: A Call for Studies on Acoustic Communication in
Plants.” Behavioral Ecology 24 (4): 789-96.
Gagliano, Monica, et.al. 2016. “Learning by Association in Plants.” Scientific Reports 6(1): 38427.
Gagliano, Monica & Richard Powers. 2020. Conversation on “Plant Intelligence”, Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2015. “Braiding Sweetgrass.” Consortium. 408pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2012. “The Last Summoner.” Starfire World Syndicate. 406pp.
Onzik, Kristi and Monica Gagliano. 2022. “Feeling around for the apparatus: a radicley empirical plant science.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 8(1): 34774.
Schlanger, Zoë. 2024. “The Light Eaters.” Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY. 290pp.
Shetterly, Margot Lee. 2016. “Hidden Figures.” William Morrow. 368pp.
UNESCO. 2025. “Women and girls in science: exploring the challenges facing female scientists today.” UNESCO website https://www.unesco.org/en, March 25, 2025.
A previous version of this article was published on Reality Skimming Press Blog, August 24, 2026
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist, novelist and award-winning short story author of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. Nina teaches writing at UofT and writes for various magazines, including essays on science and futurism. Her short work has appeared in Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Chiaroscuro, subTerrain, Apex Magazine, Metastellar, and several anthologies. She currently has 10 novels published and several non-fiction books on writing and science. Her book “Water Is…” (Pixl Press)—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, and teacher—was Margaret Atwood’s pick in 2016 in the New York Times ‘The Year in Reading.’ Nina’s award-winning eco-novel, "A Diary in the Age of Water" by Inanna Publications, is about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world. Her eco-novel “Gaia’s Revolution” is currently in production with Dragon Moon Press.
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