The Limitations of Being a Woman
Being a woman in the scientific field came with a set of limitations such as limited job opportunities, education opportunities, difficulty getting positions of power (ie. French Academy of Sciences) and limited recognition of their accomplishments.
One of the limits of being a woman is that it made it more difficult for them to win awards for their work. For example, The French decoration the "Legion of Honor" was offered to Pierre and not Marie. It was for discovering radium and polonium. They had done the same amount of work toward winning the award. Marie was rejected because she was a woman, even though she discovered polonium. However, Pierre declined the award because he said that the award had more to do with Madame Curie than himself. Her husband won an award without her even though she contributed greatly to the project. Being a woman held her back from winning some awards she could have easily won had she been a man.
Being a woman also caused limited work opportunities. After graduating from Sorbonne, Curie had a difficult time finding a job. Fortunately, she found someone who did not mind that she was a woman and who saw her potential. Eventually, as she began working with Pierre, she was viewed as his assistant rather than a main contributor. Sexism prevented some of her ideas to be fully recognized as her own, as some people thought that her ideas were not 'good' or usable because of her gender (such as how she was almost excluded from her Nobel Prize in physics). This was also true for her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie when she won a Nobel Prize with her husband. She was also viewed as his assistant instead of her own person.
Sources for this tab:
-Goldsmith
-Lassieur
-Pasachoff
-Yannuzzi
-Goldsmith
-Lassieur
-Pasachoff
-Yannuzzi