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Spring 2007, Vol. 3, No. 2 | Index
Looking Back
MBL Women Were Pioneers of Science and Fashion
In the MBL’s early days, women comprised approximately one-third of the total course enrollment. In some courses, such as Botany and Embryology, more than half the students were women. The MBL was unusual for its time in that it encouraged the enrollment of women students of science on an equal basis with men. According to a new book by University of Massachusetts Professor Patricia Campbell Warner, early MBL women biologists were also pioneers of women’s modern sportswear.
Campbell Warner writes in her book, When the Girls Came Out to Play, that the mainstreaming of women’s modern sportswear had its roots in Massachusetts as women at the MBL abandoned the “skirt convention” in 1911 and opted for more practical bathing suits and gym suits to collect samples from the water. By adapting their attire to make their work easier, she says, the biologists were ahead of their time.
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