Women, minorities, and the Manhattan Project | Hacker News Reader

Women, minorities, and the Manhattan Project

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

The most interesting parts of this for me were the lessons about discrimination. First, that how we think about the Manhattan Project is shaped by how it was reported at the time, because it was naturally written about through the lens of that time's biases. Second, that while WWII allowed more women to get into science out of necessity, this was sadly reversed afterwards as the need was gone: WWII didn't end society's prejudices, it just forced it to temporarily overlook them in some limited areas.

Food for thought.

Yes, it would be much better to have equality. Women would get drafted and fight in WW2 alongside men.

It's a little funny to think about equality, or really justice, in the context of war. Among other things, at least in the modern US, quite a number of US soldiers are men of lower classes and limited options who are looking at the armed forces as a job with good pay and a good basis for a future career, and the armed forces know that and advertise on that basis. If a draft starts, college students and certain professionals can get deferred; working men age 18-25 get drafted. It is the very nature of income and earning-power inequality in the US that is powering our current enlistment and would be powering any draft. It's not really sensible, I think, to argue about whether this equality is needed when the very reason the situation exists is itself a fairly major inequality.

That said, women's groups have historically supported extending the draft to women. In the 1981 Supreme Court case Rostker v. Goldberg, which was filed by a group of men who opposed the gender discrimination in the draft, both the National Organization for Women and the ACLU's Women's Rights Project filed amici supporting them:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/22/us/women-join-battle-on-al...

https://www.aclu.org/tribute-legacy-ruth-bader-ginsburg-and-...

It's not as if women didn't fight in WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches

Same happened at Bletchley Circle and all over the Western World. I imagine that post-war desires to return to the "simplicity" of pre-WWII helped drive us back to the traditions of a pre-WWII environment. The achievements of women in STEM during the war wasn't enough to displace the damage done to the collective mindset, I guess.

When brilliant and accomplished rocket scientist Yvonne Brill died in 2013 The New York Times opened her obituary with

She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

This has since been changed and, in typical New York Times fashion, no mention was made that the article was updated[1].

It now reads: > She was a brilliant rocket scientist who followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.

[1]http://io9.com/the-new-york-times-fails-miserably-in-its-obi...

As if a reference to beef stroganoff was the only issue...

Though it is better.

The New Yorker points out the eight years off part isn't even factually accurate, she moved to a job with more flexible hours at FMC Corporation (involved in their work with ARPA) while still making major contributions to the world in that capacity.

I just found the obituary [1] and was considering replying with the "correct" quote, but did some more digging and discovered that you are absolutely correct [2]: the Times has, without notification, edited (some might say "airbrushed out") the original phrasing. Shameful.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/science/space/yvonne-brill...

[2]: http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/yvonne-brill-and-...

Yes I should have mentioned it for completeness. Apologies.

"As advertisements from the later period suggest, the role of the space-age woman was as the helpful wife — not the person doing the calculations."

What the advertisement really suggests is that someone felt the need to promote women's role as housekeepers. You can also find adds with women smoking, which shows cigarette companies tried to get the non-smoking part of population as customers.

really good article in general. i thought it was worth pointing out this neil degrasse tyson clip in particular, linked at the end to tie the discussion back to the present day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EkuXfsWmMo

Reply on news.ycombinator.com