Abstract
This chapter is based on interviews with four women mathematicians who made a research career in mathematics in Denmark from the mid-twentieth century on. Through semi-structured research interviews, we try to capture and pass on glimpses of strategies and experiences in their lives. The four interviewees represent the very few women who achieved faculty positions in a male-dominated field at the universities in Denmark. Their personal stories, in addition to being admirable examples of academic achievement, become stories of how they navigated and succeeded in a society without apparent or fixed solutions for ambitious working women and mothers—and of how they later in life reflected on their choices and options. Their stories are both about women receiving an atypical education in a male-dominated field and about pursuing and succeeding in having a career and a family during a period of change in social values and possibilities for women. In the chapter, we focus on their stories about school life, on the milieu at the universities during their studies, their career choices, gender biases, and on their descriptions of family life and relationships. We coin the concept of “implicit girl,” which was revealed in the interviews, a girl who is created implicitly in our educational system and thus situated in the culture of our society at large.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See https://womenandmath.wordpress.com/past-activities/statistics-on-women-in-mathematics/ (all websites cited in this article were last accessed on November 3, 2018).
- 3.
See http://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/files/-/garcia_working_paper_5_academic_careers_gender_inequality.pdf; Kahlert (2015), Alper (1993), MacLachlan (2014), and Cech and Blair-Loy (2010).
- 4.
Regarding interviews as qualitative research methods, see Kvale and Brinkmann (2009).
- 5.
See Brinkmann and Tanggaard (2010), pp. 37–42.
- 6.
Brinkmann and Tanggaard (2010), p. 30.
- 7.
Chadarevian (2011).
- 8.
Mazzotti (2014).
- 9.
See, for instance, Richards (1995).
- 10.
Mazzotti (2014), p. 122.
- 11.
Shortland and Yeo (1996).
- 12.
Govoni (2000), p. 409.
- 13.
Quoted from Govoni and Franceschi (2014), p. 11.
- 14.
- 15.
Gjerløff and Jacobsen (2014), vol. 3, pp. 74ff.
- 16.
Gjerløff et al. (2014), vol. 4, p. 339.
- 17.
Jacobsen and Løkke (1986), pp. 64, 71.
- 18.
Danmarks Statistik (2014), no. 146: https://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/Nyt/2014/NR146.pdf.
- 19.
On the history of Danish nurseries, kindergarten, the professionalism of childcare and pedagogues, see the timeline and stories on the webpage www.pædagoghistorie.dk.
- 20.
- 21.
See, for instance, http://universitetshistorie.ku.dk/overblik/vigtige_aarstal/ (University of Copenhagen: “Vigtige årstal I universitetets historie”).
- 22.
Dansk kvindebiografisk Leksikon, Thyra Eibe (1866–1955): http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/636/origin/170/.
- 23.
The translation is still used and is digitized at https://archive.org/details/euklidselemente00euclgoog.
- 24.
Dansk kvindebiografisk Leksikon, Hanna Adler (1859–1947): http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/271/origin/170/.
- 25.
Dansk kvindebiografisk Leksikon, Kirstine Meyer (1861–1941): http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/1435/origin/170/.
- 26.
Vibæk (1959).
- 27.
Sveinsdottir (1997).
- 28.
Guttorp and Lindgren (2009).
- 29.
Kvinders adgang til uddannelse og erhverv (1857–1995): http://kvinfo.dk/aarstalslister/kvinders-adgang-til-uddannelse-og-erhverv-1857-1995. For an overview of women in Danish academia around 1900, see also Rosenbeck (2014).
- 30.
Høyrup (1987). See also Agnes Scott’s Biographies of Women Mathematicians: https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/fenchel.htm.
- 31.
See Vibeke Borchsenius’s from 1999: http://www.au.dk/om/profil/publikationer/nekrolog/1999vb/.
- 32.
Uddannelses- og Forskningsministeriet (2017), p. 2.
- 33.
Danmarks Statistik (2016), no. 266.
- 34.
Kvinfo Ekspertdatabase: http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/634/action/2/vis/447/.
- 35.
Dansk kvindebiografisk leksikon, Birgit Grodal (1943–2004): http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/958/origin/170/.
- 36.
Dansk kvindebiografisk leksikon, Dorte Olesen (1948–): http://www.kvinfo.dk/side/597/bio/886/.
- 37.
On Svend Bundgaard, see http://www.au.dk/om/profil/historie/showroom/galleri/personer/svendbundgaard1912-1984/; and the Festschrift Disse fag må lempes til Verden—Oprettelsen og udbygningen af Det Naturvidenskabelige Fakultet ved Aarhus Universitet. Den første periode: Et festskrift i anledning af 50-års jubilæet 2004, which is available online at http://www.au.dk/fileadmin/www.au.dk/universitetshistorisk_udvalg/filer/-/Henry_Nielsen__Disse_fag_maa_lempes_til_verden.pdf.
- 38.
The official statistics of the University of Copenhagen count students from mathematics and physics as one group. The percentages of women students with a major in math or physics were 19% in 1947, 14% in 1955, and 17% in 1971. Ellehøj and Grane (1986), vol. 3, p. 61. At the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences as a whole, the percentage of women students grew from 28 to 36% during the same period; see Pihl (1983), vol. 12, p. 86.
- 39.
Examples of the continuity of early-twentieth-century discriminatory attitudes and opinions of female students and researchers well into the 1950s can be found in Rosenbeck (2014), p. 109ff. Rosenbeck argues that a shift in attitudes toward women in academia in Denmark did not occur before around 1970 (ibid., p. 128ff.), but also recounts several instances of women students and researchers being welcomed in their field and having senior male scholars as mentors.
- 40.
Danmarks Statistik (2015).
- 41.
See Govoni’s chapter in this book, Govoni (2020), pp. 326–327.
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Fajstrup, L., Gjerløff, A.K., Kjeldsen, T.H. (2020). Living by Numbers: The Strategies and Life Stories of Mid-Twentieth Century Danish Women Mathematicians. In: Kaufholz-Soldat, E., Oswald, N. (eds) Against All Odds. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47610-6_9
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