A Lab of One's Own: Science and Suffrage in the First World War - Couverture souple

A Lab of One's Own is a great title for an important book.... Patricia Fara paints all the nuances of the trajectories of women scientists, keeping in the background the specificities of a war economy, the instrumental place of science within it and the ambiguities and new challenges faced by women. (Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, LSE Review of Books)

Enthralling book. (Uta Frith, Literary Review)

An engrossing, exciting tale. (Dava Sobel, International New York Times)

This thought-provoking book...is history writing at its most compelling. (Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience)

Fascinating book... Carefully researched and absorbing... Informative and moving, A Lab of Ones Own is a timely reminder in helping us eliminate the inequalities that professional women still face today. (June Purvis, Times Higher Education)

As this remarkable book demonstrates, Fara is not only one of Britain's leading historians of science, but also one of her generation's most eloquent storytellers. (Joanna Bourke, BBC History Magazine)

An engrossing, exciting tale of uncelebrated scientists who innovated and experimented against a background of grand historical events. (New York Times)

Interesting study. (Lucy Lethbridge, Financial Times)

Fara's nuanced narrative [is] more than the sum of its parts. (Elizabeth Bruton, Nature)

Important book... a compelling tale... her book charts a significant chapter in lost feminist history. (Wendy Moore, The Guardian)

2018 marked a double centenary: peace was declared in war-wracked Europe, and women won the vote after decades of struggle. A Lab of One's Own commemorates both anniversaries by revealing the untold lives of female scientists, doctors, and engineers who undertook endeavours normally reserved for men. It tells fascinating and extraordinary stories featuring initiative, determination, and isolation, set against a backdrop of war, prejudice, and disease. Patricia Fara investigates the enterprising careers of these pioneering women and their impact on science, medicine, and the First World War. Suffrage campaigners aligned themselves with scientific and technological progress. Defying protests about their intellectual inferiority and child-bearing responsibilities, during the War they won support by mobilizing women to enter conventionally male domains. A Lab of One's Own focuses on the female experts who carried out vital research. They had already shown exceptional resilience by challenging accepted norms to pursue their careers, now they played their part in winning the War at home and overseas. In 1919, the suffragist Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly that 'The war revolutionised the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free.' She was wrong: Women had helped the country to victory, had won the vote for those over thirty - but had lost the battle for equality. A Lab of One''s Own is essential reading to understand and eliminate the inequalities still affecting professional women today.