A LAB OF ONE’S OWN

A remarkable study writing female war scientists back into history

Author Patricia Fara Publisher Oxford University Press Price £10.99 Released Out now

War, women’s rights, and modern science meet in this fresh and feminist work by Cambridge scholar Patricia Fara. Newly released in paperback, the cleverly titled A Lab Of One’s Own – a play on the novelist Virginia Woolf’s 1929 celebrated essay A Room Of One’s Own – weaves an absorbing narrative of British women’s important contributions during World War I, but moves it beyond the nurses and munitionettes who dominate popular understandings of women’s roles in the country’s war effort. Instead, female scientists, doctors and engineers are the main focus of the book, which illustrates both the obstacles these inspiring women faced and the comparative neglect of their achievements in their time and ours.

During World War I female scientists led or participated in a wide variety of research projects. At Imperial College London women worked on experimental trenches dug in the gardens, where they developed an improved grenade filling, and studied the effects of gasses including mustard gas, with little choice but to test it on themselves. Other areas of research across the country included explosives, aircraft design and anaesthetics. But the significance of this work did not protect women from discrimination and their positions were far from secure, with many of them dismissed postarmistice to accommodate returning men.

Fara’s vibrant prose captures the tumultuous and emotive climate of the war years and is teamed with keen academic observations. Her welcome study is a superb account of trailblazing women, whose efforts to secure equality in the workplace will no doubt resonate with many presentday women.