Creating complicated lives : women and science at English-Canadian universities, 1880-1980 / Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley ; edited by Marelene Rayner-Canham and Geoff Rayner-Canham.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1 A Complicated Life: My Journey to Feminist Enlightenment -- 2 New Horizons: Women and Science in Academe, 1880-1920 -- 3 Academic Realities of Single Women, 1920-1980 -- 4 Complicated Lives I: Family Life and Science, 1920-1950 -- 5 Complicated Lives II: Family Life and Science after 1950.

"Why have Canadian women scientists been written out of the historical record? Who were they? What did they accomplish? What were their life paths? These are some of the questions answered in this authoritative work. Over decades of research, Marianne Ainley identified, tracked down, and interviewed surviving scientists. Creating Complicated Lives weaves the lives and work of these pioneers with the author's own experiences as an immigrant scientific technician and later a feminist historian.

Ainley argues that we must look at the lives of women scientists through a new historical lens that takes into account both the advances of science and concurrent debates about the advancement of women. Rather than having linear career trajectories, many women shifted fields, coped with discrimination, and endeavoured to find niches in which they could make significant contributions."--Pub. desc.