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Helen Bradford Thompson, later Woolley, published The Mental Traits of Sex in 1903, in which she proved that women's intelligence did not differ from men's. Investigating aspects of mental functioning, Thompson concluded that men's and women's intelligence was similar and that upbringing accounted for small differences, rather than biology. Woolley investigated differences in school children and working children, and showed that leaving school to go to work did not benefit children. This finding contributed to the passage of child labor laws. Woolley also worked in early childhood education, special education, and vocational guidance. Despite these accomplishments, Woolley never held a tenure-track position and was fired early in the Depression. The author of three books and approximately fifty articles, she was unsuccessful in obtaining another position. This author ponders the difficulties that women academics encountered early in the twentieth century. Woolley was a pioneer, breaking ground for women in academe today.
Keywords: child labor laws / child psychology / childhood education / higher education for women / psychology / sex-role stereotyping / vocational guidance / women academics / women's intelligence / women scientists
Introduction
Not only was Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley a woman scientist, a psychologist, whose work deserves acknowledgement; she was also my grandmother. Until recently, her work has been neglected, and she still goes unmentioned in many texts about women's history. Helen Thompson Woolley was a prolific writer. The University of Chicago Press published her first book, a reprint of her Ph.D. dissertation, The Mental Traits of Sex, in 1905. Her second, Diagnosis and Treatment of Young School Failures, with Elizabeth Ferris, was published in 1923 by the Bureau of Education of the United States Department of the Interior. Her third, An Experimental Study of Children at Work and in School Between the Ages of Fourteen and Eighteen Years, was published in 1926. In addition, she published over fifty articles. I append a list of her publications, which she apparently compiled as part of a job search in the early 1930s. Her papers are scanty. Those in my family's possession date from a difficult period of Woolley's life, after she came to live with my parents.1
Woolley's contributions were important. In The Mental Traits of Sex, she debunked the idea that women's intelligence differed...