High Noon: Women Reformers and Engineers Clean up US Cities, 1890s to WWII–Pamela E. Mack, retired historian of science and technology, Clemson University

In the late 19th and early 20th century, white women made significant inroads into scientific and technical careers, only to be pushed out in the 1930s and 1950s. One group of women experts developed out of the settlement house movement and worked on sanitary garbage disposal, sewage treatment, and water purification. These women engineers were part of a reform movement that argued that it was women’s work to clean up cities as well as homes, for the health of their families and those of other women. What might we re-learn from their commitment to technology to serve the public good?