March 24, 1826 – Birth of Matilda Joslyn Gage, Activist and Eponym for the “Matilda Effect” Describing Tendency to Deny Women Credit for Scientific Inventions

Matilda Joslyn was born on this day in history to abolitionist parents in New York. She married Henry Gage in 1845 and they had five children, operating their home as a station on the Underground Railroad.

Gage began speaking for the fight for women’s suffrage at 1852 and quickly became a pillar of the movement, according to the National Park Service site about her life:

In 1869, she co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Gage organized suffrage groups in New York and Virginia and worked as a writer and editor for NWSA’s suffrage publications, including the History of Woman Suffrage.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage

In 1870 she wrote an essay “Woman as Inventor” on the bias against acknowledging the achievements of those women scientists whose work is attributed to their male colleagues. The term “Matilda effect” was coined in 1993 by science historian Margaret W. Rossiter. The Matilda effect was compared to the Matthew effect, whereby an eminent scientist often gets more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is shared or similar. [For more on Rossiter and the women in science she felt were victims of the “Matilda effect” see this excellent review in the “On Wisconsin” magazine.]

As an Iowa State University site on Gage reports:

Gage became more and more convinced that the misogynist elements of Christian doctrine were major causes of women’s lower social status. She argued that many churches taught that woman was inferior to man and blamed women for the introduction of sin into the world. From 1878 to 1890, Gage lobbied within the NWSA to make opposition to misogynist religious teachings a priority. Her efforts met with strong resistance from the moderate and conservative party elements. . . . “

Gage left the NWSA in protest in 1890 and formed a new organization, the Woman’s National Liberal Union (WNLU). The WNLU reflected in particular Gage’s belief that the established churches were a major bulwark of male supremacist teaching, a view she expanded on in her book Woman, Church, and State (1893).

She served as president of this union from its inception until her death in Chicago, in 1898.

Gage also advocated for rights for Native Americans, criticizing the government for failing to respect its treaties. She spent time with the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy, and in 1893 the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation offered her an honorary adoption.

Gage died in 1898 at the age of 71. Her gravestone in Fayetteville Cemetery carries one of her lifelong mottos: “There is a word sweeter than mother, home, or heaven—that word is liberty.”