Finding Solutions at the Kitchen Table
With an Account of a Historical Event
By Michal Zimring
In August of 1856, Eunice Newton Foote was putting the finishing touches on her paper entitled “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays”- a paper that would be presented on the 23rd of August at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, but not by Eunice.
Eunice had the advantage of being educated at Troy Female Seminary, the only school in America that gave females a scientific curriculum equal to that of males, She had an intense curiosity and she wanted to put that together with her education and explore a subject that was engaging the scientific community of the 19th century. The subject was climate change, but of course, they didn’t call it that then. Geologists had found rocks that were millions of years old and which seemed to have been deposited in a tropical climate. It appeared that the climate had changed over millions of years, but nobody could explain it. Had the earth’s atmosphere once been much warmer?
For Eunice, it was a question worthy of an experiment. So she set up some equipment in her home – two glass cylinders and one thermometer in each. Using an air pump, she removed the air from one cylinder and condensed the air in the other. She placed the cylinders in the sun and recorded the temperatures.
Earlier in the 18th century, Horace-Benedicte Saussure had described the "greenhouse effect" caused by warming air in a glass tube in, but Eunice wanted to consider the effects of other gases. She compared temperature increases with moist and dry air and the temperatures of a variety of gases. She repeated the experiment with common air, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide. All of them heated up and their temperatures rose after being exposed to the sun, but the cylinder with carbon dioxide rose the highest.
Then Eunice came to her conclusion – carbon dioxide trapped the most heat. Thinking about the earth’s atmosphere she deduced that “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature. The gas absorbs the heat radiated from the earth.” Physics Today Article
As I mentioned before, Eunice did not present her paper. She was not allowed because 1) she was a woman, and 2) she was only an amateur scientist. Instead, it was presented by Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian. Perhaps recognizing the value of her work, Professor Henry prefaced the reading with this statement: “Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful but the true.”
Eunice Newton Foote’s paper was acknowledged and praised, then buried and forgotten. Three years later, John Tyndall, an Irish physicist who had access to the latest laboratory equipment available in Europe and the backing of the scientific community, published papers detailing his own work on heat-trapping gases and is now acknowledged as the father of climate science. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katherine Wilkinson, co-authors of "All We Can Save," wondered if Eunice ever found herself remarking as so many women have: "I literally just said that, dude.”
Eunice wrote one more scientific paper and then went back to working on women’s suffrage. You can find her signature – the fifth on the list right under Elizabeth Cady Stanton – on the "Declaration of Sentiments" from the Women’s Rights Convention.
I found this a fascinating story, not only for its historical perspective but also for its striking parallels to today’s story of women and the climate crisis. Being dismissed for your accomplishments because you are a woman is not an unfamiliar story. The agency that is considered the foremost body on global warming The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been reporting on the climate for 30 years. They have “overlooked the contributions of female scientists and the unique impact on the planet’s roughly 3.8 billion women.” (E&E News – Climate Wire Sara Schonhardt 08/02/2021).
Since the 1980s the ratio of female authors/contributors has gone from 3% to just over 30%. There are plans to increase gender equality and inclusion, but they say it won’t be easy. Globally there is still an underrepresentation of women in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering. These are fields to which the IPCC looks to present its reports.
The dismissal of women’s work and the categorizing of Eunice as an ‘amateur scientist’ raised another question. We can of course say, “Oh, what would Eunice have achieved if only she had had access to the funding and lab equipment that John Tyndall had?” And she should have. What if we looked at this as an advantage she had as an amateur? Let's look at what Eunice achieved at her kitchen table and what women can achieve at their own kitchen tables.
The kitchen is usually a room or area in a home with cooking, food storage and preparation, eating, and dishwashing. "Around the world, women are the primary gatherers of water, food, and fuel. They manage and dominate subsistence farming, caregiving, and cleaning.” Article. Women have extensive skills and knowledge in all these areas. In times of crisis, they know how to adapt and create innovative solutions; they know how to do so by organizing people and resources in their communities.
Around the world, women are using these skills to create community farms and to learn new climate-smart regenerative agriculture practices to grow food for their families and communities. They are rebuilding food distribution systems and creating better access to healthy foods and markets. These practices not only feed people, but they also improve soil nutrition and help to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, clean the air and water, and restore health that improves lives and livelihoods.
Organizations like Women’s Earth Alliance support women farmers around the world to rebuild global agriculture, reduce hunger, and honor and protect the land. Our food production systems are tied to the challenges we face with climate change. Healing the land where we grow our food, and cleaning the water and air we breathe brings healing to the earth.
Using regenerative practices to grow our food is a game-changing climate change solution. While we recognize the dominance of mostly male global leaders who spend a lot of time talking and setting goals at global conferences, we also want to recognize the vital role that women play in bringing about concrete solutions such as growing food, saving seeds, regenerating the soil and feeding the people without chemicals and soil depleting fertilizers. We can celebrate what women are doing with their kitchen skills, and listen to their voices as they share their craft.
“Kitchen” skills may not be the choice or inclination of all women. And of course, there are plenty of men who know their way around the kitchen, even though they may only call themselves a "happenstance chef."
Whether in the kitchen, chemistry lab, community gardens, or on the global stage, there are so many arenas where women’s leadership is vital to addressing the issues of climate change. Women or men, and amateurs are welcome.
