A Difficult Time to be a Woman...     Christine Ladd-Franklin did not become a leading scientist during a time when the doctrine of separate spheres was at its highest by chance. The ideology of the period was that white, middle-class women were defined by their family life and their activities were determined by their relatives' needs. Women had been classified as nurturers by the emotional role they played for in the family while the men took on the identity of the public realm and everything the family was not. Science was not excused from these ideas and its move from the "domestic, amateur context tro the public, professionalized arena worked to women's disadvantage."

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