There’s a shadow that lingers over the pages of history, a quiet theft woven into the fabric of science—a theft not of gold or gems, but of recognition, of voice, of legacy. It’s called the Matilda Effect, a term that hums with both the weight of injustice and the whisper of resilience.
The Matilda Effect is a bias in science where women’s contributions are overlooked, misattributed to men, or forgotten entirely. It’s a term coined by Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993, named after Matilda Joslyn Gage, a suffragist who argued in the 1800s that women were inventors too, even as her own voice was drowned out by history.
At its core, the Matilda Effect is about credit going where it doesn’t belong. Rossiter, a science historian, observed this pattern—women doing the work, men getting the glory—and linked it to Gage, whose 1870 essay “Woman as Inventor” called out the erasure of women’s ingenuity. Gage herself was a casualty of it, her radical ideas on suffrage and abolition overshadowed by louder, often male, voices of her time. Rossiter’s term isn’t just a label; it’s a spotlight on a systemic glitch.
It’s all around us, in the very textbooks we grow up reading, the labs that house experiments that take us closer to understanding our own existence, and the journals that share this knowledge with the world. The absence of women’s names isn’t just an omission—it shapes how we see who belongs in science, who we imagine when we think of a “genius,” who gets to inspire the next generation.
Take Rosalind Franklin. In the 1950s, her X-ray diffraction images of DNA revealed the double helix structure—a breakthrough that reshaped biology. She was meticulous, her work precise, yet it was James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins who walked away with the 1962 Nobel Prize. Franklin? She got a nod years later, after her death, when the story couldn’t be buried anymore. Then there’s Lise Meitner, a physicist who, with Otto Hahn, cracked nuclear fission in the 1930s. She even coined the term “fission,” working through letters while fleeing Nazi persecution as a Jewish scientist. Hahn got the 1944 Nobel Prize alone; Meitner got a pat on the back and a lifetime of “almosts.” Nettie Stevens is another—her 1905 experiments on mealworms proved sex chromosomes determine gender, but Edmund Wilson, who did similar work with less clarity, got the credit in the textbooks. These women weren’t just helpers; they were pioneers, and when their turn came to shine, the world conveniently looked away.
And it’s not just a thing of the past. Even today, studies show that women in STEM receive less credit for their work, are less likely to be cited, and face harsher scrutiny when they do achieve. Female scientists are awarded fewer patents, receive less funding, and are less likely to be named as lead authors on groundbreaking studies. The glass ceiling isn’t just in the boardroom—it’s in the lab, the lecture hall, the peer-reviewed journal.
Growing up, I loved Roald Dahl’s Matilda—that little girl with a big brain and a bigger heart, outsmarting everyone around her. She was my hero, taking on a world that underestimated her with quiet, fierce smarts. The Matilda Effect feels like the flip side of her story. Where Dahl’s Matilda wins, real-life Matildas—Franklin, Meitner, Stevens—get robbed.
This isn’t just history for me—it’s personal, even as an undergraduate still finding my footing in STEM. I haven’t been in labs yet, running experiments or fighting for credit, but I’ve felt the Matilda Effect in quieter, subtler ways that creep under my skin. The casual dismissal of ideas until they come from someone else’s mouth. The hesitation in a professor’s voice when acknowledging a woman’s contribution in a lecture. The self-doubt that whispers, Am I really good enough, or will I always have to prove it twice over?
The Matilda Effect isn’t some ghost from the past; it’s alive, sitting in the corner of every classroom. It’s the extra weight I carry, the unspoken rule that I’ve got to be flawless to even get a seat at the table. It’s the discomfort of speaking up, of asserting an idea, knowing it might not land until it’s echoed by someone with a deeper voice.
The future scares me—when I do step into those settings, like labs or research teams, where the stakes get higher. I picture myself presenting a project, my voice steady, only to see it handed off to someone else’s resume. I worry I’ll be the one double-checking my worth, wondering if my name will stick to what I create.
But I think of Roald Dahl’s Matilda, that pint-sized powerhouse who outwitted the odds with nothing but her brain and a stubborn streak. That’s the spark I hold onto.
Here’s the hope: we’re not stuck. Dahl’s Matilda didn’t settle for less, and neither should we. It’s on us—telling the real stories, claiming our space in the labs, the journals, the history books. Step by step, we can make it so no one’s brilliance gets lost in the shuffle. The world is big enough for all of us—let’s make sure it knows all our names.
Because science isn’t just about discovery; it’s about who gets remembered. And it’s time we remember the Matildas who built the world, one breakthrough at a time.