21st Lenna Frances Cooper memorial lecture: nutrition research by and about women

Physiologists, chemists, and a few physicians, virtually all men, carried out the early research in human nutrition. Nutrition emerged as a "woman's field" of study and practice during a period when women's attempts to enter traditionally male-dominated fields of science were being resisted and frustrated. Nutrition benefited as a result, because it was given the attention of outstanding women scholars denied opportunities in their own fields. Women were the principal investigators of the nutrition concerns of women and children, for reasons of access and gentility . Analysis of historical and contemporary contributions by and about women suggests a gender difference between investigators' concerns: Men explore problems; women study needs.