Excerpt from Female STEM Pioneers Who Survived the Holocaust by Victoria Van Orden Martínez (Pen & Sword History, 2026), launching September 28, 2026.

“The 1950s was a decade of both progress and regression. In the wake of the Second World War, medical and scientific advances were being made at a rapid pace. Researchers in STEM fields were in high demand and universities around the world expanded their programmes accordingly. Governments increased funding for STEM-related education and research. Progress was the byword of the decade.

“The flip side of this progress was regression. Most alarmingly, regression from postwar peace to the Cold War, Korean War, and the nuclear arms race. Less noticeably to most people was the regression from the boom in opportunities for women during the war to hyper-domesticity afterwards, particularly in North America. With men back from war, women were forced to give up the jobs they had filled during the conflict and return to the home. Among the jobs women had to relinquish to men were many in STEM fields. In other parts of the world, this regression was due not so much to a cultural notion of women’s place being in the home but to financial and political instability and the demands of postwar reconstruction.²

“The women in this book were affected by both types of regression. In their home countries before the war, women’s education and employment in STEM fields was relatively more common than it was in the countries they eventually settled in after the war. Those who had left or simply not returned to their home countries after the war did so not because of gender bias pursuing an education and career in science but because of factors such as destruction and political uncertainty. Seeking better lives elsewhere, they settled in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, with the intention of continuing the educations and careers that they had begun before and during the Second World War and the Holocaust. It came as a shock to many of them when they encountered the gender bias and gendered culture norms in their adopted countries that contributed to the low participation and success of women in STEM.”

² Suggested reading: Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America, Volume 2, Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972, Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Amelia Bonea and Irina Nastasă-Matei, eds., Negotiating in/Visibility: Women, Science, Engineering and Medicine in the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2025.

Excerpted from Chapter 1, “Discoveries and Dismissals,” pp.1-2.

Female STEM Pioneers Who Survived the Holocaust by Victoria Van Orden Martínez will be available in Europe late September 2026 and in North America late November 2026, and can be pre-ordered directly through the Pen & Sword website or on Amazon and other retailers.