The Matilda Effect:                         

Photo: Matilda Joslyn Gage

Named after activist Matilda Joslyn Gage. This term describes the systematical denial or minimalism of women’s contributions to science and invention.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was born on the 24th of March 1826 in the United States of America. Gage was an activist and a writer known for her contributions to the American Suffrage Movement (The Suffragette’s Cause).

When you think of the American women’s suffrage movement, the names of two women in particular Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton instantly come to mind.

But there was a third woman in that powerful leadership triumvirate—one whose radical vision was so ahead of her time that mainstream history actively tried to erase her.

She also spoke out in support of Native American People, Abolitionism and FreeThought Movements. These vocalisations were what led to her erasure from history.

What Was Abolitionism?

This was the process of petitioning for the end of slavery in the US which was active during the Colonial Era and ended just after the American Civil War. The only time slavery was still considered *reasonable* was after a crime was committed and was used as a form of community work for convicts. This form of punishment was abolished in 1865.

What Was the Freethought Movement?

This is a social movement that takes into account the free thinking(s) of writers, artists (including performance artists), activists and a variety of other Free Thinkers forming ideas that are unorthodox attitudes and beliefs separate from authority, tradition or dogma (a belief/set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without questioning).

More Than a Vote: A Radical Vision for Freedom

Gage didn’t just want women to vote; she wanted complete and total human liberation. While other suffragists focused strictly on the ballot, Gage looked at the bigger picture. She saw how deeply ingrained sexism was in society and attacked it from all angles:

Indigenous Rights Advocate: Gage was deeply inspired by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nation, where women held equal political power, property rights, and veto power over war. She spoke out fiercely against the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans and was eventually adopted into the Mohawk Nation’s Wolf Clan.

📜 Prolific Historian: She did the heavy lifting to document the movement, co-authoring the foundational History of Woman Suffrage alongside Anthony and Stanton.

Why History Tried to Erase Her:

If she was so influential, why isn’t she in the history textbooks next to Susan B. Anthony?

In 1890, the suffrage movement made a calculated political pivot. To win the vote, mainstream leaders decided to merge with conservative, religious women’s groups. Gage was furious. She firmly believed that organized church doctrine was the primary tool used to keep women oppressed.

Gage refused to compromise her principles for political expediency.

She warned her peers:
“Do not allow the Church or State to govern your thought or dictate your judgment.”

She broke away from the mainstream movement to form the Woman’s National Liberal Union, focusing on the total separation of church and state. In response, more conservative suffragists slowly edited her out of the movement’s official narrative.

As the iconic feminist Gloria Steinem famously put it, Gage was “the woman who was AHEAD of the women who were AHEAD of their time.”

Gage looked at the bigger picture, once writing:
“When all humanity works for humanity, when the life-business of men and women becomes one united partnership… the world will hold in its hands the promise of a millennium.”

Her Modern and Surprising Legacy

Though mainstream history sidelined her, Gage’s influence quietly shaped the modern world in two incredible ways:

1. The Wizard of Oz Connection 🌪️
Gage’s daughter, Maud, married a struggling writer named L. Frank Baum. Gage loved her son-in-law but constantly pushed him to write down his stories. Her radical feminist views and her fascination with matriarchal societies heavily influenced Baum. Without Matilda Joslyn Gage, we wouldn’t have The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, nor would we have powerful female figures like Glinda the Good Witch.

2. The “Matilda Effect”
In 1870, Gage wrote a groundbreaking essay called Woman as Inventor, documenting how women’s scientific breakthroughs were routinely stolen by men. More than a century later, in 1993, historian Margaret W. Rossiter coined the term “The Matilda Effect” to describe the systemic bias where female scientists lose credit for their work to male colleagues.

In one of her essays, she noted that women were:
“…restricted in education, industrial opportunities, and political power… where her degradation reacts injuriously upon the race.”

Time to Remember Matilda

Matilda Joslyn Gage passed away in 1898, her tombstone proudly bearing her lifelong motto:

“There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home, or Heaven; that word is Liberty.”

She was too radical for the 19th century, but her vision aligns perfectly with the fights we are still having today regarding bodily autonomy, equal credit in the workplace, and human rights. It’s time we put her back in the history books where she belongs.

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Bibliography / Further Reading

If you want to dig deeper into Matilda’s life and work, check out these excellent primary and secondary sources:

Primary Sources (Written by Gage)

Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman as Inventor. Fayetteville, NY: F.A. Darling, 1870.

Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman, Church and State: The Original Exposé of Male Chauvinism and the Church. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1893.

Secondary Sources & Biographical Works

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. History of Woman Suffrage. Vols. 1–3. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881–1886.

Brammer, Leila R. Excluded from Suffrage History: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Nineteenth-Century American Feminist.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Carpenter, Angelica. Born Criminal: Matilda Joslyn Gage, Radical Suffragist. Pierre, SD: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2018.

Rossiter, Margaret W. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 325–341.

The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation. “Who Was Matilda Joslyn Gage?” Official historical preservation center and museum archives.