User:Grace Sheehan/sandbox

Margaret E. Knight

Disadvantages
Knight was a women who successfully patented many of her very inventions, however it wasn't done with ease or without obstacles. It was well known that Knight had not received credit for her work as a young teenager when she was still working at the cotton mill and that she was not allowed to patent her very own design. She overcame a surprising amount of adversities considering the fact that she was a woman inventor in the late 1800's to the early 1900's.

Even though she overcame many barriers in the life of women in the 1800's and was deemed 'successful', she was never able to profit from her inventions due to her sex. Another reason Knight was dismissed so often was because she wasn't a wealthy or highly educated woman. Due to the time Knight was alive she also faced the disadvantage of making much less money than men due to the hierarchy of sex. Most women during that time period were paid half or even less than what the average man was making in the workforce. Knight was aware of that type of limitation among many more, however sex was a special obstacle, she is quoted to have supposedly said;

"I’m only sorry I couldn’t have had as good a chance as a boy..."

- MIT

The unfairness in pay was also due to there having been an economic boom with industrialization, meaning that most women who weren't homemakers and men who lacked higher paying and successful turned to working in factories. Thus making it more difficult for women to synonymously pay for their basic needs and trying to receive education.