International Women Online Journal of Distance Education (April, 2022 Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Article: 02 ISSN: 2147-0367 8 Copyright © International Women Online Journal of Distance Education / www.wojde.org MITIGATING THE MATILDA EFFECT ON CHRISTINE VON PRÜMMER: A (RE-)ILLUMINATION OF HER EXTRAORDINARY WORK Hilary SCHMIDT hschmidt1@athabasca.edu Athabasca University, Canada Susan BAINBRIDGE susanbainbridge@athabascau.ca Athabasca University, Canada Norine WARK norinewark@gmail.com Education, Technology, & Research Consultant, Canada Received: 31.01.2022 Accepted: 26.03.2022 ABSTRACT The Matilda effect refers to the systematic under-recognition of women’s accomplishments in scientific fields (Rossiter, 1993), which we previously proposed extends into additional fields coded male within our culture, such as educational technology and distance education (Schmidt et al., 2021). In the current paper, we attempt to reverse the Matilda effect by highlighting the accomplishments of a groundbreaking early feminist distance education researcher, Christine von Prümmer, whose cross-national, multi-institutional empirical research focused on gender differences in online, digital, and distance education (ODDE). We briefly review von Prümmer’s biographical background before exploring her major achievements in ODDE research, which include challenging accepted notions regarding the supposed gender neutrality of theories of learning (such as andragogy), uncovering empirical evidence of female distance learners’ needs as distinct from those of “standard” (i.e., male) distance learners, and offering guidance to institutions across the world regarding how they might best support women learners’ success in an ODDE environment. We conclude that von Prümmer’s omission from standard textbooks and other works focused on distance education provides further evidence of the Matilda effect within this field. Keywords: Matilda effect, women researchers, distance education, online education, gender differences, gender equity, feminist researchers INTRODUCTION In an earlier paper, we argued that the Matilda effect—the well-established phenomenon by which women’s scientific accomplishments are systematically under-recognized— extends into the field of open, digital, and distance education (ODDE; Rossiter, 1993; Schmidt et al., 2021). Given the association of ODDE with computing and digital technology, both of which remain largely coded male within our culture (Makarova et al., 2019), we suggested that this extension was likely (Schmidt et al., 2021). As an example of the Matilda effect’s impact within ODDE, we described the accomplishments of Starr Roxanne Hiltz, a superlative early online learning researcher, whose work is now largely forgotten.