Lynn Margulis was determined in her goal of scientific collaboration amongst scientists all around the world. From 1985 onwards, Margulis took the initiative to collaborate with SEM, when she participated in several SEM-sponsored conferences, in order to achieve her goal of scientific collaboration. In 1998, when INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY replaced Microbiología SEM as the official SEM journal, her expertise in the matter and overall aid was invaluable to this transition. With the introduction of INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY, Lynn Margulis, along with other outstanding microbiologists, was appointed Associate Editor. Margulis took this position with great responsibility and determination, putting all her effort and focusing all her intellectual energies in encouraging researchers to submit articles to the journal. Her role as peer reviewer was instrumental to this process. She would submit research articles from her own laboratory, and contribute historical perspectives as well as book reviews. In 2004, she became Honorary Associate Editor but maintained an active involvement with the journal.
International Microbiology: the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology
Other than her propensity for furthering education by giving lectures in schools and otherwise, Lynn Margulis was also a staunch proponent in feminism, specifically in the role of women as more than just housekeepers, wives and mothers. In an essay published in 1993, Lynn Margulis discussed what she terms the “red shoe dilemma”. The “red shoe dilemma” illustrates the struggles and challenges that many women face when confronted with choosing between a professional career and family life. She remembered how she was deeply moved by the film “The Red Shoes” when she was a teenager, in which a career conflict led a desperate ballerina to commit suicide. Lynn Margulis was moved because she had never considered the need to choose between career and family. She recognised, however, that “children, husband, and excellence in original science are probably not simultaneously possible”, but still believed that women should always be allowed to do both.
About herself, she wrote: “Probably, I have contributed to science because I twice quit my job as a wife. I abandoned husbands but stayed with children. I’ve been poor, but I’ve never been sorry.” As a result, women all around the world look to her not just as a woman in science, but as a feminist icon.