9.5: Science and Society - Women

An often-overlooked facet of the Scientific Revolution was the participation of aristocratic women. Noblewomen were often the collaborators of their husbands or fathers. For example, the Lavoisiers were a French husband and wife team that invented the premises of modern chemistry in the 18th Century. In some cases, women struck out on their own and conducted experiments and expeditions, such as the entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian, who took research trips to South America and did pioneering work on the life cycles of various insect species.

Figure 9.5.1: One of Merian’s illustrations, depicting the life cycle of butterflies and moths.

A few male theorists supported proto-feminist outlooks. The French scholar François Poulain de la Barre (1647-1725) concluded that empirical observation demonstrated that male dominance in European society was just a custom. Nothing about pregnancy or childbearing made women inherently unsuitable to participate in public life. In addition, he applied a similar argument to non-European peoples, arguing that there were only cosmetic differences between what would later be called “races.” His work was almost unprecedented in its egalitarian vision, anticipating the ideas of human universalism that came of age in the 19th Century and a dominant view in the 20th.

Despite the existence of highly-qualified and educated women scientists, informal rules banned them from joining scientific societies or holding university positions. In general, there was a marked tendency of male scientists to use the new science to reinforce rather than overthrow sexist stereotypes. Anatomical drawings drew attention to the fact that women had wider hips than men, which supposedly “destined” females for the primary function of childbearing. Likewise, they (inaccurately) depicted women as having smaller skulls, supposedly implying lower intelligence. In addition, male scientists and doctors increasingly pushed women out of important traditional social roles, such as midwifery, insisting on a male-dominated “scientific” superiority of technique.