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Assignment 02

For Londa Schiebinger, the importance of the comparison of anatomy between white women and men in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stemmed from the social structure at that time. People turned to science and hard “evidence” to really evaluate if women were capable of important tasks outside of the realm of domestic life. Marie-Genevieve-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville depicted women having smaller skulls and larger pelvises than men. This and the works of many other scientists who supported the same notions, led many people to believe that women were less intelligent than men and were only useful for reproduction. Consequently, women were not being taken seriously in prominent positions in the areas of politics, science, and education. Schiebinger mentions that even with what little progress came with the support for gender equality, there were still some setbacks. For example, she references Andreas Vesalius who stated that everything about the anatomy of men and women were the same except for the reproductive organs. He believed that because women’s reproductive organs were on the inside, they automatically become the inferior gender. In the 18th century, research in the anatomy of the female body was prompted by population increase and a new interest in motherhood. With more information and clearer depictions of women, scientists still believed that women were still unmatched because of their sex organs. The effort put into this new research proved that men were satisfied with the way their gender roles were and would support any research that made them seem more superior than women. In the 19th century, the idea that women were below men and equal to children continued. In a gleam of light, it was found that women’s skulls were actually heavier than males but what became a flaw for women was that so were children’s skulls; further putting them in the same classification. Women and children were always placed in the same category; except women could birth children. Using religion and the Bible as reasoning, many believed males were superior because God put Adam before women and children. What is shocking is that many women at the time were not taken seriously and therefore, could not dispute these findings by these male scientists. Their social status and standard of worth was being determined by people that have never considered them valuable in the first place.