Women In The Scientific Revolution

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries women in science were unacknowledged and frowned upon by European society. Women were excluded from university education except in Italy. Women’s roles were to focus on their household before all else, and certainly not to put science above these womanly duties. As females gained interest in science they were excoriated for neglecting their femininity. Most people involved in science understood the importance of all genders discovering scientific evidence; Europeans who had no part in science were critical to women due to their blinding focus on traditional sexual rank rather than society’s growth.
As a whole, society tended to disrespect women’s efforts in the Scientific Revolution. Society drilled ideas that a woman’s beauty and femininity came before anything else; therefore, women who put science above their feminine grace were frowned upon. It was absurd for a woman to attend university. Academies were sneered at for involving women in scientific discovery. So, females could only receive scientific education from their husbands, friends, or salons. People tried to justify women lesser, saying females did not have the ability to comprehend science or that their biological structure was inferior. Females had smaller skulls, interpreted as smaller minds; and women had

Women had to be extremely impressionable, much more than a man, to have the slightest positive recognition; if a woman was average in her presence, she would gain no respect. Europeans believed science was male privilege and women were below the ability to partake in said privilege. Although most people who wished women to be expelled from science were men, some of these cynics were female. Many women felt that their power of beauty was enough, that women needed to be satisfied with themselves rather than intruding on male