Women's Brains By Stephen Jay Gould Summary

In the essay “Women’s Brains” published in 1980 in Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist, argues against the judgments against women referring to their “lack” of intelligence. He also argues that we cannot trust science to give us the full truth without missing something. Gould wrote this text in response to a study from the French professor Paul Broca when he founded that women are inferior to men because their skull size was smaller making them not as smart and Gould analyzed not only Broca’s work but also many of his followers to show that the results they found from their own work always has one flaw in their work when they argue that women aren’t as smart as men. He studied Broca’s work to argue that Broca’s conclusions

The two main pieces of research that Gould argues against are, French scientists Paul Broca and Gustave Le Bon. Broca conducted an experiment by weighing the brains of men and women. He concluded that men were superior to women because men had heavier sized brains. Then Le Bon states that women are inferior to men and they cause disaster. With this study being accepted as true statements, Gould argues that biological determinism can cause problems of judgment as people try to guess the scientific data over time. He then expands the argument by bringing in Broca's disciples and pinpointing errors in their work to show that there was bad data and bad interpretations in this study. Gould argues in a very logical style without simplifying his explanations to reach out to people who could analyze data and come to their own

He wanted to show that women were being ignored because they were seen as uneducated because Broca’s and his disciples had done experiment and misinterpreted the data to create degrading conclusions. After Gould starts with George Eliot, he then quotes Manouvrier about how women were degraded after Broca’s conclusions became public. “These numbers fell upon poor women like a sledge hammer, and they were accompanied by commentaries and sarcasms more ferocious than the most misogynist imprecations of certain church fathers” (3). He wanted to show that women were being degraded by men in society. Not only that but scientists also attack women because of Broca’s conclusion. “A desire to give them the same education, and, as a consequence, to propose the same goals for them, is a dangerous chimera….” (7). Le Bon had believed that anything involving women were disastrous especially if they are educated. Gould put Eliot, Manouvrier, and Le Bon in the beginning to show his frustration and sadness that women were being degraded just because one scientist had come up with crazy conclusions from a tiny amount of data which lead to more misinterpreted conclusions from