Early women scientists acted through egalitarian religious sects and domestic-role constriction

Evidence

Because the Scientific Revolution itself was not isolated from social, economic, and intellectual changes, its meaning for women was directly tied to these developments. The women who contributed to the intellectual life of late seventeenth-century England were not only reacting against the constriction of women’s roles into the domestic sphere and to the slow pace of women’s educational advancement, but, as in the Reformation, were responding to opportunities for women made possible within the more radical and traditionally more egalitarian religious sects. Caught up by the excitement of the “new science,” educated women, along with men, became an eager audience for the new ideas. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 1017

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s strand that radical sects opened egalitarian religious roles to women—here extended to women’s scientific participation, building on ch41 and ch60 on radical Protestant sects.
• XREF: connects to: Gnostic Christianity granted women religious roles orthodox churches denied them — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 116; Radical religious sects extended egalitarian cosmology to family and sexual relations — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 530; Radical Protestant sects offered women greater religious participation than orthodox churches — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 601 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses #qualifies (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204
• Patriarchal marriage domesticated feminine cosmic power into lawful order #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 367
• Early modern women’s intellectual achievement required noble birth or courtesan status #expands (0.72)
• Redefining daewa as an individual obligation opened space for women’s religious authority #expands (0.70)