Scientific authority has repeatedly been deployed to justify female intellectual inferiority

Evidence

The use of science as an ideology to keep women in their place was not confined to ancient and early modern times. In the nineteenth century, Darwinian theory was found to hold social implications for women. Variability, the basis for evolutionary progress, was correlated with a greater spread of physical and mental variation in males. Scientists compared male and female cranial sizes and brain parts in the effort to demonstrate the existence of sexual differences that would explain female intellectual inferiority and emotional temperament. Women’s reproductive function required that more energy be directed toward pregnancy and maternity, hence less was available for the higher functions associated with learning and reasoning. The “adventurous sperm” and the “passive ovum” continued to serve as reproductive metaphors. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 653

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the polyad thread of law/institutions: science functioning as a legitimating institution, like Legalism elsewhere, that rationalizes hierarchy. — connects to: Biologizing women’s inferiority is scientifically baseless and ethically vacuous — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 104; Darwinian science was mobilized to justify female subordination — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 653; Nature’s figuration as submissive female gave scientific exploitation normative sanction — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 755 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Darwinian science was mobilized to justify female subordination #exemplifies (0.95) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 653
• Biologizing women’s inferiority is scientifically baseless and ethically vacuous #corroborates (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 104
• Bacon framed scientific method as the capture and enslavement of a female nature #exemplifies (0.90) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 676
• Nature’s figuration as submissive female gave scientific exploitation normative sanction #expands (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 755
• Modern scientific language still encodes the sexualized coercion of nature #exemplifies (0.82) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 682
• Women’s exclusion from authority stems from learned passivity, not innate inferiority #exemplifies (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 673
• Women’s inferior status relative to men is universal across societies #qualifies (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3177