Londa Schiebinger’s book, The Mind Has No Sex?, is an excellent survey of women’s role in the origins of modern science and the reasons for its decline. The title is drawn from a statement by a 17^th century philosopher, François Poullain de la Barre. Based on his studies of the ‘new’ science of anatomy, he claimed that there was no evidence that women’s undoubtedly inferior position was due to some biological deficit, or lack of natural ability, and that, given appropriate opportunities, women would be as capable as men of high achievements in all spheres. “L’esprit n’a point de sexe” he declared.

It appears to have been downhill all the way since that optimistic statement. In parallel with the exclusion and disappearance of women from the realms of scientific enterprise and discovery, there is evidence of a powerful drive among (male) scientists towards applying the sexual differentiation associated with reproduction to all other aspects of the body, including the brain and hence the mind. Women’s development was described as being arrested at a lower stage of evolution, with brains and abilities to match.

Behind this was the assumption that a woman’s primary (if not sole) role in society, to be a mother/homemaker, is determined by her biology, and deviations from this destiny (such as becoming ‘over-educated’ or trying to enter ‘male’ occupations) would be damaging for her, her family and, presumably, the future of society. It was not an unspoken assumption either. This prejudice was supported by lofty statements from (male) authorities, full of rousing psychobabble about maternal instinct and the drive to be “womanly companions of men and to be mothers”. The stereotypical view was established of women’s essential nature as empathic, emotionally labile, cognitively fragile, wholly and inextricably linked to their destinies as wives and mothers and determined by their different brain structure and function.