Women During the Scientific Revolution

In the middle ages woman were socially ineligible to seek a life of learning. Though, in the late 14th and 15th centuries humanism began to encourage learning for all elite (including women).



Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)

 Social Class: Aristocrat, Duchess of Newcastle
Published: Experimental Philosophy and Grounds of Natural Philosophy
She criticized the growing idea that through science, humans would be able to be masters of the universe.

 Unlike France and England, who discouraged women' interest in science, 1/7 of the astronomers in Germany were women.



Maria Merian (1647-1717)

Nationality:German
Social class: aristocratic
She undertook an expedition to collect and draw samples of plant and insect life. This led to her work Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam". The book showed the reproductive and developmental cycles of insects.


Maria Winkelmann (1670-1720) 

 She was a female astronomer who discovered the comet Hitherto

QUERELLES DES FEMMES 

The nature and value of women had been the subject of an ongoing, centuries-long debate, known as the querrelles des femmes (argument about women)


An important project in anatomy during the scientific revolution was the attempt to illustrate the human body and skeleton. What was found was that females had smaller skeletons (specifically smaller heads) then men and that reaffirmed their social inferiority. Why is that so?
Women----->>>> They were found to have smaller yet bigger pelvic areas than men, which reaffirmed that womens' sole purpose were, by God and now by nature,  to bear children; not to be smart intellectuals
Men------>>> They were found to have smaller pelvic areas and bigger skulls. This was interpreted as males having bigger brains altogether smarter than women.

Random Info : Scientific Revolution deteriorates midwife positions.