As a man who, when working out whether to marry, once reasoned that a wife was “better than a dog, anyhow” Charles Darwin is not known to history as a leading advocate of gender equality.
Controversial though his views on other subjects may have been, historians have typically seen the great scientist as the epitome of the Victorian conservative when it came to gender. Famously, Darwin even stated that there were fundamental “differences in the mental powers of the sexes”.
Now, though, it seems that there may have been more to Darwin’s views on gender than he allowed into the public eye.
New research into the inner world of the great naturalist - focusing in particular on his private letters - has revealed evidence that he actively encouraged and helped pioneering women scientists to break into what, in the 19th century, was seen as strictly a man’s domain. Perhaps more dramatically, the study has also linked Darwin to women who fought for equality between the sexes, before suffragettes were even on the political map.
The research is the work of the “Darwin and Gender” project, funded by The Bonita Trust, and part of the Darwin Correspondence Project based at Cambridge University Library, which for the past four years has been studying the full range of Darwin’s writings on gender - including those which were never published. Its results, including resources for both school and university students, are being released via its own website, and in a new film, Darwin’s Women.
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Image:Still from the film "Darwin's Women".
Credit: Jonathan Settle / University of Cambridge
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Darwin’s women
10 September 2013
On matters of gender, Charles Darwin was supposedly an arch-conservative - but new research suggests that he actively helped women who were striving for an equal footing in society.