SURPRISING FACTS WOMEN IN SCIENCE
1 CAROLINE KENNARD BERATED DARWIN FOR HIS SEXIST VIEWS
Amateur scientist Caroline Kennard (1827–1907) was a prominent member of a movement in Boston, Massachusetts, striving to raise the status of women in society. In 1881, she was shocked to hear another woman cite Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, detailed in On the Origin of the Species (1859), in support of the view that “the inferiority of women; past, present and future” was “based upon scientific principles”. Kennard wrote to Darwin, encouraging him to clarify that this was not accurate.
However, the 72-year-old Darwin's response revealed that he did indeed believe that women were less evolved than men. “I certainly think that women though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually,” he wrote. For women to overcome this biological inequality,
