Inferior: The True Power of Women and the Science that Shows It

by Angela Saini

‘Man is himself a problem in search of a solution,’ he writes. ‘When men understand that the best way to solve their own problem is to help women solve those that men have created for women, they will have taken one of the first significant steps toward its solution … The truth will make men free as well as women.’

If brute strength is a large part of the reason for male supremacy, he says, then in an age when strength matters less and violence appears to be declining, women should naturally ascend:

social psychologist Carol Tavris, author of The Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex, puts it to me this way: ‘Here is feminism, which involves ideological, political and moral beliefs and goals. And here is science, which requires us to put our beliefs and assumptions, including those inspired by feminism, to empirical test … For decades, feminism has been a lens that illuminated biases in science. It made science better. Women began studying questions about women’s lives – menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth, sexuality, work and careers, love – that most male researchers simply weren’t interested in. When men did include women in their studies and found gender differences, they often concluded that women weren’t just different from men, but deficient. So feminism was a crucial way to explode beliefs that people held that were just wrong.’

science is far from perfect. That’s not the fault of the method, but of ourselves. We imperfect creatures crash into its home and dirty its carpets with our feet. We throw our weight around when we should instead be its respectful guests. With us in charge, science can only be a self-correcting journey towards the truth. As such, none of the research I’ve written about represents the end of the story. Theories are only theories, waiting for more evidence.

Feminism can be a friend to science. It not only improves how science is done, by pushing researchers to include the female perspective, but science in turn can show us that we’re not as different from each other as we seem.

The facts are what will empower us to transform society for the better, into one that treats us as equals. Not just because this makes us civilised. But because, as the evidence already shows, it makes us human.