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

by Angela Saini

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.’