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

by Angela Saini

Small individual choices, multiplied over millions of households, can have an enormous impact on how society looks.

‘Darwin created a space where women could say that maybe the Garden of Eden didn’t happen … and this was huge. You cannot overestimate how important Adam and Eve were in terms of constraining and shaping people’s ideas about women.’

Of the ten scientific fields they investigated, eight showed a male bias. In pharmacology, the study of medical drugs, the articles reporting only on males outnumbered those reporting only on females by five to one. In physiology, which explores how our bodies work, it was almost four to one.

at around the age of two or three, children start to become aware of their own sex. Between four and six, a boy will realise that he will grow up to be a man, and a girl that she will be a woman. By that age children also have some understanding of what’s appropriate for each gender, according to the culture they’re in.