Sexes in Science and History

A groundbreaking 1894 work that turns Darwin's own theory of evolution against the scientists who used it to prove women's inferiority. Eliza Burt Gamble meticulously compares male and female organisms across species, then traces the archaeological and anthropological evidence of women's actual roles in prehistoric and early historic societies. She systematically dismantles the "scientific" justifications for male supremacy that passed as established fact in her era, revealing how conveniently those "findings" served the existing power structure. Moving from biology to history to contemporary conditions, Gamble shows readers in 1916 how far women had progressed and how much further they still needed to climb. This is rigorous, polemical, furiously intelligent work from a woman who understood that if evolution was true, then the supposed natural order of male dominance was anything but.