Apr 17, 2022

I've realised that I just don't believe that all experiments and studies are non-biased. Particularly when it comes to research telling me who I am. A woman.

In the corporate world, I've seen data be manipulated to support or disprove a particular business strategy or objective. So surely it is in the same in science?

Charles Darwin himself displayed considerable levels of bias towards women in his most important of works 'On The Origin of Species', published in 1859, and 'The Descent of Man', which came out twelve years later.

In a letter, hand-written by Darwin in December 1881, in response to questions posed to him about his suggestion of the inferiority of women, by Mrs Caroline Kennard from Brookline, Massachusetts, Darwin writes:

"I certainly think that women though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually, and there seems to me to be a greater difficulty from the laws of inheritance (if I understand these laws rightly) in their becoming the intellectual equals of man.

For women to overcome this inequality they would have to become breadwinners like men. And this wouldn't be a good idea, because it might damage young children and the happiness of the households".

The breadwinners point is an interesting one. In the animal kingdom, the lioness is the 'breadwinner'; going out to hunt and feed her pride. The general understanding is that the male lion protects the pride and so is in charge and this show of dominance leads to him eating the kill first. He may share the kill with the cubs, but the lioness eats last and usually on the scraps.

Now. Turn this on its head for a moment.

Currently, this is seen as the lioness being denied feeding on the kill by the male. However, I would like to suggest an alternative hypotheses. That, if this were the other way around and instead it was the male that hunted and the females and cubs fed first, leaving him the scraps, would that not be seen as heroic and a great sacrifice on his part?

Do we apply bias to how we view the animal kingdom as well as ourselves? We know we do to some extent as we view nature through rose-tinted glasses; seeing it as cute or romantic when actually it is savage and cruel and unforgiving, with just about every creature fighting for survival every single day.

The male lions are 'security guards', dominating the land and protecting the territory of the pride. Whether he is in charge or not is surely a matter of perception?

The perceived importance here is the strength and might of the male lion, however it is the lioness who feeds the pride, making her the breadwinner, which, in accordance with Darwin's own opinion, makes them 'equal'.

In the 21st Century, women have indeed become breadwinners for their families. Some earning vastly more than their male partners and with some males choosing to stay home and look after the children, much like a male lion protecting the pride.

Perception is the key point here. To refer to Darwin's letter to Mrs Kennard again, he concedes that women are "generally superior to men in moral qualities" but inferior in intellect. This shows Darwin's perception of morals versus intellect and which he deems more valuable.

Darwin has applied his own bias to his scientific findings. And if Darwin could do it, it surely stands to reason that other scientists could also be applying their own bias to their research?

Respected British biologist, Walter Heape, argued in his published work 'Sex Antagonism' in 1913, that "equality between the sexes was impossible because men and women were built for different roles".

I find this suggestion of man and woman being biologically different perfectly acceptable. These differences exist all across the natural world between male and female creatures. The point I believe the scientists and scholars of their time were missing from the women fighting for equal rights, was that somewhere along the line of history, men decided that women's attributes were less valuable than man's. And men have spent hundreds of years using science to prove it, not realising (in some cases at least) that they were falling foul to their own biases.

In her amazingly insightful book 'Inferior', Angela Saini brings to light a woman called Eliza Burt Gamble from Concord, Michigan. Gamble was fighting for women's rights and, in 1894, published some of the most radical ideas of her age in 'The Evolution of Woman: An Inquiry Into The Dogma Of Her Inferiority To Man'.

Studying statistics, history, and science, this was Gamble's counter-argument to Darwin and other evolutionary biologists. In her book, Gamble wrote that "the human qualities more commonly associated with women - cooperation, nurture, protectiveness, egalitarianism, and altruism - must have played a vital role in human progress".

Gamble argued that "women had been systematically suppressed over the course of human history by men and their power structures."

In her book, Saini goes on to say that "It's hard to picture the directions in which science might have gone if in those important days when Charles Darwin was developing his theories of evolution, society hadn't been quite as sexist as it was. We can only imagine how different our understanding of women might be now if Gamble had been taken a little more seriously."

Saini adds, "Historians today have regretfully described Gamble's radical perspective as 'the road not taken'.

Whilst the road may not have been taken in the past, it is certainly one that can be taken now and biases can and should be checked and put to one side to allow for open-mindedness and respect for all beings, no matter their perceived 'inferiority'.