Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting The Story

Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting The Story
Angela Saini

‘Inferior is more than just a book. It’s a battle cry – and right now, it’s having a galvanising effect on its core fanbase’ ObserverAre women more nurturing than men?Are men more promiscuous than women?Are males the naturally dominant sex?And can science give us an impartial answer to these questions?Taking us on an eye-opening journey through science, Inferior challenges our preconceptions about men and women, investigating the ferocious gender wars that burn in biology, psychology and anthropology. Angela Saini revisits the landmark experiments that have informed our understanding, lays bare the problem of bias in research, and speaks to the scientists finally exploring the truth about the female sex.The result is an enlightening and deeply empowering account of women’s minds, bodies and evolutionary history. Interrogating what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, Inferior unveils a fresh view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded.

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Copyright (#u0bc67060-a13d-5f77-853b-86359a55f230)

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

Copyright © Angela Saini 2017

Cover photograph © Vanessa Serpas on Unsplash

The right of Angela Saini to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008172039

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008172046

Version: 2017-12-12

Dedication (#u0bc67060-a13d-5f77-853b-86359a55f230)

For my boys, Mukul and Aneurin

Contents

Cover (#u2d4c06eb-39ca-5170-b9ee-42fbf8222858)

Title Page (#ue5be5e74-8a5f-5f1c-bf62-908a516e0eb9)

Copyright (#ueee87d63-97e5-5f19-99fa-b2c8b9f264a4)

Dedication (#u580232ca-351d-5fd5-9f8f-95b877fe9416)

Introduction (#u0d50021a-0212-51be-b18b-4550da918e95)

1 Woman’s Inferiority to Man (#u98605b26-e355-5e11-9836-dce859e3475b)

2 Females Get Sicker But Males Die Quicker (#uc687cbde-7eed-51dc-a35a-40d1b8442cfe)

3 A Difference at Birth (#ufd15ea60-7c60-5f08-9e32-3986cebd77e1)

4 The Missing Five Ounces of the Female Brain (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Women’s Work (#litres_trial_promo)

6 Choosy, Not Chaste (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Why Men Dominate (#litres_trial_promo)

8 The Old Women Who Wouldn’t Die (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

References (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Introduction (#u0bc67060-a13d-5f77-853b-86359a55f230)

For centuries, scientists have influenced decision-makers on important issues including abortion rights, granting women the vote, and how schools educate us. They have shaped how we think about our minds and bodies, and our relationships with each other. And of course, we trust scientists to give us the objective facts. We believe that what science offers is a story free from prejudice. It is the story of us, starting from the very dawn of evolution.

Yet when it comes to women, so much of this story is wrong.

I must have been about sixteen years old, on the playing field of my school in south-east London, watching a home-made rocket zoom into the sky. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. Fresh from the nerdy triumph of having been elected chair of the school’s first science society, I’d organised a day of building small model rockets before setting them off. I couldn’t think of anything better. The night before, I calculated whether we had enough construction materials for the crowds that were sure to come.

I shouldn’t have worried. On the day, I was the only one who turned up. My chemistry teacher Mr Easterbrook, a kind man, stayed and helped anyway.

If you were the geek growing up, you’ll recognise how lonely it can be. If you were the female geek, you’ll know it’s far lonelier. By the time I reached sixth form, I was the only girl in my chemistry class of eight students. I was the only girl in my mathematics class of about a dozen. And when I decided to study engineering a couple of years later, I found myself the only woman in a class of nine at university.

Things haven’t changed much since then. Statistics collected by the Women’s Engineering Society in 2016 show that only 9 per cent of the engineering workforce in the UK is female, and just over 15 per cent of engineering undergraduates are women. Figures from WISE, a campaign in the UK to promote women in science, engineering and technology, reveal that in 2015 women made up a little more than 14 per cent of their workforces overall. According to the National Science Foundation in the United States, although women make up nearly half the scientific workforce there, they remain under-represented in engineering, physics and mathematics.

Standing on that playing field by myself aged sixteen, I couldn’t figure it out. I belonged to a household of three sisters, all brilliant at maths. Girls stood alongside boys as the highest achievers at my school. According to the Women’s Engineering Society, there’s very little gender difference in take-up and achievement in the core science and maths subjects at GCSE level in British schools. Indeed, girls are now more likely than boys to get the highest grades in these subjects. In the USA, women have earned around half of all undergraduate science and engineering degrees since the late 1990s.

Yet as they get older, fewer women seem to stick with science. At the top, they’re in an obvious minority. And this is a pattern that goes as far back as anyone can remember. Between 1901 and 2016, of the 911 people awarded a Nobel Prize, only forty-eight were women. Of these, sixteen women won the Peace Prize, and fourteen the Prize for Literature. The Fields Medal, the world’s greatest honour in mathematics, has been won by a woman only once, in 2014 by the Iranian-born Maryam Mirzakhani.

A couple of years after I graduated from university, in January 2005, the president of Harvard University, economist Lawrence Summers, gave voice to one controversial explanation for this gap. At a private conference he suggested that ‘the unfortunate truth’ behind why there are so few top women scientists at elite universities might in some part have to do with ‘issues of intrinsic aptitude’. In other words, that there’s a biological difference between women and men. A few academics defended him, but by and large Summers’ remarks were met by public outrage. Within a year he announced his resignation as president.