Description:
This book is a fascinating comparative study of constructions of female nature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on debates surrounding women's entry into higher education, it explores how gender difference was negotiated in Britain, Germany and Spain.
Review Quotes:
'...this book is an impressive piece of work. By examining scientific and medical theories about women's higher education, Katharina Rowold illuminates two key themes. In the first place, she shows how social Darwinist and eugenic thought was shaped and reshaped by different national contexts - and how this process helped to frame debates about the admission of women to university. Second, she explores how both those in favour and those against the higher education of women drew on the rhetoric of science to articulate their arguments.' - William Whyte, University of Oxford, UK
'The Educated Woman is a valuable and thoroughly researched study that illuminates the interaction of numerous different strands - the scientific, the medical, the religious, the political - within specific national contexts and particular historical moments on this important topic.' - Lesley A. Hall, Wellcome Library, UK