ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the prevailing scientific beliefs regarding gender differences during the latter half of the 19th century. After outlining assumptions regarding general gender differences, it discusses beliefs about specific dimensions of female ability and personality. The nature of the female was believed to produce a number of specific female traits including gentility, emotional lability, and reliance on intuition over cognition. The chapter considers the unintentional male scientific bias which gave rise to these views and examines the meaning of the social history of views on gender for current socio-biological research. The implications of evolutionary theory for the study of human traits were recognized even as the merits of the theory were debated. A refinement of the inferiority theme took shape with the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-19th century. Male deviations became legitimized by evolutionary theory and the hypothesis of male superiority through greater variability became a convenient explanation for the facts of social life.
