ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, women seemed to be winning their battle for greater equality. In 1913, the American H.J. Mozans rejoiced that by 1897 even German professors, whom he thought the most conservative of academics, had conceded the intellectual equality of the sexes, not least in mathematics and sciences. They realised, he said that ‘the reputed sexual difference in intelligence was not due to difference in brain size or brain structure, or innate power of intellect, but rather to some other factors ...[that is] education and opportunity’. He tartly called this the best ‘illustration of the sluggishness of the male as compared with the female mind’ since men of science were only now arriving at the ‘sane conclusion’ which Christine de Pisan had reached 500 years before. He illustrated his argument with many examples of women from Europe and the USA who had achieved highly in a range of sciences, mathematics and invention despite the barriers they faced. 1
