ABSTRACT
Differences between the intellectual characteristics of men and women were constantly discussed during the nineteenth century. Men and women had different thought processes, it was argued. Stimulated by Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, discussion in the 1860s of women’s position in society changed its ground and became centred on attempts to account for the differences between the sexes through the theory of evolution. Anthropologists, who themselves had discovered primitive societies in which men and women were still in the earlier stages of development, thought it doubtful that women had ever been men’s equal, for had this been so there should have evolved on earth as many societies in which women predominated over men as there were those in which men predominated over women. In primitive societies men and women often performed the same kinds of work; women were expected in some societies to do all the heavy carrying and even to continue their work while pregnant.
