* Women property of husband / needed permission of husband to publish

Contemporary ‘Science’ dictated them to weaker status until 19th-20th century

Salons – women controlled the discourse of men / go-betweens / protectors from censors

* Suzanne Neckar

Writers/ Coffee House Owner

* Moll King: “Lectures in natural philosophy could be heard at Man’s near Charing Cross or Garraway’s in Exchange Alley, while the Grecian coffeehouse in the Stand was closely associated with the Royal Society. Moll’s was clearly one of the seedier coffeehouses, yet it was popular and attracted fashionable men-about-town.”

Debating Societies

– La Belle Assemblee, the Female Parliament, the Carlisle House Debates for Ladies only, and the Female Congress

Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) – aristocrat/scientist/poet/playwright

– natural philosophy (influenced by Hobbes)

Maria Winkelmann (1670-1720)

• astronomer
• wrote in German which prevented her from pub in scientific journals
• was denied a place in the Royal Academy Berlin
• Liebnitz supported her

Jeremy Bentham

• complete equality / right to vote / Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781)

Marie-Anne Paulze (Madame Lavoisier) – chemist

• combustion/air/acids/heat conduction
• trans English works to French / editor of husbands works
• diagramed experimental equipment
• ‘Elementary Treatise on Chemistry’

Laura Bassi (1711-78) – member of Italian Academy institute of Sciences/ chair of Institute of Experimental Physics

• worked in Newtonian physics
• received doctorate from Bolgna 1732 (europe’s second)/world first female professor!
• professor of anatomy ….her husband was her assistant!
• 1745 appointed one of 25members of Pope benedict XIVs elite scholars à Benedettini

Marquis de Condorcet

• ‘For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship for Women’ (1789)

Eva Ekeblad – agronomist/scientist à potato flour and potato vodka (saved wheat for bread!)

• 1746 first female member of the Royal Swedish Academy

Hedvig Nordenflycht – poet, salon hostess in Sweden

• member of the Tankebyggarorden – ‘Order of the Thought Builders’ – 1753 literary society
• 1761 ‘To the Defense of Women’  – Advocated Education for Women

Mary Wollstonecraft

– A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

– education and upbringing dictates place in society/limited expectations

Rousseau (anti)

– BOTH men and Women need reeducation in order to achieve equality

– domestic role of woman is a structural precondition for modern society

– women ‘naturally’ tended to be mothers and wives

*attacked salons as producing ‘un-natu