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Bluebirds, babies, and orgasms: the women scientists who fought Darwinism’s sexist myths

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Patricia Gowaty were pioneers. Yet their work is still contentious—and their contribution all too often ignored

By Angela Saini  
July 6, 2017
August 2017

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (left) and Patricia Gowaty (right) corrected myths about female animals. Photo: courtesy of the author/Hrdy/Gowaty

When I set out to write a book on what science tells us about women—a topic as controversial as it is vast—there was one person I knew I had to meet. So I found myself on the sun-drenched road to Winters, a town in California’s western Sacramento Valley. Here, a picturesque walnut farm is home to one of the most incredible women in science, a thinker whose work one researcher told me…

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Angela Saini

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist. Her new book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story, is out now from Fourth Estate (£12.99)

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