Women's Brains Stephen Jay Gould Analysis

251 Words1 Page

Stephen Jay Gould’s 1980 essay “Women’s Brains” as found in his book, The Panda's Thumb, questions the validity of the “scientific” studies that have concluded women to be inferior to men for their lesser brain size. Gould elucidates the absurdity of scientific conclusions that can be obtained based on the premises which assumed the inferiority of women prior to any testing. Gould’s essay also explains that the studies performed by Paul Broca, a professor of clinical surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, neglected comparisons of height, weight, and other factors of women when comparing their brain size to men’s. Gould exposes the unfair distribution of Broca’s sampling population, using women who were considerably older and men who

Open Document