Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America

"We forget what the decades in the run-up to women finally getting the vote were like. There was a huge amount of intellectual debate amongst women. Darwin’s theories played an important role in helping to rethink what it meant to be female. Evolution painted a new story of the past that countered religious narratives, and in some ways liberated women from conservative religious expectations. Although, of course, Darwin also believed that women were the intellectually inferior sex, almost less evolved than men. Hamlin beautifully captures the state of debate at the time, and profiles the incredible women thinkers engaging with these fresh scientific ideas."