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Julia Patterson
Mr. Welch
AP Euro, 7
29 October 2014
DBQ: Women in Science
Prompt: Analyze and discuss attitudes and reactions toward the participation of women in
the sciences during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were commonly believed to be
workers around the house and to raise families. When some women sought to be regular
contributors to science, naturally, most of them were declined this opportunity. Most of the
negative speculators were men and occasionally women, who strongly believed in the traditional
view of a womans role in society. The majority of the supporting view were women who
sought to work I the scientific field, and their families.
Most men did not support women in science because they held onto the traditional role of
women in the house hold. Johann Eberti criticized Marie Cunitz, who neglected housework and
slept most days because she spent most of her time working with Johannes Kepler (Document 1).
Most men thught that women should limit any studying they do to either art or music, and some,
like Johann Junker, even questioned the morality or legality of women participating in sciences
(Document 10. Women were discriminated simply for being women. Samuel Pepys shows a
distinct prejudice against a woman who appeared at a meeting of the Royal Society of Sciences
because of the way she dressed and held herself (Document 3).
Women who condemned feminine scientific contribution often did so because they felt
threatened. Dorothea Erxleben, a female medical practitioner herself, wrote that other women
felt as if she were trying to make herself superior to them or equal to men, which at that point

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women were seen as inferior (Document 9). There were also women who simply believed that
females could not comprehend scientific matters and bound them to the old view of women: a
pretty face that works the home (Document 12). Both genders attacked female scientists and for
similar reasons.
Most of the supporters were female scientists who believed they had every right to
partake in scientific development. Marie Meurdrac, who admits that women traditionally were
supposed to be hidden at home, described that minds have no gender and are equally capable of
science (Document 2). A man made a similar statement about his wife. She discovered
somethinga cometthat he had never seen before, and although it is possible that he only
supported her because they were married, Gottfried Kirch greatly praised his wife (Document 6).
Gottfried Leibniz, on the other hand, used the reason why most women were denied access to
science to give them credibility in the field. He said, because women were more detached from
troublesome cares, they are more capable than men to discover beauty in science.
Women did not have the majority support, but thanks to the people who supported them,
combatting the discriminators, women are an active part in science today.