Education and Sex

In England during the 1870s opponents of higher education for women began to explain how mental strain affected the female reproductive system. Recent educational achievements of women made anthropological ‘proofs’ of women’s innate mental inferiority look doubtful. Medicine was the first occupation to be assailed by women in their drive to enter the professions, and it was medical practitioners who made the strongest attack against higher education for women. Few medical writers considered themselves conservative in their attitude toward women. The medical attack concentrated on what would happen if women were encouraged to attend universities. Through menstruation women’s reproductive system made regular demands on their constitution, and mental strain was as dangerous to them as physical strain. Throughout most of nineteenth century, people generally believed in physical delicacy of the human female. Although the physical stamina required by women of labouring classes belied this, the ideal of womanhood rested in prototype of the frail, protected woman of the middle classes.