s, even those claiming to be objective in their premises.
Our purpose here is instead to present an analytical essay, in which we will outline three characteristic and sharply different explanations for the lack of women in the so-called hard sciences, and will inquire into the nature and merits of their claims. We will begin with a brief examination of the actual scope of the paucity of women in the sciences, utilizing the example of astronomy. From there we will go on to briefly outline the three schools of thought, and to logically analyse their respective claims. We will find that--though some of these schools appear to have more conceptual merit than others--we cannot at our present state of knowledge identify any reliable procedure for judging among them.
The singularity of Madame Curie at the pinnacle of scientific prestige can be traced down through the whole range of status in the sciences, both in the past three or so centuries in which science as we understand it now has been a social enterprise and mode of thought, and in the institutions and training system for the sciences at the present day. Women seldom make any appearance in the conventional histories of science. When they do, it is notable that they are most likely to appear in a "helpmeet" role.
Thus, for example, the student of the history of astronomy prior to the present generation is likely to encounter only three women in the standard textbooks. The first, in chronological sequence, is Caroline Herschel, the sister of the (vastly more famous) William, and almost invariably described simply as his assistant, with no specific contributions attributed to her. The second is Henrietta Leavitt, the discoverer of the mass-luminosity relationship of Cepheid variables--the standard yardstick for measuring distances beyond a few hundred light-years from the sun. Leavitt, however, was never technically a professional astronomer, in spite of the imp...