September 22

"This pristine silk motor scarf was sold in London before the Women's Social and Political Union's “Woman’s Sunday” March on 21 June 1908. The government had challenged the suffrage movement to show numbers, and more than 250,000 activists traveled…

"English physician and natural philosopher Erasmus Darwin wrote this work at the urging of his two daughters, born from his relationship with Mary Parker and out of wedlock. They had sought his counsel on establishing a boarding school in 1794.…

Keenly observant entomologist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian was the first to study and depict the metamorphosis of insects in the field. She taught girls botanical drawing and sold her specimens, prints, and books to earn a living. Her first work,…

Bound in a lovely pink, gilt-edged and stamped glazed paper binding, schoolgirl Emma Lascal’s beautifully observed and sensitively drawn cosmography report summarizes the astronomical knowledge of her day. Nineteenth-century advances in the telescope…

Trade Card advertising Mme. Demorest’s Reliable Patterns,
[New York, New York]: [ca. 1870-1900]

Depicted in the image is a "mixed-gender" medical school class dissection. A group of medical students consisting of five males and 1 female examine a cadaver along with the professor. The image portrays the tension over female medical training in…

In this text, French humanist Marconville compiles examples from the past and present of the virtues and vices of women. Ultimately, he suspends judgement on whether women have an inborn predisposition to these various virtues and vices.

French philosopher Madeleine de Scudéry was a prolific writer. Her novels and books were published under her brother’s name. She embraced philosophical dialogue as a means to explore questions of gender, sexuality, education, and power. Scudéry was…