"Women are stupid"

Lots of women's work has been stolen by and passed off as men's work like the woman who was down out of the Nobel peace prize because her male colleagues literally sneaked in her office and took it.

Rosalind Franklin had died by the time Crick, Watson and Wilkins got the Nobel prize and it can't be awarded posthumously, it can only be split between 3 people so it would have been interesting to see who would have got it if she was still alive, the Nobel committee ignored Dorothy Hodgkin's achievements for years so who knows. Franklin didn't have a good working relationship with Wilkins but whether that was misogyny, antisemitism or personal antipathy is difficult to say, she got on well with Crick and they worked together after the DNA papers were published, Watson is famously a bit of an arrogant arse but it is his book that made her role in the discovery famous among the general public, even if he was rude about her in it. Franklin and Wilkins paper with the famous X-ray crystallography image was in the same edition of Nature as Crick and Watson's paper with the structure so for scientists in the field she was known. And her work with Aaron Klug was what lead him to getting the Nobel Prize a few decades later. Her being ignored is the romantic story but it's way more complicated than that.

I don't recall hearing the idea that women are stupid as I was growing up. And I wasn't surrounded by progressive feminists either. But I agree that the historical achievements of women are overlooked.

These days it feels like people have higher academic expectations of girls than boys. Which is damaging to boys.

A woman invented beer is rather misleading. No one knows who invented beer, if you can even put a pin in it as it was likely rather more of an organic development. But it isn't possible to rule out a man being the "inventor".

Women used to do the baking, and the brewing that was an extension of that. It was all part of traditional women's work.

Never come across this.

Interesting...

I've never gone across this at all, and I wonder if it is something to do with growing up in a northern ex-industrial town where women worked in the mills and factories, both as single and married women, starting as far back as the late 18th century.

It's very hard to have a culture where women are perceived as stupid when you've a mill floor full of females operating complex weaving machinery.

That women have managed to do what they have done under conditions of such oppression ( 2 of us getting killed every week, millions of girls aborted around the world ) makes women all the more amazing.

I certainly believe that the lack of opportunity given to women (barred from education in the past etc) has likely skewed the statistics and wasted much opportunity. However, I'm not sure that two out of 32 million women being killed weekly is a factor in this if I'm honest. I think they're separate issues.

When I was young my DF praised my intelligence and told me I could do anything. It was my DM who used the "be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever" quote. Weird, really, as she was a HCP who went back to work as a married woman in the 70s when it was unusual.

I never thought women were stupid, nor was I ever encouraged to do so. My grandmother was certainly as intelligent as my grandfather and my mother as my father. Both parents encouraged me and my sister academically and supported us in aiming high. We went to a girls' grammar school full of bright girls who got top grades in science and maths as well as the other subjects. And then to a top university where there was no expectation that men would out-perform women. As a teacher, I most often see girls out-performing boys.

Only after i discovered feminism did I learn how amazingly unstupid women actually are and how deep of a lie it is to say women are stupid.

So you thought women were stupid until a feminist told you otherwise? That does seem a bit bizarre if I'm honest.

The Guardian but still:

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jan/26/girls-believe-brilliance-is-a-male-trait-research-into-gender-stereotypes-shows

My age 6, girls believe only boys can be geniuses.

Haven’t looked into methodology, though.

I don't know how common this really is. My sense in pop culture is that men are presented as buffoons, and women as clever. It seems a really common trope on kids cartoons as well which has made me somewhat uncomfortable.

I've known plenty of families as well where the family culture was that women were the ones capable of being in charge and knowing what's what. My own family, which is extremely combative, didn't differentiate as far back as I can remember.

My son, who is a boy with three sisters, asked me one day why girls were smarter than boys, as if this was just a thing everyone expected. It made me a little sad.

Positive or negative I mean

My dad had been doing a meccano project with DD when she was younger and there was a bit missing which he said he'd find.
I was shopping later with ds and DD and he called my phone and asked to speak to "the engineer" - ie DD. I do think these tiny cumulative things have an effect.

Yes exactly, Sakura. It really bothers me when I meet women who have internalized all that bs. One of my oldest friends is like that, actually. She can't help it, but it's as if she wants to drag us all down with her. And why? I mean, it's right there in front of her eyes: competent, successful, brave women. How can she harbour these strange theories about women being inferior when she grew up watching the same adults I did? It's so weird. I think there was relentless misogyny in her house though. And yes, it seems much worse than when men think it.

Wow that is incredibly recent!
I'm 40 and am lucky enough to have been brought up to believe I could do what I wanted and was one of the most intelligent in my class. The fact I was a girl wasn't relevant. This was by parents, grandparents and teachers. It took until I was applying for a job for me to experience this sort of sexism.

I'm in my 60s and think it's getting better. When I left junior school having won a scholarship for a local girl's grammar a female teacher wrote in my autograph album 'be good sweet maid & let who will be clever'. That wouldn't happen now. Small steps maybe but steps nonetheless.

I was raised to believe I was not as intelligent and pretty worthless for being female. My mother was/is anti feminism and still insists that my younger brother is more intelligent than me despite considerable evidence to the contrary. My dad has always had more belief in me.

I'm 49. When I was a child I was told that women were less intelligent than men because our brains were smaller. Also that boring jobs should be done by women rather than men, because women had a higher boredom threshold. And there were no female comedians because women couldn't tell jokes.

I know isn't true but when you're young you believe what adults say, and it took me a long time to break free from childhood conditioning.

@Chickenish same here. And surrounded by men who respect women. But am really noticing the increase in younger men who talk down to women and the younger women who tolerate it and keep saying how intelligent such a such guy is when they are just ordinary.