Women and science: Genealogy of exclusion

Abstract

This article sets out to contribute a personal reflection, from the viewpoint of cultural history, on the contexts and conditions that led to the exclusion of women from fields of science. In recent decades, international feminist literature and gender studies have produced a wide historiography, providing public opinion with the bases and evidence of the social, cultural and ideological reasons that helped build gender models of a particular archetype of women and of feminine nature in Western tradition. Patriarchal, monotheistic religion, the birth of science within the context of a patriarchal order and the challenge of doing science in a democratic society constitute the main thread explored herein.