1. We hold that Evolution’s plan,

2. To give as little as she can,

3. Is sometimes trying.

4. Fair share of brains, indeed, we win;

5. But why not throw the swimming in,

6. Why not the flying?

7. – May Kendall

The 1870s were characterized by debate of the “woman question” – or, more accurately, questions. What were the moral, intellectual, and physical capabilities and limitations of women? What roles should women be afforded in Anglo-American society? From which social arenas should they be excluded? This political climate shaped the contents of Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), while also being significantly impacted by it. Antifeminists and feminists alike saw the opportunity to use the power of scientific authority, and specifically the power of Darwin’s name and theory of sexual selection, to promote what were often diverse views of woman’s place in nature and society.

Beginning in the late 1970s, historians of science began to correct a past blind spot in scholarship and university courses on the Darwinian Revolution by including analysis of gender issues, specifically in relation to the content of Descent of Man. For example, Ruth Hubbard (1979), Evelleen Richards (1983), and Rosemary Jann (1997), among others, investigated the extent to which Darwin should be identified as sexist and highlighted feminist responses to the Descent of Man written by nineteenth-century women such as Eliza Burt Gamble (1841–1920), May Kendall (1861–1943), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935).