Understanding how the human being develops in the maternal womb is one of the questions that most intrigued humanity. If today, with a lot of knowledge and technology, we still do not know all the processes of gestational development, this question was extremely difficult to answer in antiquity. The performance of Eurocentric science, in the hands of white men over the past centuries, was fundamental to establish the stereotype of the biological inferiority of women and their participation in society as a producer and creator of children.
Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), a Greek philosopher and scholar in several areas, including embryology, considered women “defective men” whose development in the mother’s womb had been terminated prematurely. Female fetuses would lack the heat necessary to transform them into male fetuses. As for the role of women in reproduction, he maintained that if menstrual blood was the material cause for the formation of the embryo, it was in the man’s semen that the divine, animated and rational force that would give rise to life resided. Menstruation was an impure semen, which lacked the soul principle.
For Galen (129-217), an important physician who lived in Rome and whose studies prevailed in Western conceptions for several centuries, the higher temperature of men would also explain their biological superiority. Heat, deficient in women, would be responsible for the deformation of their external and internal reproductive organs. The “female testes” (the ovaries), small and imperfect, would give rise to a cold semen, incapable of generating an animal.
The idea of women’s biological inferiority was also present during the 17th and 18th centuries, a fertile intellectual period for natural history. With the construction of the first microscopes, in 1677 the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was able to observe sperm for the first time. Their movement served as proof of life, presuming the existence of a complex structure endowed with a soul. The current of preformism or animalculism gained strength, with the idea that beings were already completely formed and miniaturized within the gametes. Nicolaas Hartsoeker’s drawing, published in his Essai by Dioptrique [Ensaio de dióptrica] in 1694, is the most typical illustration of preformism, showing a human being curled up in a fetal position inside a sperm head.
Even after decades of studies and the demonstration that sperm and egg were necessary to form an embryo, the idea remained that the egg would be a kind of “passive cell” waiting for the strongest and fittest sperm to enter. In fact, the fertilization process is much more complex, with the egg playing a key role in attracting sperm and controlling its entry.
At the time of the Enlightenment, schemes about the evolution of living beings were still in force that showed women as embryonic or juvenile forms of adult white men. Female anatomy and physiology were used as a justification for associating women with the private sphere of domestic care and reproduction, while men enjoyed culture, politics and also scientific work. Even after many advances, doctors in the 19th and 20th centuries believed that menstruating women should avoid mental exertion, as the thought would drain energy and divert it from the reproductive system, causing general weakening and possibly leading to infertility.
The sexism produced by men and supported by science for many centuries still reverberates today. Although we have known for more than 50 years that a typical human embryo is made up of an equal number of maternal and paternal chromosomes, the burden of reproductive responsibilities still falls on women. For example, it is common for women to have medical consultations and health checks before trying to conceive, but men are rarely advised specific preconception care.
Science demonstrates that a similar proportion of men and women can experience infertility, and there are numerous treatments and scientific articles focused on male infertility. In the social imaginary, however, the inability to bear children is attributed mainly to women. The science that collaborated to restrict the role of women in society now needs to help reverse this fact, in addition to publicizing that care for reproduction is the responsibility of both sexes.
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Rossana Soletti is a professor of embryology and history of science at UFRGS.
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