Physiology and Physical Force: The Effect of Edwardian Science on Women’s Suffrage

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough metabolic theory was ceding ground to genetics and endocrinology in early twentieth-century Britain as an explanation for sex determination, the belief that women were more conserving (anabolic) than expending (catabolic) of energy held sway. Thus, many scientists supported the antisuffrage argument of “physical force,” claiming that women lacked inherent energy needed to physically enforce laws and should be excluded from voting. A secondary argument claimed that such cyclic elements as menstruation and menopause made women too irrational to vote. This article examines how scientific macroarguments over women’s physiology fueled the key antisuffrage microargument of physical force. The debate over physical force illustrates the way that scientific knowledge, even when uncertain and evolving, may take public form as political certainty.