Inferior by Angela Saini: Book Overview

A powerful deconstruction of science’s sexism

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Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story is a 2017 groundbreaking work by science journalist Angela Saini that masterfully unravels how centuries of sexism have corrupted scientific research and perpetuated harmful myths about women. Published by Fourth Estate Books in the UK and Beacon Press in the US, this meticulously researched 280-page volume challenges everything we thought we knew about gender differences and the role of women in human evolution.

Saini’s central thesis is deceptively simple yet powerful: science has systematically failed women. Not because of a few bad actors or isolated incidents, but because sexism has been woven into the very fabric of the scientific method itself — from hypothesis design to peer review. The book exposes how respected scientists, including Charles Darwin himself, allowed their personal prejudices to taint their theories about women’s capabilities, roles, and very nature. What makes this particularly damaging is that these pseudoscientific conclusions became social dogma, used to justify everything from denying women education to restricting their freedoms.