Editing Phrenology (section)

=== Gender stereotyping ===
[[Sexism|Gender stereotyping]] was also common with phrenology. Women, whose heads were generally larger in the back with lower foreheads, were thought to have underdeveloped organs necessary for success in the arts and sciences while having larger mental organs relating to the care of children and religion.{{sfn|Staum|2003|p=64}} While phrenologists did not contest the existence of talented women, this minority did not provide justification for citizenship or participation in politics.{{sfn|Staum|2003|p=65}}

The popularly held phrenological belief in the Victorian era was that women's brains were smaller and weaker than those of men and as such were incapable of being practitioners themselves. Evidence from letters written by the phrenologists [[Johann Spurzheim]] to his wife, Honorine Spurzheim, suggest that he had a number of women attending his lectures that were interested in phrenology.<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |last=Bittel |first=Carla |date=April 23, 2020 |title=Woman, Know Thyself: Phrenology, Gender and Nineteenth-Century Cultures of Science |url=https://www.wimlf.org/blog/woman-know-thyself-phrenology-gender-and-nineteenth-century-cultures-of-science |website=Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation}}</ref> He held the belief that women did not have necessary "superiority of intellectual powers". Despite this, many middle class women were just as captivated by the pseudoscience as their male counterparts. Contributions to the field of phrenology would be made by prominent figures such as [[Lydia Folger Fowler]], the second American woman ever to receive a medical degree, who created character charts and lectured extensively on the subject.<ref name=":02" />

Phrenology had an appeal to middle class women as a chance to understand their own minds and "know thyself" by creating charts that were very clear evidence for the organs of intellect being just as prominent in their brains as they were in men's.<ref name=":02" />