We document the participation of women in European academia from the first universities to the eve of the Industrial Revolution. A total of 108 women taught at universities or were members of academies of arts and sciences. Most of them were active in Catholic southern Europe—an unexpected result. We conjecture that Protestantism left less room for women at the top of the distribution of human capital to exercise their talent. The percentage of ever-married female scholars is 79%, but a large fraction of them remained childless. Comparing them with 58,995 male scholars, we find that they were on average better.

中文翻译：

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1800 年前欧洲学术界的女性——宗教、婚姻和人力资本

我们记录了从第一所大学到工业革命前夕，女性在欧洲学术界的参与情况。共有 108 名女性在大学任教或者是艺术和科学学院的成员。他们中的大多数人活跃于南欧的天主教徒——这是一个意想不到的结果。我们推测，新教给处于人力资本分布顶端的女性留下的施展才华的空间较小。已婚女学者的比例为 79%，但其中很大一部分人仍然没有孩子。将他们与 58,995 名男性学者进行比较，我们发现他们的平均成绩更好。