University education was available to some women during the medieval period in Europe. The Italian physician, Trotula di Ruggiero, is supposed to have held a chair at the School of Salerno in the eleventh century, where she taught many noble Italian women, a group sometimes referred to as the "ladies of Salerno". Several influential texts on women's medicine, dealing with obstetrics and gynecology, among other topics, are also often attributed to Trotula. The University of Bologna allowed women to attend lectures from its inception in 1088, and Dorotea Bucca occupied a chair in medicine there in the fifteenth century.

Medieval convents were another place of education for women, and some of these communities provided opportunities for women to contribute to scholarly research. However, for the most part, women were excluded from universities.An example is the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen, whose prolific writings include treatments of various scientific subjects, including medicine, botany and natural history (c.1151-58).

Scientific Revolution (16th, 17th centuries)

Margaret Cavendish, a 17th century aristocratic woman, took part in some of the most important scientific debates of that time. She was however, not inducted into the English Royal Society, although she was once allowed to attend a meeting. She wrote a number of works on scientific matters, including Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Grounds of Natural Philosophy. In these works she was especially critical of the growing belief that humans, through science, were the masters of nature. As an aristocrat, the Duchess of Newcastle was a good example of the women in France and England who worked in science.

Women who wanted to work in science, but lived in Germany, came from a different background. There, the tradition of female participation in craft production enabled some women to become involved in observational science, especially astronomy. Between 1650 and 1710, women made up 14% of all German astronomers. The most famous of the female astronomers in Germany was Maria Winkelmann. She was educated by her father and uncle and received training in astronomy from a nearby self-taught astronomer. Her chance to be a practicing astronomer came when she married Gottfried Kirch, Prussia's foremost astronomer. She became his assistant at the astronomical observatory operated in Berlin by the Academy of Science. She made some original contributions, including the discovery of a comet. When her husband died, Winkelmann applied for a position as assistant astronomer at Berlin Academy, for which she was highly qualified. As a woman - with no university degree - she was denied the post. Members of the Berlin Academy feared that they would establish a bad example by hiring a woman. "Mouths would gape", they said.

Winkelmann's problems with Berlin Academy reflect the obstacles women faced in being accepted in scientific work, which was considered to be chiefly for men. No woman was invited to either the Royal Society of England nor the French Academy of Sciences until the twentieth century. Most people in the seventeenth century viewed a life devoted to any kind of scholarship as being at odds with the domestic duties women were expected to perform.

Overall, the Scientific Revolution did little to change people's ideas about the nature of women. Male scientists used the new science to spread the view that women were by nature inferior and subordinate to men and suited to play a domestic role as nurturing mothers. The widespread distribution of books ensured the continuation of these ideas.