Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female

The words of Voltaire, “Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors,” flow with both admiration and limitation. In this sharp saying, he acknowledges that women of great knowledge and even martial valor exist, yet he confines their recognition by suggesting rarity in the realm of invention. Beneath his words lies the imprint of his age—an Enlightenment world where women were often denied the tools of invention, yet judged for not producing it.

For centuries, women were shut out from universities, guilds, and academies, the very places where learning and invention were cultivated. Their intellects were not lacking, but their opportunities were bound. When Voltaire compared them to female warriors, he invoked images of Amazons—extraordinary, admired, but seen as exceptions, not as equals. In this, he both flatters and diminishes, offering praise that still confines women to the margins of history.

Yet history itself defies his conclusion. Consider Hypatia of Alexandria, a philosopher and mathematician of late antiquity, who taught astronomy and invented instruments for measurement. Or Ada Lovelace, centuries after Voltaire, who envisioned the first algorithm and is now hailed as the mother of computer science. These women prove that invention was not absent from their sex, but suppressed by the chains of culture. Their genius was real, and where it appeared, it shone with blinding brilliance.

Voltaire’s words also reveal the paradox of his own time. He lived in an age that adored the wit of Madame de Staël and the intellect of Émilie du Châtelet, his own lover and collaborator, who translated Newton’s Principia into French and illuminated its meaning for Europe. Without her, the discoveries of Newton might have remained inaccessible to much of the continent. If invention was rare among women, it was not for lack of ability, but because the gates of invention were guarded by men.

So let the generations remember: when you hear that women are not inventors, ask who kept the tools from their hands, the books from their eyes, the workshops from their reach. The rarity of female warriors and inventors is not proof of nature, but of history’s injustice. For whenever women have been given space to learn, they have shown that their genius rivals and equals that of men. The lesson is not that invention belongs to one sex, but that invention blossoms where freedom allows it.