Caroline Augusta Kennard, née Smith (15 January 1827 - 24 October 1907) was an American amateur scientist and advocate of women's rights.
[3] In 1892, Kennard donated fruit from her own Ricus elastica plant (rubber tree) to the Boston Society of Natural History.
[3] On Kennard's death, a science scholarship at Radcliffe College was established in her memory by her sister, Mrs Martha T. Fiske Collord.
More specifically, Kennard prepared a paper for this organization, which she read in 1896, emphasizing the need for children to study nature as she believed this positively impacted their development and education in the long run.
[3] The theory that Kennard questioned was found within Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which emphasized that women are in fact inferior to men.
As a result, this incident motivated Kennard to personally write Darwin in 1881 declaring that this was inaccurate as she attested that women are not scientifically inferior to men.
[9] In response, Darwin wrote back to Kennard, referencing his work titled Descent of Man as he stated, “I certainly think that women though generally superior to men [in] moral qualities are inferior intellectually.” [9][5] Darwin noted that the only way to solve this inferiority and for the sexes to be considered equal was for women to become “breadwinners," or to assume economic responsibility and make their own money through work.
[3] This is illustrated in his letter to Kennard claiming, “To do this, as I believe, women must become as regular ‘bread-winners’ as are men; and we may suspect that the easy education of our children, not to mention the happiness of our homes, would in this case greatly suffer.” [10] Ultimately, Darwin’s response infuriated Kennard and she wrote him back on January 28, 1882, arguing that women were certainly “breadwinners” and were not inferior to men.
[3] Furthermore, Kennard expressed to Darwin in their correspondence that women were crucial to society because they worked equally as hard as their male counterparts.