We document the participation of women in European academia from the rst univer-
sities to the eve of the Industrial Revolution. 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. We
measure the quality of women in academia through their publications. Comparing them
to 52,000 male scholars, we nd that they were on average better, suggesting some form
of discrimination.