Yes. Bell was extremely progressive in his views about women and their role in society. In a 1901 letter from Bell to his wife Mabel, he wrote “If only the educated can vote, they not only rule the uneducated, but have the power to prevent the latter from being educated — a dangerous power to place in the hands of a class. If women are excluded men not only rule the affairs of women, but have the power to PREVENT women from ever getting a franchise unless THEY (the men) choose — an equally dangerous power. “
He goes even further, saying “And so with women — who are — on the average more intelligent and better educated than men — at least in America. The bulk of the men go to work early, and the preponderance of girls in the high schools of the country is very marked. The girls who receive a high school education so enormously outnumber the boys as quite to outweight the preponderance of males receiving a university education. While women do not, excepting in very exceptional cases, reach as high a point in education as men, still, taken as a whole the general level of intelligence and culture is, I think, indisputably higher among women than men, and the difference becomes more marked as you go down in the social scale.”
