  Against the characterization of rationalism as excluding women, Margaret Atherton draws on Mary Astell and Damaris Lady Masham to argue that in fact rationalism offered a framework in which women (and, one presumes, members of non-European cultures) could do philosophy. By prescribing a method of reasoning that doesn’t hinge on a particular education or social standing, argues Atherton (after Astell), rationalism reconceptualizes reason as in principle possible for all humans—man and woman, Plow-man and Doctor (Atherton, 32). Erica Harth traces the history of sixteenth and seventeenth century French “salon women” and offers evidence that Descartes’s clear, jargon-free French and commitment to being intelligible by lay people made Cartesianism appealing to the women who regularly participated in philosophical salons. Further, Harth reconstructs the thought of the prominent salon women to show that they extend Cartesianism in novel ways (Harth 1991). However, she notes that most of what comes down to us from French Cartesianism of the day originated in the male-only academy, and not the salons.