Current Events > TIL: Florence Nightingale actually didn't have a high opinion of women.

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Although much of Nightingale's work improved the lot of women everywhere, Nightingale believed that women craved sympathy and were not as capable as men. She criticised early women's rights activists for decrying an alleged lack of careers for women at the same time that lucrative medical positions, under the supervision of Nightingale and others, went perpetually unfilled. She preferred the friendship of powerful men, insisting they had done more than women to help her attain her goals, writing: "I have never found one woman who has altered her life by one iota for me or my opinions." She often referred to herself in the masculine, as for example "a man of action" and "a man of business".