Well of course you doubt - thereby admitting what you deny: that saying such a thing out loud would be politically incorrect then as now.

I notice you completely ignored the concrete example I gave of comparable discrimination being explicitly avowed by a premier scientific organization at about the same time (Hertha Ayrton at the RS). No national scientific academy in the West would conceivably respond to a female nominee that way now. How does your model account for this evidence while still maintaining that disallowing a woman from giving a lecture on the gounds of tradition would be as suicidal then as now? I could provide further examples of a similar nature, if you'd like.

My point about Cambridge was not that women were not allowed to attend. They were allowed to attend, but they were denied degrees. Also, responding to ``Women couldn't attend Harvard (or Yale or Oxford or...)" with "Men couldn't attend Vassar" completely misses the intended point. Hint: The point is not "There were some colleges that women couldn't attend. How discriminatory!"

Finally, Marie Curie is not just famous for discovering an element. She was the first scientist to realize that radiation isn't due to a chemical reaction, but due to structural properties of individual atoms. She was also thereby the first scientist to provide evidence that atoms have an internal structure. This is a hugely significant discovery. And she did all of this before Pierre started working with her on radioactivity. Your belief that Marie Curie's fame is undeserved appears to be a product of reasoning upwards from a pre-written bottom line, rather than any acquaintance with actual facts about her life and work.