it is implausible that this high regard is explicable in terms of political correctness, given the time period.

When do you think that the movement for progress toward gender equality began? Keep in mind that women gained to right to vote near the beginning of the 20th century, and the movement to bring that about began many decades before then. This illustrates the point that the movement for progress toward gender equality has been influential for well over a century. It does have a beginning, but that beginning is long before 1903, not after.

An example of a prominent and hugely influential intellectual who favored progress toward gender equality and who lived long before 1903 is John Stuart Mill, who wrote The Subjection of Women.

Marie Curie was regarded as an accomplished scientist by her contemporaries, and it is implausible that this high regard is explicable in terms of political correctness, given the time period.

Marie Curie was not famous for being an accomplished scientist. You have never heard of the person that discovered Radon, that being a far more important discovery than Radium, for Radon revealed the transmutation of the elements. She was famous, then as now, for being an accomplished female scientist. She was, then as now, like many famous women of the nineteenth century, a mascot.

The evidence that unqualified females have been affirmative actioned in to STEM fields since 1880 or so, and into administrative positions since around 1850 or so, is pretty similar to the evidence that they are being affirmative actioned today. This produces predictable results, which results are then denounced, starting in the 1860s, as the result of incorrigible misogyny, and proclaimed to be grounds to apply affirmative action even more vigorously and suppress thoughtcrimes even more harshly.

In practice everyone acts as if female STEM credentials are given merely for being female, rather than actually being qualified, and those that deny acting in this manner, nonetheless do act in this manner, just as those that repudiate John Derbyshire's infamous advice as racist nonetheless act in accordance with that advice. This could be because everyone is consciously or unconsciously misogynistic, or it could be because credentials really are given merely for being female.

And this has been the case for well over a hundred years, with everyone saying for over a hundred years that it was the last generation that was horribly misogynistic, but now we are thankfully past all that.

Which then is it? Misogyny or gender realism? One statistic that might be relevant to that question is that today's SAT is no longer an intelligence test, but instead measures the same thing that grade point average is supposed to measure. Predictably, boys do substantially better on the SAT, and substantially worse on grade point average. Affirmative action grading for female GPA is one possible explanation. You, perhaps, may have a better explanation.

Boys also do substantially better on the LSAT, but that is to be expected, since the LSAT is an intelligence test rather than an accomplishment test.

When I claim that women have been affirmative actioned for over a hundred years, it was of course denied back then, just as it is denied now, so I cannot prove that claim, but the smell of hypocrisy and doublethink were suggestive then, as they are suggestive now.

If you ask me for a properly authoritative citation for that claim, I will not be able to give it. All I can produce as evidence is a funny smell, which funny smell has not changed much in over a hundred years.

If you insist, however, I can give you properly authoritative citations for grade point average, LSAT, and SAT.

My priors for "mascots" being fictitious are outweighed by my priors for conspiracy theories being fictitious.

You're confusing conspiracy and prospiracy.