History of Feminism

is a lot of competition which fosters incentives to steal things that can't be locked away in vaults. Given that research (or song-writing or script ideas for movies for example) build on or provide variants of past works, it is also very problematic to determine the origin of an idea and give due credit.

It is also common practice for "leading scholars" to use research assistants/graduate students to do the work while the scholar gets the credit--or majority of the credit even if they contributed very little to the project. Graduate students who want to get published are often willing to have their major professor sign on to and submit their work since it increases their probabilities of getting published. This happens regardless of gender. It is often considered a part of "paying your dues".

I don't know how much you shared with your professor, but if he/she was simply plagiarizing your work, that is indeed grievous. I am sorry if that happened to you.

None of this is to deny that there are definitely subtle and considerable gender biases that exist in academia as well as elsewhere, but stealing ideas is not gender specific. Having experience in a male-dominated field I can attest to the fact that it happens to many males as well.