Science and the Construction of Women (RLE Feminist Theory)

Mary Maynard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136194542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Science and the Construction of Women is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the major questions currently challenging feminist scholars of science. The authors ask key questions: What constitutes science? How have feminists investigated it? How does science 'construct' women? How can we create a feminist discourse of science? Are the current developments to women's advantage or disadvantage? Their answers draw on material from a wide range of natural scientific, humanities and social science sources, critically examining theoretical approaches from the postmodern to the materialist to the cyborgian.

A key argument of the book is that there are strong intellectual and pragmatic reasons – the rapid development of information technology, advances in fertility treatment and genetic engineering, feminist concern for environmental issues – why feminism must rigorously engage with issues of a scientific and technological nature. Science and the Construction of Women provides an important contribution to the opening-up and broadening of debate in the field.

This book will be an important text for students of gender and women's studies, and science studies. It is also designed to be read by feminists both inside and outside the academy and to appeal to all those with interests in the sociology of knowledge and the history of ideas.

Chapter 1

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Revolutionizing the Subject: Women's Studies and the Sciences

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Mary Maynard

Introduction

Amidst the boom in publishing, teaching and research which has accompanied the growth of western women's studies,¹ it seems that less attention has been afforded to the natural sciences or technology than to other disciplinary areas. This is not to say, of course, that there has not been some significant work in these fields. Writers such as Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding and Evelyn Fox Keller, for example, have developed sustained philosophical and epistemological critiques of scientific rationality, while others, Cynthia Enloe and Cynthia Cockburn, for instance, have examined the patriarchal and manipulative usages of technology (Cockburn, 1983, 1985; Cockburn and Fiirst-Dilic, 1994; Cockburn and Ormrod, 1993; Enloe, 1989; Haraway, 1989, 1991; Harding, 1986, 1991, 1993; Keller, 1985, 1993). Further areas which have attracted attention are those of reproductive technology and genetic engineering (Arditti, Duelli Klein and Minden, 1984; Spallone, 1988, 1992; Stanworth, 1987). This is especially in relation to the ways in which women are objectified into body parts and reduced to the carriers of male genetic material. In addition to research and publications emanating from the US, Australia and Britain, important analytical and critical work on science has also emerged from European networks, such as the Danish Gender-Nature-Culture group and the feminism and science cluster of the Network of Inderdisciplinary Women's Studies in Europe (NOI ♀ SE) (Lykke and Braidotti, 1996; Lykke, Bryld and Markussen, 1992). In general, however, most western women's studies courses, whether undergraduate or graduate, have tended to focus their concerns on the humanities or social sciences. Science seems to have been able to maintain a stronger resistance to feminist influences and has featured less prominently on the women's studies agenda (Harding, 1986).

Recently, two British feminists, Linda Birke and Hilary Rose, both of whom have published extensively on matters to do with feminism and science and who are also both contributors to this volume, have commented upon the anti-science feeling that seems to exist in women's studies and in feminism more generally. Birke, for instance, points out that, compared to some subjects, there is relatively little interest in science within the women's movement or women's studies, except around specific issues such as women's health, and comparatively few women's studies books or courses that explicitly address science and technology (1994). She refers to science as hostile territory, not just in terms of her experiences in the laboratories of academia, but in the women's movement as well. Discussing this hostility, Birke remarks: ‘I remember when I was surrounded by several women who wanted to know how I could possibly be doing research in science because it was so heavily patriarchal. I did wonder at the time and I'm still wondering since why science gets singled out. Can you name one area of the academy that isn't patriarchal?’ (1994: 187).

Rose also identifies an anti-science tendency within feminism. Focusing, in particular, on what she refers to as the ‘postmodern deluge’, Rose is critical of this development because, she argues, an over-emphasis on language and discourse leads to a refusal to distinguish between true and false knowledge and good and bad science (1994: 23). She suggests that postmodernism's relegation of the contest between more and less truthful accounts, to one about different stories that we may choose to believe or not, is immensely politically damaging. Crucially, such an anti-science position denies the possibilities of either developing empowering knowledge or of making practical social interventions.

It is the argument of this book that women's studies stands aloof from the sciences at its peril. More specifically, this collection of interdisciplinary essays aims to explore some of the major questions and topics with which feminist scholars of science are currently engaging. It is concerned with what constitutes science, how feminists have investigated it, the ways in which science is able to construct women, the possibilities of generating new feminist discourses of science and the extent to which current developments might be to the advantage or disadvantage of women. In this, the text draws on material and utilizes examples from a wide range of natural scientific, humanities and social science sources. It employs feminist methods derived from history, sociology, deconstruction, discourse analysis and literary criticism. It also critically examines the usefulness to feminists of postmodern, materialist, cyborgian and standpoint theory. Overall, the book indicates that to present the relationship between women and science in polarized terms is too simplistic. There has been a tendency for some writers to see the sciences either as inherently oppressive of women or as their salvation (Jordanova, 1995). Yet, as the contributions collected here indicate, not only are the very terms women and science problematic, since they imply the existence of homogeneous, static and ahistorical categories, neither can the relationship between them be taken for granted. Not only do differences between women position them differentially to take advantage of whatever potential science might offer, but different aspects of scientific endeavour may be more or less coercive or empowering of women. For these reasons various contributors present their arguments in relation to issues of class, race and sexuality, as well as geographical location.

Some of the chapters in the book were originally presented as public lectures in the highly successful series on Women and Science organized by the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York, UK, as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations. The theme was specifically chosen in order to raise the profile of questions about science for women, although it was acknowledged that the title itself, selected in an attempt to maximize the potential audience, was deeply problematic. Other material has been commissioned or included to widen the book's scope.

It is the aim of this chapter to provide a context for those which follow. It begins by outlining some of the characteristic features of the women and science literature, considering why science might have generated so much negativity and the reasons which might be bringing about change. The chapter then pays attention to issues concerning science, technology and power and the ways these are addressed in this volume. It concludes by suggesting feminist debates on science and technology need to pay more attention to race and racism and to environmentalism and ecology in relation to science, especially as they relate to non-western contexts.

Women's Studies and the Study of Science

There are several possible reasons why women's studies has paid less attention to the sciences than to other disciplines. As Nancy Lane (chapter 3), Ailsa Swarbrick (chapter 4) and Jean Barr and Linda Birke (chapter 5) indicate, for instance, science tends to be regarded as a male preserve. Lane shows how, despite marked improvements in the number of young women taking and succeeding in examinations in some science subjects, their presence still decreases dramatically the higher up the student, academic and professional hierarchy one travels. Further, despite rhetoric to the contrary, there have been difficulties in persuading the British government to take this problem seriously. Swarbrick discusses the difficulties faced by women wishing to pursue a career in technology, particularly if they have families. She argues that, in striving to counter gendered constraints, such women demonstrate considerable commitment to technology as a career, although this is not often recognized or valued. Barr and Birke's research suggested that women feel excluded from science and that this is rooted in the distinction they make between commonsense, perceived as owned knowledge, and science, which is treated as alienated knowledge and, therefore, has nothing to do with them. In the accounts collected from interviews, Barr and Birke found that women portrayed the activities of science as ‘boring, tedious, mathematical’ (this volume, p. 82). The attribution of a form of knowledge as being ‘scientific’ tended to be reserved for something which, by definition, they could not, or did not expect to, understand.

It is tempting to suggest, then, that the relative disinterest in the sciences, often found within women's studies, is to do with the fact that many of those involved in it have not studied science to any great extent and feel that they have a rather ambiguous relationship to the subject. Interestingly, the terms of the debate have changed over the years, so that it is now the nature of science, rather than the deficiencies of women, which are seen as the problem (Birke, 1994). Yet, this ambivalence within women's studies furthers women's general marginalization from both understanding and generating powerful knowledge forms. After all, scientists hold privileged and prestigious positions as creators of knowledge in western societies. The work which they produce is still, despite the supposed advent of the postmodern and ‘risk’ society, afforded a high degree of legitimacy and is used to justify all kinds of social decisions and interventions (Beck, 1992; Crook, Pakulski and Waters, 1992). As Rose points out, not only is women's exclusion part of the general sexual division of labour in a society where most roles are deeply gendered, but the nature of the science subjects themselves is unlikely to change until women are in a position to make more realistic challenges to them (1994; chapter 2). Additionally, in a world which is becoming increasingly technologized, women will be severely penalized if they are not able to operate and benefit from the new developments, as they take place. This is particularly the case when the acquisition of knowledge enhances control over use (Cockburn and Fürst-Dilic, 1994; Gray, 1992).

Another reason for women's studies' disenchantment with the practices of science can be linked to early feminist critiques of male knowledge, particularly the philosophical stance of positivism which scientific practices are said to embody (Mackinnon, 1982; Smith, 1974; Stanley and Wise, 1983; 1993). Bryman has outlined how positivism might be regarded as comprising at least five components (1988). First, it entails a belief that the methods and procedures of the natural sciences can be applied in the social sciences. Second, it holds that only those phenomena which are observable directly, or indirectly through the aid of instruments, can be legitimately researched. This largely excludes emotions, feelings and the notion of subjective experience. A third tenet suggests that scientific knowledge is produced through the accumulation of verified facts. These aid the formulation and generation of theoretical understandings, so that theory expresses and reflects the findings of empirical research. Fourth, scientific theories are regarded by positivists as providing an underpinning for empirical research, in the sense that it is the hypotheses derived from them which are then submitted to empirical test. Finally, positivism requires the researcher to be purged of all values, thereby adopting an objective, value free and politically neutral stance towards all aspects of the research process.

Now, it is not difficult to see why feminists, alongside others, might have problems with all of the above defining characteristics of science. For instance, feminists have been critical of the idea that researchers can stand back and remove themselves from personal involvement in what they study (Harding, 1986; Stanley and Wise, 1983; 1993). They dispute conventional notions about, and the so-called procedures for ensuring, objectivity (Harding, 1991). Feminists are also sceptical of the notion that there is one true real reality, which is somehow external to and there for the researcher to discover (Stanley and Wise, 1983; 1993). They have expressed concern about ways of obtaining knowledge which emphasize rationality, impersonality, predictability, measurement and control, at the expense of emotionality, empathy, rapport and contradictions (Nielsen, 1990). Criticism has also been levied at the emphasis on generating quantifiable and numerical data which, certainly in a social context, produces a falsely concrete body of information and atomistic facts, in both a static and an atemporal fashion (Graham, 1983).

Yet, some feminists, along with other scholars, have also questioned whether the assumptions of positivism really reflect the ways in which natural science itself is practiced and the extent to which claims about value neutrality, rigorous methods and the search for objective facts are legitimate (Haraway, 1989; Keller, 1985). As Hilary Rose points out in chapter 2, the 1980s and 1990s have been characterized by heated debate as to the extent to which science is or is not a social construct and the implications of this for statements about truth. Thus, given the increasing ambivalence with which many have written about the philosophical underpinnings of a scientific methodology, it is hardly surprising that there has been a tendency for feminists to shy away from engaging with the more substantive issues which science addresses. For reasons such as this, then, feminists have tended, as Birke puts it ‘to leave science to the boys’ (1994, 192).

Where there has been a concern abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Revolutionizing the Subject: Women's Studies and the Sciences
• Chapter 2 Good-bye Truth, Hello Trust: Prospects for Feminist Science and Technology Studies at the Millennium?
• Chapter 3 Women in Science, Engineering and Technology: The Rising Tide Report and Beyond
• Chapter 4 Against the Odds: Women Developing a Commitment to Technology
• Chapter 5 Women, Science and Adult Education: Toward a Feminist Curriculum?
• Chapter 6 Science and Technology: Friends or Enemies of Women?
• Chapter 7 The Knowledge in our Bones: Standpoint Theory, Alternative Health and the Quantum Model of the Body
• Chapter 8 Technologies of Reproduction: Why Women's Issues Make a Difference
• Chapter 9 Reproductive Technologies and Lesbian Parents: An Unnatural Alliance?
• Chapter 10 Rethinking Bodies and Boundaries: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk and Cyberspace
• Notes on Contributors
• Index