Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804758158 ISBN 13: 9780804758154

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

The prominent scholars featured in Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering explore how gender analysis can profoundly enhance human knowledge in the areas of science, medicine, and engineering. Where possible, they provide concrete examples of how taking gender into account has yielded new research results and sparked creativity, opening new avenues for future research. Several government granting agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the European Commission, now require that requests for funding address whether, and in what sense, sex and gender are relevant to the objectives and methodologies of the research proposed, yet few research scientists or engineers know how to do gender analysis. This book begins to rectify the situation by shedding light on the how and the why.

About this title

About the Author

Londa Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. Her books include The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (1989), Has Feminism Changed Science? (1999), and, most recently, the prize-winning Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (2004).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

By Londa Schiebinger

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2008 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-5815-4

Contents

Preface....................................................................
vii
Contributors...............................................................
ix
1 Introduction: Getting More Women into Science and Engineering—Knowledge 
Issues Londa Schiebinger..................................................
1
2 When Gender Criticism Becomes Standard Scientific Practice: The Case of 
Sex Determination Genetics Sarah S. Richardson............................
22
3 One Thing Leads to Another: Gendering Research in Archaeology Margaret 
W. Conkey..................................................................
43
4 Sex Matters: Letting Skeletons Tell the Story Lori D. Hager.............
65
5 Change around the Edges: Gender Analysis, Feminist Methods, and Sciences 
of Terrestrial Environments Louise Fortmann, Heidi Ballard, and Louise 
Sperling...................................................................
79
6 Feminist Perspectives on Geographic Information Systems: Implications 
for Geographic Research Mei-Po Kwan.......................................
97
7 Stem Cells, Women, and the New Gender and Science Charis Thompson.......
109
8 If You Meet the Expectations of Women, You Exceed the Expectations of 
Men: How Volvo Designed a Car for Women Customers and Made World Headlines 
 Tatiana Butovitsch Temm...................................................
131
9 Are Photons Gendered? Women in Physics and Astronomy C. Megan Urry......
150
10 "A Very Scholarly Intervention": Recruiting Women Faculty in Science 
and Engineering Danielle LaVaque-Manty and Abigail J. Stewart.............
165
11 Building Two-Way Streets to Implement Policies that Work for Gender and 
Science Sue V. Rosser.....................................................
182
12 Projects of the National Academies on Women in Science and Engineering 
France A. Córdova..........................................................
198
Bibliography...............................................................
213
Index......................................................................
235

CHAPTER 1

Introduction:Getting More Women into Science and Engineering—KnowledgeIssues

Londa Schiebinger

Innovations surrounding women and gender have rockedscience and technology in the past three decades. Who, for example,could have predicted that the chief scientist at NASA would be a woman(France A. Córdova, now president of Purdue University, and an author inthis volume)? Or who would have thought that geneticists would dethrone the"master gene" model—that conceptualized mammalian sex as determinedby a single master gene on the Y chromosome—and put in its place an accountthat emphasizes interactions between the testis and ovary factors (seeRichardson this volume)? Or who would have imagined that an artificial kneewould be designed with nineteen unique aspects to meet the distinctive skeletaland load-bearing needs of females?

In my lifetime, the situation for intellectual women in the United Stateshas improved dramatically. We can measure these changes partially throughimages. Anyone growing up in American consumer culture understands thepower of images. Images project messages about hopes and dreams, mienand demeanor, about who should be a scientist and what science is all about.We have seen some interesting changes in who is imagined to be a scientistin our society. Historically, when prompted to "draw a scientist," 98 percentof the students drew males (Kahle 1987, see Figure 1.1). By the 1990s, that haddeclined to 70 percent with some 16 percent of the scientists drawn beingclearly female and another 14 percent ambiguous with respect to sex (Figure1.2). In the 1990s, a remarkable 96 percent of the scientists continued to bedepicted as Caucasian despite the prominence of Asians in science (Rahmand Charbonneau 1997).

We can also see gendered innovations in the content of science, in thiscase, in understandings of human evolution. Most of us grew up with an imageof human evolution as the "evolution of man" (Figure 1.3). Evolutionarytheory presented males as actively and aggressively driving forward humanevolution. As Charles Darwin stated, only something he called the "equaltransmission of characters" allowed traits selected for in males to be transmittedto females (Hrdy 1999).

In 1993, a much-heralded new image was produced to correct this picture.In that year the American Museum of Natural History in New York openedits new "Human Biology and Evolution" exhibit featuring this reconstructionof early humans from the 3.5 million-year-old footprints preserved involcanic ash near Laetoli (Figure 1.4). This diorama clearly gives woman aplace in human evolution, and although the assumptions captured in this imagehave changed dramatically since the 1960s, the process is still incomplete.The humans embodying the footprints are portrayed as a robust male toweringover his smaller female consort, his arm positioned to protect and reassureher. We simply do not know, however, the sex or relationship of the twoindividuals who made these impressions—footprints cannot be sexed. Theseearly humans might have been a large male and his much smaller mate, butthey might also have been a parent comforting his or her adolescent offspring,or just two friends fleeing the volcano together.

The purpose of this volume is to analyze changes of this sort—genderedinnovations—in science and engineering. By gendered innovations I meantransformations in the personnel, cultures, and content of science and engineeringbrought about by efforts to remove gender bias from these fields. Asdocumented in this volume, understanding and removing gender bias hasbrought new insights to specific sciences and fields of engineering. I want toemphasize from the beginning that gender analysis is not attached to the Xor Y chromosome—that, if properly trained, most researchers successfullymaster its theory and practice. Gender analysis, when applied rigorouslyand creatively, has the potential to enhance human knowledge and technicalsystems by opening them to new perspectives, new questions, and newmissions.

To understand better how this works, I set out three distinct levels of analysis(see also Schiebinger 1999 and 2003):

1. Fix the Number of Women: Participation of Women in Science and Engineering.The first level focuses on increasing the participation of womenin science and engineering. This level of analysis treats the history and sociologyof women's engagement in scientific institutions. Who are the greatwomen scientists? What are their achievements? What is the experience ofwomen in university, industrial, and governmental laboratories? Programsaimed at increasing the number of women in science and engineering (rightlyor wrongly) attempt to "fix the women"—that is, to make them more competitive—byincreasing funding to women's research, teaching them how tonegotiate for salary, or, more generally, how to succeed in a man's world.

2. Fix the Institutions: Gender in the Cultures of Science and Engineering.A culture is more than institutions, legal regulations, or a series of degreesor certifications. It consists in the unspoken assumptions and values ofits members. Despite claims to objectivity and value neutrality, the scienceshave identifiable cultures whose customs and folkways have developed overtime. Many of these customs developed historically in the absence of womenand, as I have argued elsewhere, also in opposition to their participation(Schiebinger 1989). How have the cultures of science and engineering, wheresuccess requires at least some mastery of the rituals of day-to-day conformity,codes governing language, styles of interactions, modes of dress, hierarchiesof values and practices, been formed by their predominantly male practitioners?Programs that attempt to increase women's participation taking thisapproach work to "fix the institutions." The National Science Foundation's(NSF) current ADVANCE grants, for example, attempt to transform universitycultures. These efforts range from understanding subtle gender biases inhiring practices, for example, to restructuring the academic work/life balanceby offering parental leave, stopping the tenure clock, and the like.

3. Fix the Knowledge: Gender in the Results of Science and Engineering.Scholars have emphasized the consequences of exclusion for women, but whathave been the consequences of this exclusion for human knowledge more generally?At this third level, authors focus on "fixing the knowledge." A numberof chapters in this volume explore how gender analysis, when turned to scienceand engineering, profoundly enhances human knowledge. This is a vitalissue to address today, and here we provide examples of how gender analysishas sparked creativity by opening new questions for future research. Thiswork is crucial to our efforts to recruit and retain women. Importantly, programs,such as those at the National Institutes of Health (NIH—see below)have linked the project of increasing the number of women in the medicalprofession to that of reconceptualizing medical research.

WHILE IT IS USEFUL to distinguish issues at three analytical levels, these perspectivesare obviously closely tied to one another. Emerging evidence revealsthat women will not become equal participants in science and engineering untilwe have fully investigated and solved the knowledge problem. Disciplinesare somewhat arbitrary ways of cutting knowledge. We need to be open to thepossibility that human knowledge—what we know, what we value, what weconsider important—may change dramatically as women become full partners.Science is about critical thinking, exploration, and travel into unknownworlds. We have much to gain by embarking on this voyage.

To set the stage for what follows, let me place the chapters within the analyticsI distinguish.

Participation of Women in Science and Engineering

Many people believe in progress. They believe that things are gradually gettingbetter for women. How many times have I been patted on the head andtold, "Just wait, dear, and women will move to the top." One point I want tomake is that progress for women is not a fact of nature but the result of carefulinterventions on the part of individuals, institutions, and governmentalagencies.

Let me offer just three quick examples of how we cannot just sit back andwait for things to right themselves. Opportunities for women result fromlarger social and economic restructurings in a society in addition to changesin university cultures. As is widely known, women were excluded from modernuniversities from their founding in the twelfth century until the end ofthe nineteenth century. In this sense, women are real newcomers to universityresearch labs. Women embarked on modern careers in science after thewomen's movements of the 1870s and 1880s propelled them into universities.As women gradually gained admittance to graduate schools—by the twentiethcentury a prerequisite for serious work in science—they began floodinginto PhD programs in all fields. By the 1920s their numbers were at a historichigh in the United States, with women earning 14 percent of doctorates in thephysical and biological sciences. Between 1930 and 1960, however, the proportionof women PhDs plunged as a result of the rise of fascism in Europe, theCold War, and McCarthyism in the United States. Shockingly, women did notregain their 1920s levels of participation in academic science until the 1970s(Rossiter 1982; Zuckerman et al. 1991).

A second example shows even more clearly how social structures influencewomen's opportunities in science and engineering. In the seventeenthcentury in Germany, 14 percent of all astronomers were women. Today thepercentage of women astronomers in Germany is around 5 percent (countingall lecturers and professors at German universities). How was this possible?The very different economic and social structure of life in early modern Germanygave women an opportunity to participate in ways not available to themtoday. As I have argued elsewhere, astronomy in this period was organizedalong guild lines. Guilds were social and economic organizations throughwhich most goods were produced and services provided. Guild productiontook place in the household. In astronomical families, the labor of husbandand wife did not divide along modern lines: he was not fully professional,working in an observatory outside the home; she was not fully a housewife,confined to hearth and home. Nor were they independent professionals, eachholding a chair of astronomy. Instead, they worked as a team and on commonproblems. Many took turns observing so that their observations, often madein their own attics, followed night after night without interruption. At othertimes they observed together, dividing the work so that they could make observationsthat a single person could not make accurately. Guild traditionswithin science allowed women, such as Maria Margaretha Winkelmann, tostrengthen the empirical base of science (Schiebinger 1989).

A final example from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)reveals that traditional departmental hiring processes do not always identifyexceptional female candidates. MIT was successful at increasing its womenfaculty when its president and provost collaborated with department headsand women faculty committees to implement novel hiring procedures. Thesesuccesses in both the Schools of Science and Engineering were pushed forwardas a response to the disastrous 1996 reports on women faculty at MIT.Forward-looking deans, Robert Birgeneau in Science and Thomas Magnantiin Engineering, were able to help hiring committees find qualified womenwhen encouraged to. These women hired in the School of Science achievedtenure at the same rate as their male colleagues and a slightly higher level ofprofessional success than the men as measured by election to the prestigiousNational Academy of Sciences and the like (Hopkins 2006).

I am not arguing that we adopt any particular social order or universitypolicy. My point is that the overall organization of society—the way we organizehouseholds, child care, economic production, roads, social services,universities, schools, and governments—all have an impact on women'sopportunities in science. Foundational questioning and reorganization ofsociety and science will be required to make women truly equal. Studies showthat professional women currently do more domestic labor than professionalmen. At the same time these women are expected to compete on an equalfooting with men (some of whom have stay-at-home partners) for jobs andsalaries (Williams 2000). We need to end the social welfare state in the homefor men (especially those with professional partners). Men need to assumetheir fair share of the pleasures and pains of organizing and caring for domesticspaces.

Since the Sputnik years, the United States and Western European countrieshave attempted to increase the participation of their populations in science—womenas well as men. In the United States, this led to foundational legislation,including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Equal Employment OpportunityAct, and Title IX of 1972, designed to foster equality for women. In her chapterin this volume, Sue Rosser documents how the NSF, beginning in the 1980s,has attempted to improve the numbers of women in science and engineeringby jump-starting their careers with extra research monies and the like. In alater chapter, France Córdova summarizes similar efforts undertaken by theNational Academies (the National Academy of Sciences, National Academyof Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine). Founded in 1991, the Academies'Committee on Women in Science and Engineering (CWSE) has workedwith Congress and universities to develop policy aimed at assisting women'scareers. (I should note that I attempted to include a chapter on innovationsin Europe in this volume but European Union lawyers would not approve itspublication.)

These initiatives—both on the part of the government and universities—havefocused narrowly on getting more women in the door. As importantas these measures are, they alone are not enough. In recent years, theNSF, CWSE, and numerous universities have moved to the second level in mystepped analysis and begun working toward understanding and helping tocorrect the underlying causes of inequality.

Gender in the Cultures of Science and Engineering

There have been two fundamental approaches in efforts nationwide to gainequality for women in the academy: liberal feminism and difference feminism.Oddly enough, many people in the United States and elsewhere practicefeminist virtues, while at the same time shying away from calling themselves"feminists." I would venture to say that the vast majority of Americans arefeminists, at least liberal feminists—that is to say that they support equalityand professional opportunities for women—though most would not callthemselves feminists. It is important to recognize that what is "feminist"in one time and place becomes business as usual in another. It is a curiousphenomenon that when feminist practices or points of view become widelyaccepted in science and engineering, or in the culture more generally, theyare no longer seen as "feminist," but as "just" or simply "true." The result isthat the term feminist continues to refer to people and policies on the radicalcutting edge. In her chapter on genetic models of sex determination, SarahRichardson presents a classic example of how feminism disappears when itsprinciples are mainstreamed into science. The fact that researchers may beunaware of the sources of new insights does not make those sources any lessreal—but it does serve to keep feminism on the sidelines.

Authors in this volume will use the term feminist to refer to efforts tobring about institutional and social change leading to greater equality forwomen because one needs to discuss this process and this is the appropriateEnglish term for it. One thing to emphasize is that there are many feminisms.Sue Rosser (2005) has distinguished at least ten different feminist approachesto science and technology. Here I want to emphasize only two fundamentalfeminist perspectives: liberal and difference feminism. Although these twoapproaches differ, they are not mutually exclusive, nor does the one supersedethe other. In some instances liberal feminism is the best approach—it iscertainly the best understood in the United States. At other times the insightsoffered by what I call difference feminism lead best to reform.

Liberal feminism has been the major form of feminism in the United Statesand much of Western Europe since the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft'svigorous call for equality in her 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Liberal feminism has supported well the participation of women in theprofessions. It has informed major legislation guaranteeing women's rights,as well as equal education, pay, and opportunity. It is the theory underlyinggovernment and university interventions seeking greater equality for womenat level one in my analysis. Liberal feminism has made such inroads that mostpeople think of these issues in terms of "fairness" rather than of "feminism"(Rosser and Córdova, this volume).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from GENDERED INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING by Londa Schiebinger. Copyright © 2008 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804758158
• ISBN 13: 9780804758154
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 257
• Editor: Schiebinger Londa