Gender and Science

Haverford College
General Programs

Dr. Audre Brokes
Office: Founders 25
Office Hours: Tuesday, Thursday 10:30 – 11:30am, and by appointment
Telephone
Office at Haverford: 610-896-2962 (this is an unreliable way to reach me!)
Office at SJU: 610-660-1627
Home:610-649-0831
e-mail: brokes@sju.edu

Required Texts:
1. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, Basic Books, 2000 (FS)
2. Evelyn Fox Keller; Helen Longino, eds., Feminism & Science, Oxford University Press (1998) (KL)
3. Jody Bart, ed., Women Succeeding in the Sciences: Theories and Practices Across the Disciplines, Purdue University Press (2000) (B)
4. Articles on Reserve at Magill Library (R)

Kolmar and Bartkowski: "Lexicon of Debates" (Feminist Theory: A Reader, Mayfield, 2000)
Sally Markowitz: "Pelvic Politics: Sexual Dimorphism and Racial Difference" (Signs, Winter 2001)
Carl Hempel: Philosophy of Natural Science, chapters 1 – 3 (Prentice Hall, 1966)
Thomas Kuhn: "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" (from Philosophy of Science: the Central Issues, ed, Curd and Cover; W.W. Norton and Co., 1998)
Sandra Harding: "What is Feminist Epistemology" (from Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?, Cornell University Press, 1991)
Uma Narayan: "The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist"
Sandra Harding: "Thinking from the Perspective of Lesbian Lives" (from Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?, Cornell University Press, 1991)
Ann Cudd: "Multiculturalism as a Cognitive Virtue of Scientific Practice" (Hypatia, Vol 13, no. 3, 1998)

Course Overview
The aim of this course is to provide you with an introduction to and an overview of some of the central questions, problems, and concerns that arise when the analytical lens of gender is used to examine the nature and practice of science. Some of the questions we’ll ask include: Is there a scientific basis for sex and/or gender classification? How has sexist (racist, classist) bias influenced the practice, results, and political uses of science? To what extent is scientific inquiry and, by extension scientific knowledge, objective, rational, reliable? Is science primarily a social activity? How might a feminist political agenda change, improve scientific inquiry, knowledge, and practice?

Another question that I am particularly interested in thinking about and which I invite you to think about as well, is whether people who have traditionally been excluded from science (e.g., women, men of color) or people who can learn to "think from" the perspective of these sorts of people, might have a special sort of epistemic advantage over their more traditional counterparts. What sort of advantage might this be? How might such an advantage accrue to non-traditional scientists/science-thinkers? We’ll be discussing this issue in some detail in the course.

A remark should be made about what I mean by "the lens of gender" in the first paragraph above. It is my view that the lens of gender must include (indeed, I would say that it is constituted by) a set of interlocking categories of analysis that include sex, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and the like. After all, women and men are always also members of a race, of a class, etc. While few analyses are complete in the sense that they pay attention to all of these categories equally, a feminist or gendered analysis should, I believe, strive to pay attention to these sorts of categories and how they intersect. (We’ll talk more about this in class.)

This course will be taught from a feminist perspective. What does that mean? It means different things to different people. As a rule, there is no univocal understanding of what constitutes feminist pedagogy. I can, however, tell you what teaching from a feminist perspective means to me. First of all, it means (as I mention above) that gender, race, class, sexual orientation, etc. and the interconnections among them are the central analytical and conceptual categories of analysis that we will employ. Second, it means that, to the extent that it is possible and honest to do so, you and I will be taking shared responsibility for what goes on in our course. I say "honest, because it is true that I, as the instructor, have some responsibilities and, hence, some power with respect to you. Nevertheless, I take it as a central principle of feminist inquiry that intellectual agency is shared among participants in inquiry. Thus, you will be asked to facilitate discussions in class, present material to us as a group, and engage in an individual research project of your own design (in conjunction with significant and detailed assistance from me, of course), which you will share with your classmates at the end of the semester. (We’ll talk more about this as the semester progresses.) You will also be asked periodically to engage in self-evaluations, and as a group we will be developing some principles to guide us in our discussion and inquiry.

I am indebted to Michael Penn for sharing his syllabus for his version of this course with me; it provided me with assistance in developing my own version!

Course Expectations and Grading
Since this is a survey course, you are expected to develop familiarity with a range of issues and problems in gender and science. I hope that you will develop the following in particular: a familiarity with and a facility for the basics of feminist conceptual analysis; an understanding of the central positions that scholars have taken with respect to the issues we’ll address; a basic familiarity with the scholarly literature in the field; an appreciation of some of the consequences of taking a feminist approach to science; a clarification of your own views on the issues discussed in the course. Approximately two articles (or book chapters) are assigned for each class meeting. You are expected to complete the relevant readings before class and come to class prepared to discuss them.

30% of your grade will depend on your classroom participation. This includes participating in class discussion, summarizing and presenting one of our articles to your peers and facilitating a discussion of it, assisting your peers in mastering the material, participating in some short in-class writing assignments, and orally presenting an overview of your final paper project to the class. 30% of your grade depends on a take-home midterm examination (open book, open note), questions for which will be provided by me. 40% of your grade depends on your final paper project, on a topic to be developed in consultation with me. You will present your topic and your preliminary conclusions and ideas to your peers during our last class periods.

Topics and Tentative (though fairly firm!) Schedule of Readings

Introduction: We begin with an overview of some of the issues we’ll be examining and an introduction to some of the methods we’ll be using in our inquiry. (See "Course Overview" above for a bit more detail.)

Topic I: Science and the Sex/Gender Debate. In recent years, feminist theorists have drawn fairly strong distinctions among sex role, which is thought of as a biological and reproductive category, gender role, which is defined in terms of social norms and behaviors, and gender identity, which is typically understood to be an individually determined feeling of belonging to a particular gender group. Sex role and gender role have historically (and by feminists and non-feminists alike) been defined dimorphically; there are, most have thought, two sex roles (female, male), two gender roles (man, woman). In addition, sex role and gender role have been claimed by many recent feminists to be only contingently and socially related to one another. According to many, gender has no biological basis. Recent scholarship has begun to challenge some of these claims.

Topic II: Science and Science Education: Who Participates? Science has traditionally been, and in most ways continues to be, the domain of white men from privileged backgrounds. Why is this so? What structural features of scientific practice, education, method might be inimical to the presence of people from non-dominant groups? Under what conditions have women and other non-traditional scientists succeeded? How do educational practices reinforce, challenge the traditional composition of scientific communities? How have women historically managed to transcend barriers in science?

Topic III: Thinking About Science: Two Models of Scientific Inquiry. Positivists draw a sharp distinction between what is often called the logic of discovery, which refers to the psychological, social, and historical ways in which scientific theories are generated, and the logic of justification, which refers to the ways in which scientific theories are justified. According to the Positivist view of science, justified scientific theories are logical consequences (or statistically significant inductive consequences) of their evidence classes. Thus, how a scientist arrived at her theory is literally irrelevant to whether that theory is justified, and thus likely to be true. Thomas Kuhn challenged these and several other aspects of the positivist view of science, arguing that science should be viewed as a social practice of a certain specific sort. Kuhn’s work has been widely influential in feminist thinking about science, which can, it might be argued, be seen as an extension and development of Kuhn’s insights. (Though feminists have also criticized Kuhn himself for various oversights.) We examine these views and some feminist contemporary alternative views of the nature of scientific inquiry.

Topic IV: Feminist Analysis of Science and Scientific Practice. In trying to come to grips with the significance of gender (race, class, etc.) for science, feminist scholars employ a variety of conceptual tools. In this section of the course we’ll examine some of the ways (both general and specific) in which feminists have attempted to analyze and in some cases criticize science and scientific practice. These tools include language, the male gaze, communities, politics. (Sally Haslanger uses this strategy to introduce her students to the techniques of feminist analysis. See her MIT web site for more information.)

Topic V: Feminist Epistemology and Science. Epistemology is, very roughly, the study of knowledge and justification. Traditional, western epistemology (roughly European and Anglo-American epistemology beginning in the Enlightenment) has, for the most part taken scientific reasoning to be the very best example of how it is possible to have objective, rational, and reliable knowledge about the world around us. Recently, however, various people, including but not limited to feminist epistemologists have begun to question not only this assumption but also the more general assumptions and claims of traditional, western epistemology. What are the implications of this sort of project for science?

Topic VI: Toward a Feminist Science. What would a mature feminist science look like? More generally, how are emancipatory political aims even relevant to scientific practice? Might feminism in some way hurt science? Are there positive arguments for the claim that a multicultural, feminist approach could be beneficial to science? We examine these questions and look again at Anne Fausto-Sterling’s recent theory of gender as an example of feminist science.