Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies / Edition 3

by Mary Wyer, Mary Barbercheck, Donna Cookmeyer, Hatice Ozturk, Marta Wayne

Overview

Women, Science, and Technology is an ideal reader for courses in feminist science studies. This third edition fully updates its predecessor with a new introduction and twenty-eight new readings that explore social constructions mediated by technologies, expand the scope of feminist technoscience studies, and move beyond the nature/culture paradigm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415521109
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	640
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mary Wyer is Associate Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies at North Carolina State University

Mary Barbercheck is Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University.

Donna Cookmeyer is a Chair on the Institutional Review Board and the Research Integrity Officer for the Duke School of Medicine.

Hatice Örün Öztürk is Teaching Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh.

Marta L. Wayne is Professor of Biology at the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: Science and Feminism

Since the emergence of women's studies initiatives in academia in the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a steady stream of challenges to the received wisdom of the humanities and social sciences. By placing women at the center of analysis, by asking the simple question: "What about women?" researchers revealed the ways in which the grounding assumptions in a variety of disciplines excluded women. In the fields of literary studies, history, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology, the exclusion of women as subjects of study mattered. It mattered because the interesting questions, grounding assumptions, and accepted answers all changed once women were brought into the picture. The fields grew, in short, as a result of including women as subjects of study.

Many science and engineering fields have been untouched by these developments. There are several reasons for this: (1) Where the subject matter does not include any people, the absence of women as subjects of study may seem irrelevant. (2) In disciplines where there are few or no women in a position to promote change, there are few who have a vested interest in challenging the status quo. (3) Scientists and engineers do not usually have the training to consider the social dynamics that have shaped their fields, and so most assume that scientific perspectives are necessarily "objective" and outside the influence of these dynamics. (4) Most women's studies scholars come from the humanities and social sciences, so their work does not address or challenge issues in the physical, biological, or engineering sciences. (5) Whatever their discipline, faculty evaluations of their peers tend to reinforce disciplinary boundaries by demanding that research and teaching address discipline-specific questions. Those who focus on women's lives must cross these institutionally determined boundaries, leaving themselves vulnerable to criticism from colleagues and the institution.

This book is our attempt to begin breaching those boundaries to help ensure that readers have the knowledge and perspectives they need to participate fully in the research, teaching, and public-policy decision-making of the twenty-first century. To the extent that women continue to be second-class citizens socially, economically, and politically, the issue of our access to training and expertise in scientific and technological fields has renewed urgency in the face of the growing centrality of these fields in a global economy. The belief that scientific and feminist perspectives are incompatible contributes to a persistent ignorance about the importance of scientific and technological innovations in shaping the conditions of women's lives, the limitations of research and teaching that exclude women, and the talents and abilities of women in science and engineering. It is our goal to confront this ignorance.

The Scientific Method

We generally think of scientific perspectives as true, as factual. They are assumed to be perspectives untainted by political considerations. They produce reliable and complete knowledge that we can use with predictable results. In a world full of uncertainties, facts and truth lead us to clarity and understanding. In contrast, we often think of feminist perspectives in quite different terms. Feminist perspectives create knowledge that challenges what we take for granted to be true and factual. Feminist knowledge provokes change. It encourages us to ask new questions about how to understand the world around us. Feminists are often accused of being politically biased, of creating knowledge that is not purely "objective." What could these two perspectives-feminist and scientific-possibly have in common? We argue that they share many commitments, including an emphasis on understanding the social and physical worlds in which we live, and on striving toward more complete descriptions of those worlds.

What is science, exactly? What sets science apart from any other way to gather information or explain how something works? How do we differentiate between scientific knowledge and nonscientific knowledge? Everyone has some notion of what science is and what scientists do. If we were to watch a group of people working in a laboratory while they were dissecting animals and arguing about their data, and if we knew nothing of science, we might describe them naively like this:

Perhaps these animals are being processed for eating. Maybe we are witnessing oracular prophecy through the inspection of rat entrails. Perhaps the individuals spending hours discussing scribbled notes and figures are lawyers. Are the heated debates in front of the blackboard part of a gambling contest? Perhaps the occupants of the laboratory are hunters of some kind, who, after patiently lying in wait by a spectrograph for several hours, suddenly freeze like a gun dog fixed on a scent.

However, most of us have had some exposure to images of real or imagined scientists in television, movies, and advertising. Yet most scientists do not spend their days in the jungle searching for plants that cure cancer or jungle fever (as in the movie Medicine Man), genetically engineering dinosaurs (as in the movie Jurassic Park), or trying to communicate with extraterrestrial allies (as in the movie Contact). So what do ordinary scientists do that defines their activity as science? Most scientists would define science as an approach called the scientific method. The scientific method encompasses the procedures and principles regarded as necessary for scientific investigation and the production of scientific knowledge. The scientific method is actually quite simple in concept and is made up of the following steps:

1. Observations are made of objects or events, either natural or produced by experimentation. From these observations a falsifiable hypothesis is developed.

2. The hypothesis is tested by conducting repeatable experiments.

3. If the experiments refute the hypothesis, it is rejected, and new hypotheses are formulated.

4. Hypotheses that survive are condensed into generalized empirical relationships, or laws.

5. Laws are synthesized into larger theories that explain the nature of the empirical relationships and provide a conceptual framework for understanding how the natural world operates.

Ideally, then, the facts of nature are uncovered by a stepwise winnowing-out of inadequate hypotheses and refinement of the remaining hypotheses. The explanations or facts that remain are considered true until someone is able to falsify them using the scientific method. Therefore, ideally, scientists must be prepared to abandon or alter hypotheses, laws, and theories when new knowledge contradicts them. However, as readers will learn, science does not always proceed in this idealized way. The major questions in feminist analyses of science concern the degree to which the scientific method ensures that the knowledge produced is unbiased and untouched by the social or political commitments of the researchers...

Table of Contents

Women, Science, and Technology, third edition (2013)

Editorial Reviews

"This reader provides a clear and exciting introduction to main themes in the last several decades of research on women, gender, and science. The editors create a safe space for students to explore the most controversial issues facing sciences and societies today. The editorial essays review and clarify complex issues for students in the sciences as well as in other fields. This is a fine teaching collection."
--Sandra Harding, Professor of,Education and Women's Studies, UCLA

"Here comes a fine introduction to feminist studies in science and technology . . . .Rich in case studies and theoretical analyses, with helpful contextualizing essays by the editors, it will be an excellent text for use in both Women's Studies and Science Studies courses."
--Helen E. Longino, Professor of Women's Studies and Philosophy, University of Minnesota

"This volume brings together new and classic essays in feminist, studies. The introductory essays provide a wonderful perspective on the challenges of doing work in this field which will be invaluable to both students and teachers."
--Eveiynn M. Hammonds, Associate Professor of the History of Science, MIT

Fatbrain

3 Stars from Doody

Researchers and practitioners, mostly in the social and biological sciences, and philosophers and historians of science explore the gendering of science and the impact women scientists are making around the world. Personal accounts and studies of sciences themselves address such topics as the under- representation of women in science, reproductive technology, sociobiology, evolutionary biology, and the notion of objective science. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

I have taught the First Edition many times, and am looking forward to teaching this even better collection. My students have always been astonished and excited to think about women, gender, science and technology with these first-rate accounts. The additions to this Second Edition are superb; they promise to stimulate thought-provoking class discussions. – Sandra Harding, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

This revised and updated volume has increased its utility for women and SET courses by adding much needed information about the impacts of technology on women's lives and by including chapters that examine global SET issues. The editors' introductions to each section put the chapters in a broader, societal context. This book is useful both as a college textbook and as a valuable resource for scholars, SET faculty who want to recruit and retain women in their courses and majors, and administrators who desire a deeper understanding of the issues. — Carol J. Burger, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

For professors looking for materials to complement curricular offerings in the cultural studies of science or literature and science, this volume provides a foundational, engaging, and very teachable account of the historical and sociological understanding of the intersection of women, science, and technology. In addition to essays on female Nobel Prize winners, the development of contraceptives and the vibrator, and the role of sexuality, ethnicity and race in the practice of science and technology, the volume pays welcome attention to agriculture, which is sure to become a major focus of science studies work in this new century. – Susan M. Squier, Brill Professor of Women's Studies and English, The Pennsylvania State University

The consequences of being female in disciples initially designed by and for males significantly affect the career opportunities and paths for many women striving to contribute their full talents. These reports illuminate culturally embedded challenges, validate experiences and inform strategies to accelerate our achievements. – Sherra E. Kerns, F. W. Olin Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Olin College

This second edition of Women, Science, and Technology is an excellent introduction to the range of issues that travel under the rubric of gender, science, and technology. By juxtaposing classic with newer essays, it once again demonstrates the depth and growth of this interdisciplinary field. — Helen Longino, Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University

"In its second edition (1st ed., 2001) Women, Science and Technology provides and updated, more accessible resource for students...this is a significantly improved edition that is valuable for university collections." Choice, January 2009

From the Publisher