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Gender and the Biological Sciences1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Kathleen Okruhlik
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Extract

Feminist critiques of science provide fertile ground for any investigation of the ways in which social influences may shape the content of science. Many authors working in this field are from the natural and social sciences; others are philosophers. For philosophers of science, recent work on sexist and androcentric bias in science raises hard questions about the extent to which reigning accounts of scientific rationality can deal successfully with mounting evidence that gender ideology has had deep and extensive effects on the development of many scientific disciplines.

Feminist critiques of biology have been especially important in the political struggle for gender equality because biologically determinist arguments are so often cited to ‘explain’ women’s oppression. They explain why it is ‘natural’ for women to function in a socially subordinate role, why men are smarter and more aggressive than women, why women are destined to be homebodies, and why men rape.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 20: Biology & Society - Reflections on Methodology , 1994 , pp. 21 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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Footnotes

1

Work on this project was supported by a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council for which I am grateful. I would also like to thank J.R. Brown and Alison Wylie for useful discussions during the project’s early days and my sister Peggy Okruhlik for making its completion possible. This paper results in part from amalgamating two earlier typescripts that circulated widely. The first was called ‘A Locus of Values in Science’ and dates from 1984; the second, ‘Gender Ideology and Science,’ was first drafted in 1988.

References

2 The Biology and Gender Study Group, ‘Importance of Feminist Critiques for Contemporary Cell Biology,’ in Feminism and Science, Nancy Tuana, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1989) 172-87

3 Darwin, CharlesThe Descent of Man (1871). Cited by Hubbard, Ruth in ‘Have Only Men Evolved?’ in Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth, Hubbard, RuthSue Henifin, Mary and Fried, Barbara eds. (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman 1982), 17-45.Google Scholar

4 Longino, Helen and Doell, Ruth ‘Body, Bias, and Behavior: A Comparative Analysis of Reasoning in Two Areas of Biological Science,’ Signs 9 (1983), 206-27CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Fausto-Sterling, AnneMyths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men (New York: Basic Books 1985)Google Scholar

6 Schiebinger, LondaThe Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1989) 189-213Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 191

8 See The Politics of Women’s Biology (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 1990).

9 Harding, SandraThe Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1986)Google Scholar. See also Harding, S.Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking From Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1991)Google Scholar.

10 Bloor, DavidKnowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1976)Google Scholar

11 Laudan, LarryScience and Value (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984), 68-70Google Scholar

12 See, for example, ‘Primatology Is Politics by Other Means,’ PSA 1984, vol. 2 (East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association 1985).

13 See Longino, HelenScience as Social Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990)Google Scholar.

14 Glymour, ClarkTheory and Evidence (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1980)Google Scholar

15 Ibid., 151

16 The argument in this section was also sketched in my essay, ‘Birth of a New Physics or Death of Nature?’ in Women and Reason, E. Harvey and K Okruhlik, eds. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press 1991).