The Age Of Scientific Sexism

Author : Mari Ruti
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2015-07-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781628923810

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The Age of Scientific Sexism by Mari Ruti Pdf

We trust our sciences to operate on a plane of objectivity and fact in a world of subjectivity and cultural ideologies, but should we? In The Age of Scientific Sexism, philosopher Mari Ruti offers a sharp critique of the gender profiling tendencies of evolutionary psychology, untangling the insidious threads of various gender mythologies that have infiltrated-or perhaps even define-this faux-science. Selling stereotypes as scientific facts, evolutionary psychology continually brings retrograde models of sexuality into mainstream culture: it insists that men and women live in two completely different psychological, emotional, and sexual universes, and that they will consequently always be locked in a vicious battle of the sexes. Among these regressive arguments is the assumption that men's sexuality is urgent and indiscriminate, whereas women are “naturally” reluctant, reticent, and choosy-a concept constructed to justify masculine behavior, such as cheating, that women have historically found painful. On its most basic level, The Age of Scientific Sexism explores our impulse to “explain” romantic behavior through science: in the increasingly egalitarian gender landscape of our society, why are we so eager to embrace the rampant gender profiling that evolutionary psychology promotes? Perhaps these simplistic gender caricatures owe their popularity, at least in part, to our overly pragmatic society pragmatic society, which encourages us to search for easy answers to complex questions.

Author : Mari Ruti
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2015-07-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781628923827

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The Age of Scientific Sexism by Mari Ruti Pdf

We trust our sciences to operate on a plane of objectivity and fact in a world of subjectivity and cultural ideologies, but should we? In The Age of Scientific Sexism, philosopher Mari Ruti offers a sharp critique of the gender profiling tendencies of evolutionary psychology, untangling the insidious threads of various gender mythologies that have infiltrated-or perhaps even define-this faux-science. Selling stereotypes as scientific facts, evolutionary psychology continually brings retrograde models of sexuality into mainstream culture: it insists that men and women live in two completely different psychological, emotional, and sexual universes, and that they will consequently always be locked in a vicious battle of the sexes. Among these regressive arguments is the assumption that men's sexuality is urgent and indiscriminate, whereas women are “naturally” reluctant, reticent, and choosy-a concept constructed to justify masculine behavior, such as cheating, that women have historically found painful. On its most basic level, The Age of Scientific Sexism explores our impulse to “explain” romantic behavior through science: in the increasingly egalitarian gender landscape of our society, why are we so eager to embrace the rampant gender profiling that evolutionary psychology promotes? Perhaps these simplistic gender caricatures owe their popularity, at least in part, to our overly pragmatic society pragmatic society, which encourages us to search for easy answers to complex questions.

Author : Rita Colwell,Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2020-08-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781501181283

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A Lab of One's Own by Rita Colwell,Sharon Bertsch McGrayne Pdf

A “beautifully written” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) memoir-manifesto from the first female director of the National Science Foundation about the entrenched sexism in science, the elaborate detours women have take to bypass the problem, and how to fix the system. If you think sexism thrives only on Wall Street or Hollywood, you haven’t visited a lab, a science department, a research foundation, or a biotech firm. Rita Colwell is one of the top scientists in America: the groundbreaking microbiologist who discovered how cholera survives between epidemics and the former head of the National Science Foundation. But when she first applied for a graduate fellowship in bacteriology, she was told, “We don’t waste fellowships on women.” A lack of support from some male superiors would lead her to change her area of study six times before completing her PhD. A Lab of One’s Own is an “engaging” (Booklist) book that documents all Colwell has seen and heard over her six decades in science, from sexual harassment in the lab to obscure systems blocking women from leading professional organizations or publishing their work. Along the way, she encounters other women pushing back against the status quo, including a group at MIT who revolt when they discover their labs are a fraction of the size of their male colleagues. Resistance gave female scientists special gifts: forced to change specialties so many times, they came to see things in a more interdisciplinary way, which turned out to be key to making new discoveries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Colwell would also witness the advances that could be made when men and women worked together—often under her direction, such as when she headed a team that helped to uncover the source of anthrax used in the 2001 letter attacks. A Lab of One’s Own is “an inspiring read for women embarking on a career or experiencing career challenges” (Library Journal, starred review) that shares the sheer joy a scientist feels when moving toward a breakthrough, and the thrill of uncovering a whole new generation of female pioneers. It is the science book for the #MeToo era, offering an astute diagnosis of how to fix the problem of sexism in science—and a celebration of women pushing back.

Author : Nicola Gaston
Publisher : Bridget Williams Books
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2015-11-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780908321667

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Why Science Is Sexist by Nicola Gaston Pdf

Science changes the world because the creation of knowledge opens up new pathways for us to explore new ways of doing things, and new questions to ask. My optimism lies in the fact that I think that the answer to why science is sexist does all of these things. In this eye-opening BWB Text, Nicola Gaston, President of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, reveals the ways in which the discipline of science is sexist. From the under-representation of women to the argument that mental capabilities are gendered, Gaston demonstrates the extent of our unconscious bias against female scientists, and warns of its damaging consequences for science and for society. In asking what can be done to combat this bias, she calls for us to rethink not just our attitudes towards gender, but also towards scientific knowledge and inquiry.

Author : Londa Schiebinger
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2001-04-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674976856

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Has Feminism Changed Science? by Londa Schiebinger Pdf

Do women do science differently? And how about feminists--male or female? The answer to this fraught question, carefully set out in this provocative book, will startle and enlighten every faction in the "science wars." Has Feminism Changed Science? is at once a history of women in science and a frank assessment of the role of gender in shaping scientific knowledge. Science is both a profession and a body of knowledge, and Londa Schiebinger looks at how women have fared and performed in both instances. She first considers the lives of women scientists, past and present: How many are there? What sciences do they choose--or have chosen for them? Is the professional culture of science gendered? And is there something uniquely feminine about the science women do? Schiebinger debunks the myth that women scientists--because they are women--are somehow more holistic and integrative and create more cooperative scientific communities. At the same time, she details the considerable practical difficulties that beset women in science, where domestic partnerships, children, and other demanding concerns can put women's (and increasingly men's) careers at risk. But what about the content of science, the heart of Schiebinger's subject? Have feminist perspectives brought any positive changes to scientific knowledge? Schiebinger provides a subtle and nuanced gender analysis of the physical sciences, medicine, archaeology, evolutionary biology, primatology, and developmental biology. She also shows that feminist scientists have developed new theories, asked new questions, and opened new fields in many of these areas.

Author : Evelyn Reed
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Science
ISBN : 0873485408

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Sexism & Science by Evelyn Reed Pdf

Author : Londa Schiebinger
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 1991-03-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674256002

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The Mind Has No Sex? by Londa Schiebinger Pdf

As part of his attempt to secure a place for women in scientific culture, the Cartesian François Poullain de la Barre asserted as long ago as 1673 that “the mind has no sex.” In this rich and comprehensive history of women’s contributions to the development of early modern science, Londa Schiebinger examines the shifting fortunes of male and female equality in the sphere of the intellect. Schiebinger counters the “great women” mode of history and calls attention to broader developments in scientific culture that have been obscured by time and changing circumstance. She also elucidates a larger issue: how gender structures knowledge and power. It is often assumed that women were automatically excluded from participation in the scientific revolution of early modern Europe, but in fact powerful trends encouraged their involvement. Aristocratic women participated in the learned discourse of the Renaissance court and dominated the informal salons that proliferated in seventeenth-century Paris. In Germany, women of the artisan class pursued research in fields such as astronomy and entomology. These and other women fought to renegotiate gender boundaries within the newly established scientific academies in order to secure their place among the men of science. But for women the promises of the Enlightenment were not to be fulfilled. Scientific and social upheavals not only left women on the sidelines but also brought about what the author calls the “scientific revolution in views of sexual difference.” While many aspects of the scientific revolution are well understood, what has not generally been recognized is that revolution came also from another quarter—the scientific understanding of biological sex and sexual temperament (what we today call gender). Illustrations of female skeletons of the ideal woman—with small skulls and large pelvises—portrayed female nature as a virtue in the private realm of hearth and home, but as a handicap in the world of science. At the same time, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women witnessed the erosion of their own spheres of influence. Midwifery and medical cookery were gradually subsumed into the newly profess ionalized medical sciences. Scientia, the ancient female personification of science, lost ground to a newer image of the male researcher, efficient and solitary—a development that reflected a deeper intellectual shift. By the late eighteenth century, a self-reinforcing system had emerged that rendered invisible the inequalities women suffered. In reexamining the origins of modern science, Schiebinger unearths a forgotten heritage of women scientists and probes the cultural and historical forces that continue to shape the course of scientific scholarship and knowledge.

Author : Angela Saini
Publisher : Beacon Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2017-05-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780807071700

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Inferior by Angela Saini Pdf

What science has gotten so shamefully wrong about women, and the fight, by both female and male scientists, to rewrite what we thought we knew For hundreds of years it was common sense: women were the inferior sex. Their bodies were weaker, their minds feebler, their role subservient. No less a scientist than Charles Darwin asserted that women were at a lower stage of evolution, and for decades, scientists—most of them male, of course—claimed to find evidence to support this. Whether looking at intelligence or emotion, cognition or behavior, science has continued to tell us that men and women are fundamentally different. Biologists claim that women are better suited to raising families or are, more gently, uniquely empathetic. Men, on the other hand, continue to be described as excelling at tasks that require logic, spatial reasoning, and motor skills. But a huge wave of research is now revealing an alternative version of what we thought we knew. The new woman revealed by this scientific data is as strong, strategic, and smart as anyone else. In Inferior, acclaimed science writer Angela Saini weaves together a fascinating—and sorely necessary—new science of women. As Saini takes readers on a journey to uncover science’s failure to understand women, she finds that we’re still living with the legacy of an establishment that’s just beginning to recover from centuries of entrenched exclusion and prejudice. Sexist assumptions are stubbornly persistent: even in recent years, researchers have insisted that women are choosy and monogamous while men are naturally promiscuous, or that the way men’s and women’s brains are wired confirms long-discredited gender stereotypes. As Saini reveals, however, groundbreaking research is finally rediscovering women’s bodies and minds. Inferior investigates the gender wars in biology, psychology, and anthropology, and delves into cutting-edge scientific studies to uncover a fascinating new portrait of women’s brains, bodies, and role in human evolution.

Author : Rita Colwell,Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781501181290

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A Lab of One's Own by Rita Colwell,Sharon Bertsch McGrayne Pdf

Colwell, the first female director of the National Science Foundation, discusses the entrenched sexism in science, the elaborate detours women have taken to bypass the problem, and how to fix the system. When she first applied for a graduate fellowship in bacteriology, she was told, "We don't waste fellowships on women." Over her six decades in science, as she encounters other women pushing back against the status quo, Colwell also witnessed the advances that could be made when men and women worked together. Here she offers an astute diagnosis of how to fix the problem of sexism in science-- and a celebration of the women pushing back. --

Author : Evelyn Reed
Publisher : Pathfinder
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : Psychology
ISBN : UOM:39015038906742

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Sexism & Science by Evelyn Reed Pdf

Are human beings innately aggressive? Does biology condemn women to remain the "second sex?" Taking up such biases cloaked as the findings of science, Reed explains that the disciplines closest to human life-anthropology, biology, and sociology-are permeated with rationalizations for the oppression of women and the maintenance of the established capitalist order. "A stimulating corrective to establishment academic doctrine and popular scientific vagaries. Recommended for scientific, women's, as well as nonspecialist collections." -Library Journal "An enjoyable book …. Reed shows, clearly and beautifully, how the mind of the scientist-usually male, white and middle-class-filters and processes the so-called facts …. [I]ntensely readable for non-specialists, but also stimulating for those who are not unfamiliar with the subject …. This is the sort of book that one should own, one should read, and one should pass along."-Status of Women News "Provides a useful antidote to obscurantic nonsense perpetrated by Ardrey, Morris and … Lionel Tiger."-Emergency Librarian "Dissects [Claude Levi-Strauss's] theses with precision and elegance."-News from Neasden Glossary, bibliography, index.

Author : Evelyn Fox Keller
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0300065957

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Reflections on Gender and Science by Evelyn Fox Keller Pdf

Why are objectivity and reason characterized as male and subjectively and feeling as female? How does this characterization affect the goals and methods of scientific enquiry? This groundbreaking work explores the possibilities of a gender-free science and the conditions that could make such a possibility a reality. "Keller's book opens up a whole new range of ideas for anyone who cares to think about the history of science, that is, the history of the modern world. . . Let us be glad to be in times when such a sparkling, innovative. . . book can be produced, a book to start all of us thinking in new directions."-Ian Hacking, New Republic "A brilliant and sensitive undertaking that does credit not only to feminist scholarship but, in the end, to science as well."-Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller's evident commitment to and understanding of science. As a lively and important contribution to the scholarship of science, it will undoubtedly stimulate argument and controversy."-Helen Longino, Texas Humanist "Provocative arguments, presented with authority."-Kirkus Reviews "Consistently thoughtful, provocative, and interconnected. . . A well-made book that will be useful in upper-level undergraduate and graduate women's studies, philosophy, and history of science."-E.C. Patterson, Choice "Written with grace and clarity, [this book] will stand as an important contribution to feminist theory, to the sociology of knowledge and to the continuing critique of the established scientific method."-Lillian B. Rubin "A powerful book."-Jessie Bernard

Author : Eliza Burt Gamble
Publisher : DigiCat
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2022-09-16
Category : History
ISBN : EAN:8596547338895

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The Sexes in Science and History by Eliza Burt Gamble Pdf

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Sexes in Science and History" (An inquiry into the dogma of woman's inferiority to man) by Eliza Burt Gamble. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Author : Catherine D'Ignazio,Lauren F. Klein
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2023-10-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780262547185

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Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio,Lauren F. Klein Pdf

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism. Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.” Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

Author : Mary Morse
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2008-01-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780465012244

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Women Changing Science by Mary Morse Pdf

An eye-opening and honest look at the enduring sexism within the scientific community and what women are doing to change it.

Author : Oksana Yakushko
Publisher : Springer
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2019-06-24
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9783030159825

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Scientific Pollyannaism by Oksana Yakushko Pdf

This book argues that the story of the orphan girl Pollyanna (namely, her strategy of playing the “glad games” to manage loss, abuse, and social prejudice) serves as a framework for critiquing historical forms of Western scientific Pollyannaism. The author examines Pollyannaism as it relates to the sciences, demonstrating how the approach has been used throughout modern Western history to enforce happiness and to criticize negative human emotional states. These efforts, carried out by scientists and popularized as scientific, focus on negating the role of the environment and on promoting varied forms of emotional control. Ultimately, the book emphasizes strategies used to compel individuals into becoming Pollyannas about science itself.