Talk:Criticism of science/Feminist

Feminist critiques
Feminist scholars and former female scientists such as Emily Martin, Evelyn Fox Keller, Ruth Hubbard, Londa Schiebinger and Bonnie Spanier have critiqued science for presenting itself as objective and neutral while ignoring its inherent gender bias. They assert that gender bias exists in the language and practice of science, as well as in the expected appearance and social acceptance of who can be scientists within society.

Sandra Harding says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender, sex and relations within and between the social and natural worlds." Some feminists, such as Ruth Hubbard and Evelyn Fox Keller, criticize traditional scientific discourse as being historically biased towards a male perspective. A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways in which power inequities are created and/or reinforced in scientific and academic institutions.


 * sexist bias in science

Inequality in the workplace

 * glass ceiling prevents advancement of female scientists
 * inequities in practitioners, male domination of science
 * publication bias - more males get published
 * male domination of conferences and peer review

Gender-related health issues

 * gender bias in describing reproductive physiology


 * male depiction of menstruation and pregnancy as diseases

Epistemology

 * lack of objectivity and neutrality
 * projecting gender stereotypes onto observed phenomena
 * linear thinking vs lateral and branched thinking
 * hard mechanistic thinking lacks holism
 * (male) (mis)perception of dominance and domination in nature

Emily Martin examines the metaphors used in science to support her claim that science reinforces socially constructed ideas about gender rather than objective views of nature. In her study about the fertilization process, for example, she asserts that classic metaphors of the strong dominant sperm racing to an idle egg are products of gendered stereotyping rather than portraying an objective truth about human fertilization. The notion that women are passive and men are active are socially constructed attributes of gender which scientists have projected onto the events of fertilization and so obscuring the fact that eggs do play an active role. The now proven fact that eggs release molecules that guide and activate sperm was not examined or established until the late 1970s, which Martin argues is due to scientists' viewing natural processes through social lenses of gendered stereotypes.

Martin describes working with a team of sperm researchers at Johns Hopkins to illustrate how language in reproductive science adheres to social constructs of gender despite scientific evidence to the contrary:


 * "The team went on to determine that the sperm tries to pull its getaway act even on the egg itself,
 * but is held down against its struggles by molecules on the surface of the egg that hook together
 * with counterparts on the sperm's surface, fastening the sperm until the egg can absorb it. Yet even
 * after having revealed the sperm to be an escape artist and the egg to be a chemically active sperm
 * catcher, even after discussing the egg's role in tethering the sperm, the research team continued
 * for another three years to describe the sperm's role as actively penetrating the egg."