International Day of Women and Girls in Science Week 2024 subjectId: 690797

Inspired by the United Nation's commemoration of International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11th, UM's Richter Library has created this topic guide to highlight some of the texts in our collection that explore the role women have played in science, technology, engineering and mathemathics.

Included in this guide is a brief overview of feminist theory in STEM, a reading list highlighting texts in our collection focused on women in STEM, and a link to an additional guide exploring some historical and modern women in STEM. 

A Really Short Introduction to Feminist Philosophy of Science

By Abigail Johnson, UM Graduate Class of 2017
Library Research Scholars Program

When you think of famous scientists, people like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Charles Darwin probably come to mind. It is likely that very few of the scientists you think of are women. Is this because women don’t contribute to science as much as men do, or is it because the scientific community fails to recognize the achievements of women scientists?

Additionally, STEM fields are often applauded for being the ultimate examples of non-biased objectivity that many other fields look up to and wish to associate with. But, if the STEM fields wish to truly live up to their goals of neutrality and objectivity, they need to start by rethinking who they are allowing to participate in research—sexism and racism are not compatible with social impartiality.

For example, think of Hedy Lamarr. She is typically remembered for her acting career and being beautiful, but almost no one knows she was an inventor as well. She actually invented the technology that was used for military communication during the Cuban Missile Crisis years later, but this contribution is typically overshadowed by her acting career.[1]

Another famous woman who was essentially not credited for her extensive scientific research and important discoveries is Rosalind Franklin. She contributed to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but typically only James Watson and Francis Crick are credited with the discovery.[2]

“If women are systematically excluded from the design and management of science and their work devalued, then it appears that neither the assignment of status to persons within science nor the assessment of the value of the results of inquiry is, or is intended to be, value-neutral, objective, socially impartial.”[3] So if social biases are allowed to interfere with women’s ability to participate in scientific research, and that almost certainly appears to be the case, science cannot claim to be as objective as it strives to be.

Additionally, it appears that second-wave feminism was not entirely successful in obtaining gender equality, since sociologist Hilary Rose says, “such racializing and gendering of science was not confined to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but is present today, despite the ideological claims of the neutrality of science.”[4]

Feminist philosophy of science offers explanations regarding both why women have been historically excluded from STEM fields as well as support for the claim that women are an invaluable part of the scientific process.

Historians such as Ruth Watts have acknowledged that since ancient times “there had been a few examples of renowned female teachers and writers and medical practitioners,”[5] but women that were able to succeed in their respective fields were few and far between. Perhaps that was due to social biases against women, but there is also the possibility that so few women are remembered or honored for their contributions because men are the ones judging whether or not something is worthy of being remembered or honored. Since “women’s contributions to traditional history and culture have still been contributions to what men, from the perspective of their lives, think of as history and culture,”[6] one cannot help but wonder how many of women’s scholarly contributions have been erased throughout history because they were deemed insignificant or the women unqualified.

Surprisingly, the rise of modern science did little to help women’s opportunities in scientific fields. It actually appears that it worked to their disadvantage, seeing as “there were many different ‘scientific’ explanations of life and gender competing for attention in the mid-seventeenth century, but gradually, a stress on women’s passive nature and intellectual capacities seemed to dominate.”[7]

Rather than modern science opening the door for women to pursue academics, women have continued to be marginalized in the scientific community. “Marginality resulted, in part, from several strongly felt values held by Europeans and Americans in the last half of the nineteenth century: specifically that women belonged in the home; that women were innately incapable of creative work; that women should not “usurp” the traditional male role as the head of the family.”[8]  Although this quote only addresses the marginality that women are facing in modern science, this phenomenon has been present throughout history as well.

If we as a society can figure out a way to support women’s potential as scientists and be more inclusive of women in STEM, it will not only improve the status of women, but the quality of science as well.

Abigail Johnson was part of the inaugural cohort of the Library Research Scholars Program with a focus on historical research of women scientists. A Women in STEM SubjectsPlus guide created by Abigail is now available on the UML website. Visit the guide for more examples and resources on this topic.

 

[1] "Hedy Lamarr." World of Invention. Gale, 2006. Biography in Context. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.

[2] "Rosalind Elsie Franklin." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998.Biography in Context. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.

[3] Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (United States of America: Cornell University, 1986), 67.

[4] Hilary Rose, Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Translation of the Sciences (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994), 17.

[5] Ruth Watts, Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History (New York: Routledge, 2007), 34.

[6] Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism, 31.

[7] Ruth Watts, Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History, 45.

[8] Jonathan Cole, Fair Science: Women within the Scientific Community (New York: The Free Press, 1979), 189.