Last class we spent some time debating Schiebinger’s thesis, specifically if she was claiming that science itself was gendered or just the practices surrounding it. I think in this section about biology, she clearly describes how the gendered practices of science have created a gendered science. Schiebinger writes that “we cannot free ourselves of cultural influence; we cannot think or act outside of a culture” (146). Throughout this chapter we read about scientific practices that have led to an underdevelopment of research about female anatomy and sexual practices, based on the assumption that males are the standard and influence proliferation more than females do. These types of assumptions become embedded in the “practices, institutions, and the research priorities of science” that we base our science on, changing the face of science itself (152).
In the first part of the semester I was very interested in how technology can be gendered/not neutral, like the Reddit algorithm that worked to promote sexist threads to the front page and how internet users are assumed to be white, straight, cis men. It would make sense that biology is structured similarly, with certain assumptions from society being built into the foundations of the science. Even in recent attempts to equalize/accurately portray biological phenomena such as fertilization, scientists can’t seem to explain it in a way that doesn’t reaffirm masculine values.
In addition to culture influencing science, Schiebinger notes how biology influenced society. With the introduction of “Mammalia,” society now had a scientific base for the newly developing separate spheres. A background assumption soon became that women are scientifically predetermined to be mothers and raise their children, relegating women to the home and private sphere. Men, then, could with a free conscience leave the child rearing to the women and go out into the public sphere and continue to generate gendered spaces.
