The Gender of Science
- Book Review,
by Janet A. Kourany
From Book News, Inc.
A reader for a course on gender and science for students of philosophy, the sciences, gender studies, and related disciplines. It looks at women scientists of the past and present, the nature of science, and feminist perspectives on how it should be. The 26 articles are reprinted from scholarly journals and other anthologies. They are not indexed.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
From the Back Cover
Despite substantial research during the last two decades in the area of gender and science, no anthology or textbook has introduced students in a comprehensive or systematic way to the subject until now. Integrating contributions from historians and philosophers of science as well as scientists from a wide range of fields, The Gender of Science explores the claim that modern Western science is masculine, and that its masculinity helps to perpetuate a society biased in favor of men. It also explores some of the ways women scientists are currently changing science, and some of the ways science's empiricist house philosophy must be revised to accommodate these changes. The Gender of Science also provides a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the field of gender and science. includes contributions by the most important historians, philosophers, and scientists in the field—Schiebinger, Harding, Longino, Haraway, Keller, Hubbard, Fausto-Sterling, Rosser, and many others. includes accessible, eye-opening articles on a wide range of sciences, from physics and chemistry to psychology and the social sciences. scrutinizes the aims, methods, and social effects of science as well as its subject matter, and confronts the hard normative questions that result. includes introductions to each section that integrate the different parts of the book, and make clear the contribution of each article to the overall questions of the book. is of interest to a wide range of students—students in philosophy and the sciences as well as those in interdisciplinary programs such as science, technology, and values and gender studies/women's studies.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
During the last two decades there has been a near avalanche of work in the area of gender and science—scores of books and collections of essays by historians and philosophers of science as well as scientists themselves, special issues of journals and newsletters, lectures, symposia, conferences, journal articles, bibliographies, and of course media exposes and analyses. But there have been few if any anthologies or textbooks designed specifically to structure courses on gender and science so as to introduce students to the area in a clear and systematic way, though there has been much interest in teaching such courses (to judge from the syllabi and requests for syllabi informally circulating around the country). This anthology is intended to rectify the situation. In it I have included articles that are accessible, eye-opening, and challenging to a wide range of students—students of philosophy, the sciences, gender studies/women's studies, as well as students in interdisciplinary science studies programs such as science, technology, and values. I have organized the articles so as to bring out very clearly the interrelations among them and their relevance to the students. And I have tested in the classroom over a number of years now both the anthology's format and its articles, with great success. Work on this anthology has been made much easier as a result of the efforts of a number of people. Sue Rosser of the University of South Carolina, Helen Longino of the University of Minnesota, James Maffie of Colorado State University, and especially Alison Wylie of Washington University gave me many useful suggestions and much encouragement. Students in my Gender and Science classes over the years have been unfailingly helpful in pruning out the lemons (both readings and topics) of each new syllabus, and their suggestions for organizing or reorganizing their coursework were always well considered. I owe them a special debt of gratitude both for their generous feedback and for the sheer enjoyment of our interactions. Prentice Hall philosophy editor Ross Miller and production editor Joanne Riker have been wonderfully resourceful and accommodating on a whole slew of thorny issues, and wonderfully pleasant to work with as well. Notre Dame history and philosophy of science graduate student Elizabeth Hayes did a stellar and truly memorable job trying to extract every last error from the proofs. My partner and fellow philosopher Jim Sterba as usual provided the necessary support, humor, love, and distractions to see the project through. Finally, our daughter Sonya, now a twenty-year-old psychology major, has helped me envision a more hopeful future for science. To her, energetic and absorbed and socially concerned scientist-to-be, I dedicate this book. J. A. K.
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