230206 SE Gender and Science (2010S)

The issue of gender and science is both a quantitative problem and a qualitative puzzle. It is now widely recognised that women are under-represented in academic roles in many natural science subjects, and in all academic disciplines the proportion of women falls dramatically in senior positions. The under-representation and slow progress of women in science careers is seen as a waste of skills in the knowledge economy and as an equal opportunities problem. If we want to understand and explain the issue, however, a range of complex factors must be addressed. Gender is not simply a matter of the presence or absence of sexed bodies in the laboratory. Are there gendered ways of knowing? How are processes of knowledge production related to identities and social relationships? How do institutions condition the doing and the organisation of research? How are careers in science shaped by institutions and policy makers - and how are they lived and experienced by individual researchers on the ground?

This course will introduce students to a range of debates relating to gender and knowledge production. It explores how ways of knowing, ways of being and forming identities, organisational structures, and the practical doing of science are bound together in peoples' experiences as knowing subjects. The course offers a lively and accessible introduction to questions of gender and science, drawing on research findings of the EC project KNOWING (http://www.knowing.soc.cas.cz). Students will encounter original qualitative data as well as a range of theories and analytical approaches including: science and technology studies; feminist epistemology; higher education studies; and science policy studies.

The course has four themes, each of which can be run as a self-contained block consisting of 5 hours of teaching combining, seminar discussions, guided reading, and student presentations.

Feminist epistemologies: How does gender shape what counts as knowledge, who can legitimately know things, and how knowledge is evaluated? In this strand we examine feminist critiques of mainstream epistemology and alternative proposals for understanding how knowledge works: feminist standpoint theories; feminist empiricisms; and postmodern feminist epistemologies.

The gendered university? This strand addresses the institutional dimensions of the question of women and science, exploring: the role of invisible work in reproducing and recreating gendered subjects; the 'greedy' institution and the reconciliation of work and family life; and the rise of audit culture in universities and its consequences for women.

Science as practice Contemporary approaches in science and technology studies insist that science should be understood not simply as a matter of individual cognition, but as a matter of (collective) practices. It studies science 'in action'. This strand introduces practice approaches to science with a gendered twist. In particular, we look at the gendered aspects of how science is variously constituted as an individualised or a collective practice, and at the time-regimes that shape research work.

Science careers In this strand we look at two related conceptions of the science career - the formal steps that lead to permanent positions and academic success, and the complex biographical stories that people tell about the shape and trajectory of their epistemic life-worlds. In both cases, we examine how gender and career are dynamically interrelated.