Women\u27s Studies and Science

The following paper was originally a talk delivered at the Research Conference on Educational Environments and the Undergraduate Woman, sponsored by HERS , New England, at Wellesley College last year. One manifestation of the rigid division of sex roles in our society is the fact that relatively few women are scientists, especially physical scientists and mathematicians. My interest in addressing the subject of women and the science curriculum stems from my desire to change this situation, to allow equal access of men and women into science. The college curriculum is only a small part of this problem. The different socialization of girls and boys, especially with regard to mathematical ability and career aspirations, starts early. We each have our own personal stories to tell in this regard. Mine is from the fifth grade when I had my doctor-nurse argument with my teacher. He insisted that I had not meant it when I had said I wanted to be a doctor, that I really intended to become a nurse. In the process of arguing indignantly with him, I learned a great deal about the outside world. The point, of course, is that many things shape the development of boys and girls well before they enter college. These include early socialization, the lack or presence of female role models, and the role of peer pressure

Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

Is it good medical practice for physicians to "eyeball" a patient's race when assessing their medical status or even to ask them to identify their race

Theorising Women’s Health and health inequalities: shaping processes of the ‘gender-biology nexus’

Since the theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools we employ shape research outcomes by guiding research pathways, it is important that we subject them to ongoing critical reflection. A thoroughgoing analysis of the global production of women's health inequality calls for a comprehensive theorization of how social relations of gender and the biological body mutually interact in local contexts in a nexus with women's health. However, to date, the predominant concern of research has been to identify the biological effects of social relations of gender on the body, to the relative neglect of the co-constitutive role that these biological changes themselves may play in ongoing cycles of gendered health oppressions. Drawing on feminist and gender theoretical approaches, and with the health of women and girls as our focus, we seek to extend our understanding of this recursive process by discussing what we call the 'shaping processes' of the 'gender-biology nexus' which call attention to not only the 'gender-shaping of biology' but also the 'biologic-shaping of gender'. We consider female genital mutilation/cutting as an illustration of this process and conclude by proposing that a framework which attends to both the 'gender-shaping of biology' and the 'biologic-shaping of gender' as interweaving processes provides a fruitful approach to theorising the wider health inequalities experienced by women and girls

Project Re•center dot Vision: disability at the edges of representation

The representational history of disabled people can largely be characterized as one of being put on display or hidden away. Self-representations have been a powerful part of the disability rights and culture movement, but recently scholars have analysed the ways in which these run the risk of creating a ‘single story’ that centres the experiences of white, western, physically disabled men. Here we introduce and theorize with Project Re•Vision, our arts-based research project that resists this singularity by creating and centring, without normalizing, representations that have previously been relegated to the margins. We draw from body becoming and new materialist theory to explore the dynamic ways in which positionality illuminates bodies of difference and open into a discussion about what is at stake when these stories are let loose into the world

Honneth, Butler and the Ambivalent Effects of Recognition

This paper examines the ambivalent effects of recognition by critically examining Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition cause him to misrepresent or overlook significant connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated by (1) drawing from Butler’s theory of gender performativity, power and recognition; and (2) exploring issues arising from the socio-institutional recognition of trans identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I claim that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects