## 1. Equity Issues



Equity issues in the sciences often focus on underrepresentation.
However, equity in any field has different causes and manifestations.
Thinking of equity as a matter of "how many" from the
group in question participate is important insofar as it may reflect
injustices in access to science education, employment, or promotion.
These issues of social justice are a core element of feminism, but
they do not exhaust it.



Small numbers are indicative of other equity issues that feminists
have explored. The connection between who it is that participates in
knowledge production and the nature of the knowledge produced is one.
This connection has both negative and positive aspects. On the
negative side, the unwarranted biases of researchers who share
unexamined and unsupported assumptions go unchallenged when those who
have experiences conflicting with those assumptions are excluded. This
point is addressed in literature on the epistemic value of diversity.
As Kristen Intemann puts it 



> 
> 
> by including individuals from relevantly diverse social positions, the
> resulting epistemic community will be comprised of scientists informed
> by diverse experiences that can increase the rigor of scrutiny brought
> to background assumptions, theories and models. (Intemann 2011: 126)
> 
> 
> 
> 



On the positive side, when such differences in experiences are
included in the research process it may increase the quality and
relevance of the knowledge produced. Exploration of how this is so is
one way in which feminist perspectives have contributed to the growing
awareness of the social nature of scientific knowledge (Intemann 2009,
Rolin 2006, Fehr 2011).



While social justice concerns about equity are best understood as
inseparable from epistemic concerns, this entry begins by considering
them individually with a focus on some specific aspects of equity
issues. A more expansive and detailed account of the history of how
these issues have been addressed can be found in an earlier iteration
of Feminist Perspectives on Science in the archives (Crasnow et al.
2015 [2018]).


### 1.1 Women in the Sciences



Although there have always been women interested in the world in ways
that came to be identified as scientific, their participation has
neither been uniformly encouraged nor consistently acknowledged. The
relative absence of women from the history of science, the low numbers
of women formally participating in science prior to the twentieth
century, and the continuing difficulties of many women in those fields
even after they entered in significant numbers--lower promotion
rates, lower wages, and lesser positions than men in the
field--are one focus of feminist attention. Feminist approaches
have included efforts to publicize the role of women in the past
(e.g., the History of Women in Philosophy and Science, Paderborn
University), increase the participation of women and girls in science
through education (for example, the ADVANCE initiative discussed in
greater detail in Crasnow et al. 2015 [2018]), and to identify factors
that create barriers to women persisting or advancing in the
sciences.



Sandra Harding describes projects that reveal various ways in which
women involved in science have been overlooked or forgotten as
"women worthies" projects (Harding 1986). Such projects
involve discovering and honoring women who were overlooked or
forgotten in the history of science. There are multiple motivations
for such projects. One is simply the desire to correct the historical
record and give women contributors their due. Another aim is to
encourage future participation by girls and women. If one reason for
the historically low participation of women in the sciences is that
stereotypes of women conflict with their ability to imagine themselves
as scientists, then countering such stereotypes is one way to alter
that circumstance.



Persistently low participation--or the appearance of low
participation because of the invisibility of women--lends support
to a problematic schema. Schemas are "hypotheses that we use to
interpret social events" (Valian 1999: 103)--in this case,
the hypothesis that girls and women are not suited to the pursuit of
scientific knowledge. The cultural milieu in which girls and women
find themselves pursuing science is one in which stereotype threat
(Steele 1997) is just one of the many challenges they must face.
Stereotype threat is the activation of internalized negative
stereotypes, so that when the subject is reminded of their belonging
to the stereotyped group their performance is affected so that it is
consistent with the stereotype. Girls reminded that they are girls
perform less well on mathematics tests when the dominant stereotype is
that "girls don't do math". Thus it can be part of a
cycle that helps perpetuate the low numbers through impacting scores
on tests and in classes that function as entry points to science
careers. However, there is evidence that counterexamples--such as
the awareness of successful women in these fields--can diminish
this effect thus potentially ending the cycle.



There is certainly reason to think that such projects are worthwhile,
however they do not fundamentally alter the nature of the disciplines
in question on their own. Harding describes these projects as part of
a progression in feminist approaches to science in order to contrast
them with later conceptual critiques of the sciences in both feminist
science and feminist philosophy of science. According to this
narrative feminist critique moves from a discussion of women worthies
to a deeper examination of the features of scientific knowledge
production. While the progressive story is appealing, looking back on
the past 30 years it would seem that the need for rewriting history to
include women has not vanished and, while there have been many
positive changes, some of which have been spurred by feminist
critique, work remains to be done to address remaining inequities. The
uptake of many feminist ideas about who should do science, what
science ought to study, and how such research should be carried out
has been disappointingly slow. Although a greater number of women
attain both undergraduate and graduate degrees in science fields than
ever before, their participation in the science and engineering
workforce remains comparatively low at roughly 28% when considering
all disciplines (*Science and Engineering Indicators*, National
Science Board 2018: chapter 3, 3-106). Additionally, there is a
persistent wage gap (decreasing with higher levels of education, but
nonetheless remaining even as level of education increases).



The 2010 American Association of University Women (AAUW) report,
*Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics* identified three themes that persist in conventional
explanations of the gender disparities in STEM fields. The first is
the idea that there are innate sex-linked differences in
talent--specifically that men typically have better mathematical
and spatial skills required for success in STEM fields. The second is
the idea that both drive and preferences differ by gender--that
girls are simply less interested in STEM disciplines and so do not
choose to pursue STEM careers. The third focuses on inequities related
to the workplace, including both explicit and implicit biases within
the workplace and life-work balance issues that are thought to drive
women out of STEM fields. These conventional themes resurface
periodically in the discussion of gender inequities in STEM fields
suggesting an inevitability of the status quo. The AAUW report
challenges each of these standard explanations in turn and makes
suggestions designed to address features of STEM education that seem
likely to contribute to this persistent gender disparity.



The first sort of explanation for the lower participation of women
reflects a tension between feminism and science that will be discussed
in more detail in
 section 2.1.
 The suggestion is that science itself reveals (or will reveal) the
innate differences between men and women/girls and boys that account
for the ability to do science. This claim is countered by challenging
the evidence in two ways: revealing biases in the research or noting
that when differences in ability appear to be present they can equally
well be ascribed to culture (societal influences) rather than
nature.



The second claim also postulates gendered differences, framing them in
terms of natural preferences rather than abilities. Again, this is
countered by urging consideration of culture rather than nature.
Another approach is to critique the language of preferences, noting
that the structural nature of sexism shapes researchers'
readings of preferences but also that what options are believed to be
available shapes preferences.



The third theme has received more attention recently, in part because
it goes some way towards explaining why the increase in the number of
women receiving science education has not been matched by a comparable
increase in their participation in the workforce. While participation
varies by discipline--with most of the social sciences (except
economics and political science) having women in the majority and the
life sciences close to parity--overall it remains comparatively
low (28% as noted previously; National Science Board 2018: chapter 3,
3-106), particularly when more leadership or prestigious roles are
considered. There is a growing awareness that
"microinequities"--small slights and injustices that
have an accumulative discouraging effect over time--may play a
role in this low rate of participation.



Alison Wylie offers an account of these subtle forms of discrimination
as first fully acknowledged in the 1999 MIT report "A Study on
the Status of Women Faculty in the School of Science" (MIT
1999). 



> 
> 
> Discrimination in the 1990s, ..., takes the form of innumerable
> small differences in uptake and response.... (Wylie 2011: 157)
> 
> 
> 
> 



This report notes the challenges faced by girls and women entering
science fields and clarifies how they had been underestimated or
discounted. Wylie's discussion of the reception of "chilly
climate" reports, like the MIT report gives some insight into
the depressing lack of progress in the past 30 years. 



> 
> 
> Even when systematic gender differences were successfully documented,
> either in a particular context or as a pervasive feature of academic
> life, the critics of chilly climate studies routinely denied that they
> reflect any unfairness on the part of individuals or institutions; if
> no harm was intended, and no intent to discriminate had been
> demonstrated, allegations of injustice were unfounded. (Wylie 2011:
> 171)
> 
> 
> 



Further evidence of the pervasiveness and structural nature of the
challenges that women face appear in more recent research. The 2018
Consensus Report Study carried out under the auspices of the National
Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, *Sexual Harassment
of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine* explores the extent to which women are
driven out of the academy through sexual harassment (Johnson et al.
2018). The Consensus Report Study makes concrete suggestions for
improving the environment to prevent sexual harassment and for
handling cases if they do occur. The very existence of the study and
the felt need that gave rise to it are indicators that the equity
issues that feminists have been concerned with have not been
satisfactorily addressed. Consequently, increasing the participation
of girls and women, as well as retaining women once they enter the
scientific professions, remain of interest to feminists.


### 1.2 Sciences Studying Women



As more women entered scientific fields during the twentieth century
they begin to focus on a variety of phenomena that previously had been
overlooked--phenomena present in the lives, domains, and
experiences of women. This point is beautifully illustrated by the
note that Claude Levi-Strauss made in an article describing his
field work in 1936:



> 
> 
> the entire village left the next day in about thirty canoes, leaving
> us alone in the abandoned houses with the women and children. (1936:
> 283, translated in Eichler & Lapointe 1985: 11) 
> 
> 
> 



The anthropologist finds himself "alone" since the proper
subjects of research have left the village. As women entered
anthropology they recognized those left behind as part of the fabric
of the culture that they sought, as social scientists, to
understand.



Neglect was sometimes the result of lack of access. In some cultures
men do not have access to women and domains identified with women due
to cultural restrictions on the interactions among genders. In other
cases, lack of awareness or interest in the phenomena that were
identified as connected to women resulted in lacunae in research. In
economics, for example, the failure to identify the role of (mostly)
women's domestic work as labor and hence as relevant to economic
analysis was not a result of its invisibility--domestic labor is
present throughout human experience--but rather because of
conceptualizing labor so that such unpaid domestic labor remains
outside of the economic sphere. It was *economically*
invisible. Women economists noticed and sought to correct this
omission by clarifying the ways in which paid labor depends upon
domestic support and the role this plays in capitalism (Dalla Costa
& James 1972; Federici 1975 [2020]; Himmelweit & Mohun 1977).
Perhaps in part because of roots in the Marxist tradition and so its
association with a non-mainstream economics, this understanding of
labor is still not fully incorporated into economics research.



Additionally, the domination of economics by rational choice theory
pushes against treating gender and gendered social structure as
relevant. The conception of the economic agent in rational choice
theory relies on an abstract understanding of agents as guided by
their preferences. Any variation in the choices made by different
genders must be interpreted as a matter of differences in preferences.
Embedded in rational choice theory's fundamental assumption
about agents is the idea that gender is irrelevant to the analysis of
human behavior. A number of feminist economists have noted that the
reliance on rational choice approaches is a factor in the failure to
incorporate feminist interests and insights into economics (see Barker
1995; Barker & Kuiper 2003). Although behavioral economics has
challenged many assumptions of rational choice theory, its emergence
as a new approach has not necessarily ameliorated the situation.
Recent research suggests that much work in behavioral economics is
affected by stereotypical assumptions about differences in the
behavior of men and women (Sent & van Staveren 2019). Thus the
responses to attempts to incorporate gender analyses into economics
can be summarized as follows: relevant gender differences are
identified but there is a lack uptake (domestic labor/work); gender is
treated as irrelevant; or when identified as relevant, sexist
stereotypes permeate research.



Medicine provides another example of the limited responsiveness of a
field to feminist critique. Heart disease in women was often not
recognized or understood primarily because the research had focused on
men. Although more recent research has included women, as late as 2017
research on medical practice indicated that women still are not
screened for heart disease as regularly as men during routine health
examinations. In addition, 45% of women in a nationwide survey were
unaware that heart disease is the number one cause of fatality for
women (Bairey Merz et al. 2017). Since 1993 the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) has required that women (and minorities) be included in
research projects that are NIH funded (see
 Other Internet Resources).
 However, there are problems recruiting and retaining sufficient
numbers of women for such research as evidenced by the literature
review on the topic at the NIH website. The requirement does not, in
itself, correct gender inequities in medical research which tend to be
more systematic and structural.



As a final example, consider Pamela Paxton's critique of indices
of democracy commonly used in political science research. Paxton
argues that often the operationalization of democracy in the most
commonly used indices treats one of its key indicators,
"universal suffrage", as universal male
suffrage--either implicitly or explicitly. When understood as
including women's suffrage, Paxton notes that many of the key
claims of research on democracy--including a standard
interpretation that identifies three waves of democracy--may need
to be revised (Paxton 2000). Although decisions about how to
operationalize a concept like democracy can have far-reaching effects
for theoretical explanation, this is another case where uptake has
been limited. Democracy indices have not been revised following
Paxton's critique.



These are just three examples of how attempts to challenge content,
while widely recognized as legitimate, have failed to bring about
fundamental change. Such examples suggest that feminist goals require
more than the inclusion of women as researcher or their lives as
objects of inquiry. It is not enough to "add women and
stir"--as has become clear in the struggle to gain parity
in employment, education, and research. Deeper conceptual change and
critique of the way scientific research is structured are needed.


## 2. Feminist Critique of Science



It is tempting to think that the main benefit of feminist perspectives
on science has been to identify sexist bias in science and that the
consequently the elimination of bias would be a sufficient corrective.
Undeniably, there are cases where bias is the primary issue, however,
it is not clear that its removal is sufficient to serve feminist aims.
Even if it were, however, identifying and eliminating bias may be more
difficult than it might seem for a number of reasons.



First, bias is not always easy to identify. Even with a good will,
scientists may be unable to identify problematic background
assumptions since such assumptions are often deeply embedded in
research practices, shared by the community involved in those
practices (the broader social milieu), and so not readily available to
scrutiny. Bias is not simply the tendency of individuals to prefer
particular views or to ignore the alternatives. 



> 
> 
> [I]t also includes unreflective assent to background assumptions
> about, for instance, causal relationships or how natural or social
> phenomena are to be classified. (Brister 2018: 214-215)
> 
> 
> 



Second, the idea that the best science is that which eliminates bias
evokes an ideal of science as value-free--that is, free from
moral, cultural, or political values. While this conception of science
dominated philosophy of science in the first half of the twentieth
century it has since been challenged. The extent to which values may
play a legitimate role, when, and in what aspects of science, has been
extensively explored during the past few decades (see
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science--section
 7, also Lacey 1999; Kincaid, Dupre, & Wylie 2007; Elliott
2017). Feminist philosophers of science have been active participants
in this discussion.



Finally, bias has sometimes been understood as a matter of the
idiosyncratic and irrelevant beliefs or attitudes of individual
scientists. This understanding of bias obscures the social nature of
science. Scientists typically work in teams, not in isolation, and the
frameworks within which they labor have their own social histories.
Researchers are trained by other scientists to adopt the practices of
the disciplines within which they work. In addition, the assessment of
their research is done within that social context. These social
aspects of science provide an intellectual architecture that both
shapes and constrains research.


### 2.1 Feminist Science as the Elimination of Sexist Values



Women entering science also absorb the culture of their disciplines
and so their research begins with the assumptions, frameworks, and
dominant methodology of those disciplines. If they are feminists, or
even if they are not, they sometimes come to their work with different
interests and goals. These differences may be because of an awareness
of aspects of the world that are either not of interest or invisible
to their counterparts who are men. They may frame research through
questions not asked by others and see phenomena that had been
overlooked, deemed irrelevant, or misinterpreted. They also may be
more likely to notice when research has been guided by assumptions
about the subject matter that are informed by stereotypical
understandings of gender.



On the face of it, there is no reason to think that better
implementation of the practices of science could not correct these
absences or misinterpretations. One could argue that social science
that fails to acknowledge the fundamentally gendered nature of society
simply fails to be empirically adequate. However, as Judith Stacey and
Barrie Thorne put it, 



> 
> 
> Over time ... feminists discover that many gaps were there for a
> reason, i.e., that existing paradigms systematically ignore or erase
> the significance of women's experiences and the organization of
> gender. This discovery ... leads feminists to rethink the basic
> conceptual and theoretical frameworks of their respective fields.
> (Stacey & Thorne 1985: 302) 
> 
> 
> 



Doing traditional science better but with the same basic assumptions
does not eliminate many of these problems.



Worries about what it would mean to "rethink basic conceptual
and theoretical frameworks" of science were among the reasons
that feminist critique of science was a target of the "science
wars" of the 1990s. As philosophers, historians, and other
social scientists recognized social influences on scientific research
and the fact that scientific communities were social entities their
accounts threatened the notion that moral, political, cultural, or
social values should not play a role in the assessment of evidence,
the choice of methodology, or ultimately the acceptance of
theories--the value-free ideal. While those embracing the ideal
had always recognized that some values--epistemic or cognitive
values that include, for example, the commitment to the pursuit of
truth, the empirical adequacy of theories, the consideration of total
evidence--do and should play a role in science, they rejected
that social, political, or moral values should. From the perspective
of the value-free ideal, feminist values are precisely the sort of
values that ought to be excluded.



Thus, we see the value-free ideal evoked in philosophical discussions
of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science during the 1990s.
For example, Susan Haack describes feminist epistemology as
"incongruous on its face" (Haack 1993: 32; for similar
sentiments see Pinnick 1994). In response, feminist philosophy of
science during the 1990s was formulated as a defense against the
charge that forsaking the value-free ideal would undermine the
objectivity of science and result in a pernicious relativism.



Critiques like Haack's and Pinnick's mischaracterized at
least some feminist philosophy of science and science studies from
this period. Not all feminists were arguing for a radical rethinking
of science and most were committed to maintaining some notion of
objectivity and resisting relativism. Harding described those who
believed that science was fundamentally sound and feminist goals could
be achieved through eliminating bias "feminist
empiricists" (Harding 1986). The view is not, prima facie,
implausible. Consider the cases discussed in
 section 1.2
 from economics, medicine, and political science. The idea that unpaid
domestic work should figure in economic analysis could be described as
contributing to a more empirically adequate economics. However, such
an analysis fails to account for the lack of uptake of feminist
critique in the broader discipline.



For rational choice things are a bit trickier. For the agent of
rational choice theory gender characteristics are not considered
relevant and so claiming that the approach is tainted by sexist values
might seem difficult to defend. Nonetheless a feminist empiricist (in
Harding's original sense) response is possible. Rational choice
accounts can fail in circumstances when gender is in fact a relevant
feature--and so in such cases accounts that do not consider
gender fail to be empirically adequate. Empirical adequacy requires
that all the *significant* or *relevant* phenomena be
accounted for. But from the feminist perspective that requirement
raises questions: "Relevant for whom?" and "Relevant
for what end?" Questions of significance and relevance suggest
that values are unavoidable.



This is even more clear in the medical example. The failure to
consider women when investigating cardiac health looks like sexist
bias in the research. This might be seen as straightforward sexism
resulting from considering the lives of men to be more important than
the lives of women. However, we need not assume such overt sexism in
order to see values at work in this case. A more nuanced analysis
recognizes that on average heart disease has an earlier age of onset
in men, striking them in the "prime of life".
Consequently, heart disease in men has a greater impact on economic
productivity in a society in which gender roles proscribe that men are
in the workforce to a greater extent than women--as has
historically been the case in the industrialized north. The value
placed on the lives of (younger) men as opposed to (older) women is
reflected in the prioritizing of research on men. The impact of heart
disease on the economy because it affected more men of working age
than women, is a reflection of the gendered structure of the economy.
Understanding such priorities requires identifying how values are
implicit in research decisions.



What researchers (and the society in which they are embedded) take to
be important, and so, what they investigate, always sits in the
background. The questions that are asked, what counts as evidence, and
ultimately what counts as knowledge, is dependent on those interests.
Eliminating bias in science does not mean eliminating interests.



While there is general agreement that science improperly informed by
unexamined sexist assumptions is bad science, current thinking is that
what makes it bad is less that it incorporates values but rather that
the values that it incorporates either are the wrong ones (Kourany
2010), are used in the wrong way (Anderson 2004), or are adopted
uncritically (Longino 1990). These differing feminist attitudes
towards the role of values as they appear in feminist philosophy of
science will be discussed in more detail in
 section 4.2.


### 2.2 Critique of Concepts and Background Assumptions



One reason why eliminating bias sometimes involves more than merely
doing science better is that gender assumptions are not always
apparent to the researchers that are in their thrall. For example,
gender assumptions sometimes enter scientific research through
metaphor. Some early feminist critique emphasized this avenue
(Merchant 1980/1990; Keller 1985; Spanier 1995). When their
understanding of the objects of inquiry is shaped through unexamined
gendered metaphors, scientists risk misdescribing and consequently
misunderstanding the material world. Additionally, metaphors often aid
in the reproduction or reinforcement of unequal power relations by
carrying sets of associated expectations with them.



Evelyn Fox Keller offers the following example. The understanding of
ovum/sperm reproduction was shaped (wrongly) by thinking of the sperm
as masculine and the ovum as feminine. The projection of human gender
expectations onto the gametes resulted in an assumption that the ovum
was passive (as women stereotypically are) and the sperm active (as
men stereotypically are). Writing in 2001, Keller recounts a shift to
the recognition of an active role for both gametes: 



> 
> 
> The story provides a powerful lesson. It illustrates the ways in which
> language can shape the thinking and acting of working
> scientists--that is, by framing their attention, their
> perception, and, accordingly, the fields in which they can envision
> experiments that might be useful to undertake. (Keller 2001: 106)
> 
> 
> 



Metaphors may signal hidden assumptions that play a role in
identifying what counts as relevant evidence. Sarah Richardson exposes
and explores projective attributions of gender in the ways that
stereotypical ideas about male and female traits shape research on
chromosomes and sex determination. She argues that 



> 
> 
> [f]rom the earliest theories of chromosomal sex determination to the
> midcentury hypothesis of the aggressive XYY supermale, the
> longstanding belief that the X is the "female chromosome",
> and the recent claim that males and females have "different
> genomes", cultural gender conceptions have influenced the
> direction of sex chromosome genetics. (Richardson 2013: 2) 
> 
> 
> 



As one example of the effects of this projection she discusses the
failed supermale hypothesis--the idea that XYY males have more
"maleness" in virtue of having two Y chromosomes.
Supermales were hypothesized to be, among other things, more
aggressive. Their greater numbers in both psychiatric and correctional
institutions seemed to support this. The gendering of the Y
chromosome--thinking of it as having stereotypically male
traits--supported a flawed transitive reasoning: Y distinguishes
maleness, males with double Y should have more (double?) maleness
(e.g., aggression). The result was not only a false conclusion but a
failure to examine evidence that did not support the hypothesis. For
example, institutional populations also contain a disproportionate
number of XXY males. Using the same gender stereotypical reasoning,
this evidence would be inconsistent with the supermale hypothesis.
Ultimately the hypothesis was discredited for a variety of reasons,
but this "embarrassment" in chromosomal sex determination
research is only one example of how assumptions about gender can shape
understanding of the object of inquiry. Richardson argues that such
areas of research carry with them "gender valence"--a
more nuanced projective gendering of the subject matter that is more
subtle than what is typically referred to as "gender
bias".



Metaphor is not the only avenue through which projections occur.
Assumed similarity of the experience of men and women and the further
assumption that the experiences of men are the norm is another.
Elisabeth Lloyd's extended case study of accounts of female
orgasm illustrates how an assumption of this sort can prevent the
consideration of relevant evidence (Lloyd 2005). She examines 21
accounts (hypotheses) proposed for giving an evolutionary explanation
for female orgasm--a seeming anomaly in that it does not appear
to be necessary for reproduction. Of these, only one (the byproduct
account proposed by Donald Symons in 1979) incorporates a key piece of
evidence--that many women do not experience orgasm with
intercourse and many women do experience orgasm without
intercourse.



She reviews the accounts and identifies two background assumptions
that inform all accounts except Symons's. They are: the
adaptationist assumption that 



> 
> 
> natural selection, rather than other evolutionary forces, directly
> shaped the trait into its present form, or that natural selection is
> currently maintaining the trait in the population....(Lloyd 2005:
> 230) 
> 
> 
> 



and 



> 
> 
> the androcentric assumption that males are taken to be the normal type
> or the exemplar. 
> 
> 
> 



The second of these has the problematic result that "to the
extent that they differ from the male type, females are
invisible" (Lloyd 2005: 233). She takes these background
assumptions to be responsible for the failure to consider the evidence
that human females do not consistently achieve orgasm with intercourse
and do achieve orgasm without intercourse. She argues that any account
that does not explain this anomalous evidence should be considered
problematic.



Although Symon's account is not without problems, Lloyd argues
that it fits the evidence better than the alternatives. Symons
proposes that female orgasm is a byproduct of evolution rather than a
result of natural selection, a hypothesis that he is able to consider
because he is not assuming that orgasm in females must serve a
reproductive function since it does in males. His explanation for
female orgasm is that the biological development of males and females
is parallel so that the features that lead to orgasm in males (nerves,
erectile tissues, etc.) are also present in females, but not always
activated. Female orgasm is thus a byproduct of human evolution in
much the same way that male nipples are a byproduct and just as the
male nipples play no role in human reproduction neither does female
orgasm.



Lloyd argues that the inclusion of sexist values (the androcentric
understanding of orgasm) prevent the consideration of the available
data on female orgasm as evidence. Symons' account does not rely
on this androcentric understanding of the phenomenon under
investigation and consequently his hypothesis can both consider and
account for these data.



The examples offered here indicate that the way the objects of inquiry
are understood can shape the resulting science, but the example from
Lloyd's work also suggests that an epistemology that takes into
account the role of background assumptions (beliefs) in the context of
inquiry is better equipped for thinking through how beliefs about
gender can affect knowledge production. Both concerns point us towards
feminist philosophy of science, to be discussed in
 section 4.
 But first, section 3 considers the question of the appropriate
methods for feminist research.


## 3. Feminist Methodology



The discussion of methodology in this section focuses on the social
sciences, primarily because it is in these fields that most of the
debate on this topic has taken place. "Methodology" is
understood following Harding's distinction between method,
methodology, and epistemology. Methods are "techniques for
gathering evidence", whereas methodology is "a theory and
analysis of how research should proceed". Epistemology is the
"theory of knowledge or justificatory strategy" that
underlies the methodology (Harding 1987: 2). This three-way
distinction provides a framework for thinking about the relationship
among method, methodology, and epistemology. The framework is
reflected in sociologist Joey Sprague's account of feminist
methodology. 



> 
> 
> Each methodology is founded on either explicit or, more often,
> unexamined assumptions about what knowledge is and how knowing is best
> accomplished; together, these assumptions constitute a particular
> epistemology. That is, *a methodology works out the implications of
> a specific epistemology for how to implement a method*. (Sprague
> 2016: 5)
> 
> 
> 



Some feminists have been skeptical about the capacity of conventional
research methods to address feminist interests and goals. But others
have chosen to use conventional methods in support of those goals.
Consequently, a review of feminist social science gives no reason to
think that there are any particular methods that are distinctively
feminist. And indeed feminist research often uses a plurality of
methods or "mixed methods"--usually the combined use
of both qualitative and quantitative methods within a single research
project. Nonetheless, there are elements of methodology that do seem
distinctly feminist. Most notable among these is the core commitment
to "start research from the lives of women"--their
lived experience.



The idea that research should start from the lived experiences of
those who are studied suggests an ethnographic approach and it is
perhaps for this reason feminists have been thought to favor
qualitative methods. But the frequent use of statistical
(quantitative) methods used to support feminist goals belies this
idea. Londa Schiebinger offers an example from primatology. In the
1970s Jeanne Altmann (1974) used representative sampling techniques to
effectively change research. The opportunistic sampling that this
approach replaced failed to note the frequency and duration of
behavior among primates and so gave a distorted picture of primate
life, emphasizing high drama events centering around reproduction and
male conflict over commonplace events. The role of females in the
group and family life had thus been overlooked (Schiebinger 1999:
7).



The rise of quantitative methods throughout the social sciences has
been associated with the idea that greater objectivity can be achieved
through numerical representation (see Porter 1995 for an account of
the history of this view). The notion that quantitative methods are
more objective is again closely tied to an understanding of science as
value-free and the desire to make the social sciences more
"scientific". In comparison qualitative methods like those
involved in ethnographic research--interviews, participant
observation, and the like--appear to be vulnerable to
subjectivity. A more accurate understanding of what feminist
methodology is, how it relates to the choice of method, and what this
has to do with epistemological commitments requires a more nuanced
account than focusing on quantitative/qualitative divide in method can
provide.



What does it mean to say a methodology is *feminist*? As
Sprague puts it, 



> 
> 
> while feminists are a very heterogeneous group and we disagree on many
> issues, there are two points on which we have consensus: (1) gender,
> in interaction with other forms of social relations such as
> race/ethnicity, class, ability, and nation, is a key organizer of
> social life; and (2) understanding how things work is not
> enough--we need to take action to make the social world more
> equitable. (Sprague 2016: 3) 
> 
> 
> 



A feminist methodology is one that is shaped by and serves these
commitments. It requires adopting approaches and methods that are
sensitive to the key structural elements of social life and it aims at
producing knowledge that can be used to further feminist goals.
Minimally, meeting those requirements calls for starting research from
the lives of women--that is, starting research from the daily
experiences of their lives. Feminist methodological approaches are
strongly unified in this respect and it is this aspect of feminist
methodology that much feminist epistemology is responsive to. We see
this particularly in philosophical accounts of feminist standpoint
theory with its thesis that all knowledge is situated (to be discussed
in
 section 4.3),
 but arguably all feminist epistemology calls for a recognition of the
situated nature of knowledge.



Sprague notes that qualitative methods are often thought to be better
suited to challenge inequalities that are apparent from "the
downside of the social hierarchies"--that is, from the
lives of those who are the subjects of research (Sprague 2016: 140).
Doing science as a feminist means paying attention to the way that
gender structures the differential distribution of power in society
and consequently access to the means of production of knowledge. We
see evidence of this in the invisibility of those who are
marginalized, the silencing of their voices, and the failure to
acknowledge them as trustworthy epistemic agents--all of which
are varieties of epistemic injustice (see
 feminist social epistemology,
 also Fricker 2007; Dotson 2011; Medina 2013). While the feminist
commitments that Sprague details are consistent with the idea that
feminist researchers are not confined to any specific methods, to
start from the lives of women when those lives are not among those who
are producing knowledge or being listened to in the production of
knowledge means that researchers should be thinking about the extent
to which their methods will allow lived experience to be recognized as
evidence. Consequently, feminist methodology calls for methods to be
chosen consciously--that is, with awareness of their strengths
and weakness in relation to the lives of those researched and
researcher's feminist commitments and goals. Feminist
methodology is thus self-reflective in the sense that appropriateness
of methods should always be considered.



It is not surprising then that methodological debates coincided with
more women entering the social sciences and finding that the tools
that they had been trained to use were not always adequate. In
sociology we see several examples of this. The feminist sociologist
Margaret DeVault altered her interview transcription practices,
rejecting the traditional practices she had been taught, when she came
to believe that the hesitations--the "ums", and
"you knows" in the responses of those she
interviewed--were relevant as evidence. Traditionally these would
have been eliminated or smoothed out in a transcription but DeVault
found that they often marked topics that needed to be returned to and
reflected emotional factors that were relevant to the research
questions she was investigating (DeVault 1999: 78). DeVault starts
from the lives of the women she studies as standpoint methodology
urges, and in doing so she is attentive to the emotional valences of
their lives (see
 section 4.3
 on standpoint theory). She chooses and adjust her methods in response
to this guiding methodology.



Sociologists Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins also advocate
standpoint methodology. Smith notes the mismatch between the lived
experience of those who are researched and the concepts and methods
sociology prescribes. She refers to this tension as producing
"lines of fault" and urges critical feminist sociologists
to rethink practices in order to better capture experience. Smith
describes this as problematizing everyday life, with the result that
what was taken to be "natural" is reassessed and
reinterpreted (Smith 1987). Using a similar approach--starting
from the lives of women in the African American communities she
studies--Collins finds that neither mainstream sociological
accounts nor standard (white) feminist approaches fit the experiences
of the women she studies--nor should they all be thought of as
all having the same experiences (Collins 1990 [2000/2009]). Thus the
self-reflective nature of feminist methodology directs the researcher
to question tools (methods), assumptions about how to support
knowledge (epistemology), and standard assumptions about the nature
of the objects of inquiry (ontology).



Methods are not neutral. They carry with them assumptions about what
it is to produce knowledge (epistemology) and the world that they are
used to explore (ontology). If those assumptions are flawed or not
adequate to research goals then they can result in a failure to take
appropriate evidence into consideration, distorting both the results
and interpretations of research. When researchers avail themselves of
a plurality of methods, they are more likely to think through the
benefits and drawbacks of the various techniques and reflect on their assumptions.



Methods may also carry value commitments--another reason for
reflecting on their use. Quantitative methods in the social sciences
are aimed at providing information about average effects in large
populations. When evidence is constrained by an epistemological
commitment to a method that only allows for evidence of average
effects, then the method itself may result in treating characteristics
of particular individuals as irrelevant. The methods force the
disappearance of differences which may be relevant with the result
that they may de-value minority populations or individuals. Methods
that produce evidence of average effects threaten to have a
disproportionate impact on those who are who are not
"average" in the requisite sense.



The adept use of quantitative methods may ameliorate these worries to
some extent. If populations are recognized as heterogeneous then
researchers might engage in further research on subpopulations. Some
aspects of the problem of erasure of difference could be addressed,
but which characteristics indicate relevant subpopulations will
require attention to the lived experience of those who are studied.
The need to identify relevant subpopulations reinforces a need for
pluralism regarding methods, since recognition of relevant difference
depends on the sort of scrutiny most frequently provided through
qualitative methods. Recent feminist attention to intersectionality
and the ways power differentially structures society through gender,
race, ability, sexuality, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, and other
salient features of individuals raises a further worry. It is not
entirely clear how a subpopulation strategy can address social justice
issues intertwined in this way. There is some recent research that
attempts to address intersectionality. Bright, Malinsky, and Thompson
(2016) offer one approach to examining intersectional causality, for
example. But intersectional effects cannot be understood as
additive--once again counting against reliance on exclusively
quantitative approaches. Finally, there is the problem that further
partitioning of the reference class may also decrease the sample size
and thus undermine the power of the method. In any case, these worries
further support the feminist intuition that methods must be chosen
consciously and with attention to the aims of research.



In summary, feminist methods sometimes reveal that standard
disciplinary conceptions of the objects of inquiry do not get at what
is significant relative to feminist research questions. Furthermore,
some methods are suitable for studying large populations but not for
revealing what we may need to know about individuals or smaller
populations. (Longino makes this point as well in another context in
Part 2 of Longino 2013.) Finally, what theory of evidence we
have--how we understand scientific knowledge to be
justified--matters to how we understand the way gender matters to
knowledge production. Thus we turn to feminist epistemology in the
context of philosophy of science.


## 4. Feminist Philosophy of Science



As noted in
 section 2,
 feminist philosophies of science came of age during the 1980s and
90s, the period of the "science wars". The
interdisciplinary analysis of science during this period included an
exploration of the ways that society shaped the context of research.
Critics interpreted this shift in interests as opening the door to
relativism and undermining the presumed objectivity of
science--an objectivity thought to be guaranteed by scientific
method understood as value-free. Much early feminist philosophy of
science and epistemology was centered on defending the idea that
science informed by feminist analysis would be better science and so
not antithetical to the aims of science (such as the pursuit of truth)
in the ways that critics feared. The concern of feminist philosophy of
science and epistemology with objectivity reflects this.



Sandra Harding (1986) characterized three approaches to feminist
philosophy of science: feminist empiricism, feminist postmodernism,
and feminist standpoint theory. Much of the subsequent work took this
tripartite distinction among feminist approaches as a starting point
(see
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science).
 In part, because of work on science and values in both feminist
philosophy of science and philosophy of science more broadly, the
early forms of feminist empiricism described in
 section 2.1
 have evolved into an empiricism that acknowledges that values may
play a role in science. This is reflected in a convergence of the two
dominant Anglo-American feminist approaches of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries--feminist empiricism and feminist
standpoint theory. Kristen Intemann suggests that the resulting views
might be labelled "feminist standpoint empiricism"
(Intemann 2010).



The following is an account of some of the ways in which feminist
philosophers have responded to the challenge of acknowledging that
social, political, and cultural values can play a positive role in
scientific knowledge production.


### 4.1 Feminist Empiricist Holism



One way in which feminist philosophers of science have accounted for
the role of values in science is through an empiricist holism. As
Miriam Solomon has noted, many feminist empiricists were influenced by
the American pragmatists of the second half of the twentieth century,
particularly Wilfred Sellars, Willard van Orman Quine, and Donald
Davidson. Among the similarities that result from this influence is
their naturalized approach to the philosophy of science, in that they
base their accounts on the knowledge practices of the sciences on
which they focus. They are empiricists in taking experience as the
ultimate arbitrator of our beliefs; they are holists in that they take
beliefs to answer to experience as whole--in Quine's
phrase, as a "web of belief"--rather than
one-by-one.



Lynn Hankinson Nelson (1990) is explicit in her debt to Quine, others
are less so. Longino's contextual empiricism, discussed in
detail elsewhere (see the entries on
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science,
 feminist social epistemology,
 the social dimensions of scientific knowledge,
 and briefly in this entry in
 section 4.2),
 is one of the most influential of these approaches and differs from
other empiricist approaches, most notably in the role that she
ascribes to values and how she believes that differences in values
should be adjudicated (Longino 1990, 2002). Other versions of holism
appear in the work of Lynn Hankinson Nelson (1990), Elizabeth Anderson
(1995a, 2004), and Sharyn Clough (2003a, 2003b, 2012) all of whom,
unlike Longino, argue that values should answer to empirical evidence.
Solomon has dubbed the latter approach "feminist radical
empiricism" (Solomon 2012: 435).



Since it is clear that problematic sexist values can distort science
(see the examples discussed previously in
 section 2)
 much of the work of feminists exploring the role of values in science
focuses instead on the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate
uses of values, and also on the legitimacy of the values
themselves.



Anderson argues that values are used legitimately when they are used
non-dogmatically. As an illustration she offers an analysis of Abigail
Stewart et al.'s (1997) research on divorce (Anderson
2004)--research that was explicitly guided by feminist values in
a variety of ways. According to Anderson, the values that Stewart and
her team of researchers brought to their investigation are of the sort
that are answerable to empirical evidence--the evidence of
emotional states.



Anderson examines how background values function at various stages of
Stewart et al.'s research: the framing of research questions,
the understanding of the objects of inquiry, the making of decisions
about what data to collect, the generation and sampling of data, the
analysis of the data including the choice of technique for analysis,
decisions about when to end data analysis, and what conclusions are
drawn. To illustrate, consider just one of these stages--the way
that values enter into understanding the objects of inquiry.



In the case of studying divorce, there are a variety of such objects
that need to be considered, but prominent among these are
"divorce" and "family". Stewart's
research team identifies these objects of inquiry as
"thickly" described--meaning that values are
incorporated into their descriptions. Anderson notes that, for
example, Stewart's team understanding of divorce incorporated
different values than those used in Judith Wallerstein and Joan
Kelly's research (Wallerstein & Kelly 1980). For Wallerstein
and Kelly loss and trauma are fundamental aspects of divorce.
Stewart's team, in contrast, took divorce to be a process of
adjustment to a new state. On this alternate understanding divorce is
not treated as a one-time event with an aftermath but rather as an
ongoing life adjustment. This framing also treats the process of
adjustment as open-ended allowing for both positive and negative
effects. Wallerstein and Kelly's framing of divorce as a trauma
or loss calls for researchers to focus on the negative effects and so
shapes the data collection. Both studies incorporate values, however
only Stewart et al.'s values are explicitly acknowledged and
self-consciously present and thus, open to empirical scrutiny.



Anderson evaluates Stewart et al.'s work as better science
because it is more empirically adequate.



She argues that since Stewart's conception of divorce allows for
both negative and positive experiences to count as evidence of the
effects of divorce, the way Stewart's team conceptualizes
divorce as an object of inquiry allows for a consideration of all of
the evidence. Wallerstein and Kelly's research focuses only on
the negative effects and consequently is less empirically adequate.
Thus Anderson argues that in this case the feminist values
incorporated into the research produce more empirically adequate, and
hence better, science. Anderson also notes that because the values in
Wallerstein and Kelly's account are not explicitly identified
they are not open to empirical examination. They are consequently held
dogmatically, whereas Stewart et al.'s are explicit and so open
to empirical test. In this way, she argues that values are not
problematic for science *per se*, but become problematic when
held dogmatically.



Sharyn Clough also argues for a legitimate role for values in science,
contending that they are subject to the same sort of empirical
evidence that other beliefs are. She takes Donald Davidson's
account of belief formation as her starting point. For Clough,
"some political claims (e.g., feminist claims) are better
supported by empirical evidence than others" (2003b: 4). Sexist
and racist values, for example, are not well-supported by evidence and
hence science that is sexist and racist is clearly not good science
(Clough 2003a; Clough & Loges 2008).



Clough agrees with Anderson that feminist values can improve science
and offers an illustration in her analysis of research on the hygiene
hypothesis--the hypothesis that increased levels of concern about
sanitation and the consequent decrease in exposure to micro-organisms
and pathogens is causally related to increasing rates of auto-immune
disease and allergies, particularly in the industrialized nations of
the North and West (Clough 2011, 2012). Clough explores this case from
a feminist perspective noting some additional data related to
gender--the affected populations (those suffering from allergies
and auto-immune diseases) include a disproportionate representation of
women and girls. Clough argues that the additional information that
gender norms in the most severely affected societies generally require
higher standards of cleanliness for girls than for boys is
evidentially relevant since research shows that increased
exposure to microbes in childhood increases immunity to pathogens in
adulthood. Since early exposure to pathogens may decrease the
incidence of allergies and auto-immune diseases, the higher incidence
of these conditions among girls and women in cultures where the they
are subject to stricter norms of cleanliness is predicted by the
hygiene hypothesis. Thus this correlation can provide additional
evidence for the hypothesis when gender is taken into consideration.
Adopting the minimal feminist value that gender matters improves
research in this case. These values increase the empirical adequacy of
the account and thus improve the science.



For both Anderson and Clough the values incorporated into the science
in this way are subject to empirical test as part of the theory as a
whole. Since the research relies on those values, when the evidence
supports the account as superior, it also confirms the values the
account incorporates. The objectivity of science is not threatened by
the inclusion of values since the account as a whole is still subject
to empirical evidence.



Feminist radical empiricist holist accounts such as Anderson's
and Clough's present challenges however. Solomon questions
whether any single approach to values will be able to provide an
account of the varied ways that they can function appropriately in
science. She argues that values are not all of one type and
consequently, when relevant (and she notes that they may not always be
relevant) they may be relevant in different ways, playing different
roles in knowledge production (Solomon 2012: 446). Audrey Yap worries
that some values may not be sensitive to evidence in the ways that
Anderson's and Clough's accounts would seem to require
(Yap 2016). Other feminist empiricist approaches, such as Helen
Longino's contextual empiricism discussed briefly in the next
section, may avoid these concerns.


### 4.2 Objectivity



The commitment to the objectivity of science and the association of
objectivity with the value-free ideal are among the reasons many
philosophers of science found it difficult to accept that feminist
values can make a constructive contribution to science. But as Lloyd
(1995) notes, the meaning of "objectivity" is complex,
unstable and hence far from clear. In one philosophical picture,
"objectivity" characterizes a relationship between knowers
and reality-as-independently-existing; methodologically, the knower
must be detached, because investment in a particular belief or
attachment to a point of view ("bias") "could impede
the free acquisition of knowledge and correct representation of
(independent) reality...". On Lloyd's analysis the
problem lies with the claim that this "objective"
reality--what she refers to as the "Really
Real"--is "converged upon through the application of
objective methods". The Really Real can be known since it is
publicly accessible to those who use these objective methods and who
are properly detached or disinterested. As Lloyd points out, this view
assumes (a) that the Really Real is completely independent of us;
thus, (b) objective knowledge of this Reality requires an
"objective method" characterized by detachment, because
(c) attachment or point of view might interfere with our independence
from the reality we wish to know, and (d) this reality is publicly
accessible, if it is accessible at all (Lloyd 1995: 354-356).
These assumptions are each problematic and this section and
 section 4.3
 address them.



The first assumption, that the Really Real is completely independent
of us, fails to acknowledge that in addition to "resistances by
reality", sociocultural factors are "necessarily involved
in the development of knowledge and concept-formation".
Anthropologists are virtually unanimous in holding that "sex and
gender roles lay the foundations of every human society's other
social practices", therefore, any epistemology or philosophy of
science that includes social interests and values as integral to the
acquisition of knowledge should include sex and gender related values
and interests (Lloyd 1995: 373 and 367-368).



Lloyd elaborates that when researchers investigate a phenomenon their
goal is not only to represent reality, but to give a
*significant**, that is, relevant*, representation.
Scientific accounts (theories and hypotheses) must focus on the parts
of reality that are relevant to the interests (and values) that give
rise to the research questions that motivate the research (2005:
244-245). While reality may be independent of us, our accounts
of reality are accounts of the aspects of reality that matter to us
and are shaped by the interests that give rise to our research
programs. Additionally, the questions addressed through research
arise, in part, from what is thought to be known at the time that the
research commences, this means that part of the evidence for the
account rests in that background knowledge. The ineliminability of
values in both the background knowledge and the current projects
challenges the traditional ideal of objectivity.



In addressing the question of objectivity, both Lloyd and Anderson
make use of Hugh Lacey's distinction between two aspects of the
value-free ideal: neutrality and impartiality (Lacey 1999, 2-6).
Neutrality is the requirement that scientific theories neither
presuppose nor support any non-epistemic (moral, political, social, or
cultural) values. Impartiality requires that theories be evaluated on
the basis of evidence and the extent to which they exhibit other
epistemic values (Anderson uses Kuhn's 1977 list: empirical
adequacy, consistency, scope, and compatibility with other established
theories) (Anderson 2004: 3). Impartiality is not interest or
value-free, but rather 



> 
> 
> a commitment to pass judgment in relation to a set of evaluative
> standards that transcends the competing interests of those who
> advocate rival answers to a question. (Anderson 1995b: 42) 
> 
> 
> 



Thus Lloyd and Anderson take impartiality to be the key feature of
objectivity, as does Lacey (Lacey 1999: 78). However, as noted in
 section 4.1,
 Anderson takes at least some value judgments to answer to empirical
evidence and so they may legitimately serve as part of the evidence
for background theories against which evidence for hypotheses under
consideration is evaluated. This realization forces a reassessment of
the ideal of impartiality--background theories may affect our
assessment of the evidence and so we must be prepared to determine
when such influence is pernicious and when beneficial. As we have
seen, Anderson makes the distinction by examining the extent to which
values are responsive to evidence--that is, the extent to which
they are held non-dogmatically. In order to meet the ideal of
impartiality researchers must consider all of the evidence. Since some
of the evidence is either value-laden or supports the values that
direct the research questions, impartial science need not be
neutral.



Much feminist work on values has been influenced by Helen
Longino's contextual empiricism (see the entries on
 feminist epistemology and philosophy of science,
 feminist social epistemology, and
 the social dimensions of scientific knowledge).
 Using Kuhnian arguments for underdetermination of theory by evidence,
Longino argues that since empirical evidence can never fully determine
that we should accept any particular theory, contextual values
(social, moral, political, and cultural) may play a role in that
determination by "filling the gap"--and thus Solomon
refers to this version of feminist empiricism as "gap feminist
empiricism" (Solomon 2012: 436). As a result, Longino emphasizes
that evidence is relative to the contextual values against which the
evaluation of the theory occurs. As a result, scientific theory is not
neutral in Lacey's sense; it presupposes certain social and
political values that are among the background assumptions against
which the theory is evaluated--its context. Hence scientific
theory is not objective in the traditional sense that requires
neutrality. For Longino, it is not impartial either since social and
political values can play, and often do play, a role in theory
acceptance.



Longino proposes an alternate understanding of objectivity. The social
character of science provides the opportunity for
"transformative criticism". Such criticism requires the
adherence to social norms: publicly recognized forums for the
criticism of evidence, methods, and assumptions and reasoning; uptake
of criticism, which requires that the community not merely tolerate
dissent, but alter its beliefs and theories over time in response to
the critical discourse; publicly recognized standards by reference to
which theories, hypotheses, and observational practices are evaluated
and by appeal to which criticism is made relevant to the goals of the
inquiring community; and finally, communities must be characterized by
tempered equality of intellectual authority (Longino 1993, 2002). When
science is conducted according to these norms, Longino argues that it
balances partialities and hence is objective to the degree that it
fulfills these norms. But it is neither neutral nor impartial since
scientific theory is informed by values that shape the context in
which the relevance of evidence is determined. 


### 4.3 Feminist Standpoint Theory



While there are various standpoint theories, the commonalities include
endorsement of the following three theses: the situated knowledge
thesis, the thesis of epistemic privilege, and the achievement thesis
(Wylie 2003; Rolin 2009; Intemann 2010; Crasnow 2013, 2014). The
thesis of situated knowledge is based in the understanding that
knowledge is *for* and *by* a particular set of socially
situated knowers and so is always *local*--a
cultural/social/political "location" characterized by the
power relations endemic in such settings. The differential
distribution of power and differences in interests are closely
related--and thus the questions asked and the features of the
world that are relevant to answering those questions vary depending on
location as well. Among the differences that are most salient are
those that are in conflict with the interests of the dominant groups.
Thus the metaphors of situated knowledge and social location give rise
to one of the key ideas of feminist standpoint theory--the idea
of the researcher as an insider/outsider who has "double
vision". She has access to the lived experience of those studied
and the dominant culture of those who are doing the studying (the
scholars). It is this double vision that aids in recognizing the
limits of the dominant frameworks.



Patricia Hill Collins (1986), for example, advocates the use of
standpoint to analyze race and class. She argues that the researcher
who is marginalized may recognize that many of the concepts and
procedures adopted by the discipline are problematic when her
colleagues do not, precisely because she understands the objects of
inquiry through her disciplinary research tradition and through her
own experience occupying a marginalized social location. It is this
double vision that makes the social scientist sensitive to the lines
of fault that give rise to shifts in concepts and methods discussed in
 section 2
 and
 section 3.



The thesis of epistemic privilege is one of the more contentious
components of feminist standpoint theory. Many criticisms of the view
stem from the mistaken understanding of epistemic privilege as
automatic. As Intemann points out, if this had been feminist
standpoint theory's claim the view would be either trivial or
false (Intemann 2010). But feminist standpoint theory is not committed
to the trivial claim that only those who have had a particular
experience know what that experience is like. Nor does it make the
obviously false claim that any woman can *automatically* know
about the experience of all other women. Such a claim would depend on
a presupposition of some *sameness* of women's
experience--a presupposition that is not only false, but
problematically so since it erases the differences that race, class,
disability, sexuality, and gender identification make among
women's experiences. 



Misunderstandings of the situated knowledge and epistemic advantage
theses are partly due to two errors: thinking of them in isolation
from each other and mistakenly taking them to be claims about
individualistic knowledge. Feminist standpoint theory is not an
account of how an individual acquires knowledge, but rather an account
that treats knowledge as social. This point can be made more clearly
by considering the achievement thesis--the idea that standpoint
is not automatic and must be achieved. Harding distinguishes between a
perspective and a standpoint in order to clarify this. First, feminist
standpoint theory 



> 
> 
> intends to map the practices of power, the ways the dominant
> institutions and their conceptual frameworks create and maintain
> oppressive social relations. Secondly, it does this by locating, in a
> material and political disadvantage or form of oppression, a
> distinctive insight about how a hierarchical social structure works.
> (Harding 2004b: 31) 
> 
> 
> 



Harding goes on to point out that just recording what members of
oppressed groups say is not adequate since they may have absorbed
dominant understandings of the hierarchy. Standpoint requires the
creation of a group consciousness, and this is not equivalent to the
shift in perspective of an individual (Harding 2004b: 31-32). A
change in the location of an individual automatically brings a
different perspective, however the achievement of a standpoint
requires working out where one is socially situated with others whose
experiences come to be mutually understood as shared.



Harding's account of what it is to achieve a standpoint thus
emphasizes the deeply political nature of feminist standpoint theory.
This characterization also makes clear the challenge that feminist
standpoint theory raises for objectivity since both neutrality and
impartiality are in tension with feminist standpoint theory. Since
knowledge is situated, it is also always partial. Recognizing that
some social locations provide epistemic privilege depends on
acknowledging that partiality. Given this, it is not surprising that
resistance to feminist standpoint theory has revolved around the way
it has been perceived as a threat to the objectivity of science
(Pinnick 2005).



Harding has addressed the concern about objectivity repeatedly, most
recently in Harding 2015, through what she calls "strong
objectivity". "Strong objectivity", calls for the
subject of knowledge (the knowers) and the process through which
knowledge is produced to be scrutinized according to the same
standards as the objects of knowledge. The contextual elements that
function as part of the evidence, the selection of problems, the
formation of hypotheses, the design of research (including the
organization of research communities), the collection, interpretation,
and sorting of data, decisions about when to stop research, the way
results of research are reported and so on need to be open to critical
evaluation. But such evaluation requires that these contextual
elements be accessible to researchers. The insider/outsider
double-vision that feminist standpoint theory produces gives rise to
the epistemic advantage through which researchers have this access.




> 
> 
> ...[A] maximally critical study of scientists and their
> communities can be done only from the perspective of those whose lives
> have been marginalized by such communities. Thus, strong objectivity
> requires that scientists and their communities be integrated into
> democracy-advancing projects for scientific and epistemological
> reasons as well as moral and political ones. (Harding 2004a: 136)
> 
> 
> 



Alison Wylie (2003) offers an alternative account of how feminist
standpoint can be understood to produce objectivity. Her approach is
also characteristic of shifts in the feminist epistemological landscape
that blur the lines between feminist empiricism and feminist
standpoint theory (Intemann 2010). Wylie notes that
"objectivity" is frequently used to indicate a
relationship between theory and the world and so is identified as a
property of knowledge claims. She proposes that we think about
objectivity as the degree to which these claims conform to some
standard set of epistemic virtues. She proposes empirical adequacy,
explanatory power, internal coherence, consistency with other
established bodies of knowledge, although she notes that some other
such list might serve as well. These theoretical virtues are rarely,
if ever, all maximized by any one theory. Consequently, researchers
must make judgments about which virtues are most important at any
given time for any particular knowledge project. These judgments
depend on the interests, purposes, intentions, and goals of the
researchers and research community, which can be seen as reflective of
a standpoint. Consequently, feminist standpoint can improve
objectivity through determining what sort of empirical adequacy,
explanatory power, or other virtues are relevant for a particular
knowledge project and the degree to which each is relevant.



On Wylie's account, science is not neutral (values inform
hypotheses and are implied by them), nor is it impartial, given that
values determine which among the characteristics that determine
objectivity are to be considered the most relevant for *any
specific* knowledge project. But impartiality has not entirely
vanished in that what counts as empirical is not determined by values,
even though its relevance is. Those in positions of subordination have
epistemic privilege regarding some kinds of evidence and its
relevance, special inferential heuristics, and interpretative or
explanatory hypotheses.



Both Harding and Wylie appeal to standards (epistemic values) that do
not depend on any social/political (non-epistemic values) and yet
their accounts accommodate social/political values and provide ways of
understanding how such values play a positive role in knowledge
production. Kristen Intemann (2010) has argued that refinements in
both feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint theory have resulted
in a convergence of the two approaches. She identifies three shared
features: they are contextual, normative, and social. Feminist
(holist) empiricism (both radical and gap empiricism) is contextual in
that it takes background assumptions and beliefs within a particular
context either as part of the evidence for a theory or as determining
what counts as evidence. Contemporary standpoint approaches are
contextual in that they point to social situatedness as a determinant
of knowledge through the role that it plays either in revealing the
evidence itself or the relevance of it. Both sorts of approaches are
normative in their focus on the role of social, political, and
cultural values for knowledge production, in specification of
evidence, and in determining the ends or goals of science. Both are
also social, focusing on the socio-political structure of the
knowledge community. However, Intemann identifies two remaining areas
of difference: feminist empiricism and feminist standpoint theory
differ over the kind of diversity needed for objectivity and they
differ over the role that non-epistemic values play in enhancing
objectivity (Intemann 2010: 790). For the former, Intemann argues that
standpoint's understanding of diversity as social location
offers a better grounding for a positive account of the role of
feminist values in science than feminist empiricist approaches in that
it better explains the significance of particular sorts of evidence
and why it is relevant for some knowledge projects and not others. But
the question of which knowledge projects are the ones that should be
pursued remains. It is not enough to say "women's
knowledge project" since women form a heterogeneous and unstable
group. That is to say, which characteristics--sex, gender, race,
socio-economic class, ethnicity, sexuality, or differences in
ability--matter will vary depending on context.



Sharon Crasnow (2013, 2014) suggests that while the interests of the
heterogeneous group "women" are often in conflict, through
conversation, negotiation, and political action shared interests can
be identified and serve to provisionally stabilize evidential
relevance relations around a particular knowledge project. She
conceives of this process as part of what it means for standpoint to
be achieved. Such an extension of feminist standpoint theory also
suggests a connection with current research in social epistemology
(see the entry on
 feminist social epistemology).


## 5. Queer Science Studies and the New Materialisms



Several ways of thinking about science that are closely related to or
build on feminist perspectives have emerged in recent scholarship. Two
of these will be discussed here. The first, queer science studies,
provides an extension of feminist thought in that it challenges the
traditional assumptions about gender, many of which are also targets
of feminist work. Another, the "new materialisms",
challenges the idea that knowledge should be understood as
representing passive matter, arguing that such an analysis is not
sufficiently attentive to the material aspects of embodiment. These
approaches are related to each other (and to feminist perspectives) in
their focus on the embodied nature of human subjects, and the
importance of lived experience as evidence (see also
 Biology and the New Materialisms).


### 5.1 Queer Science Studies



Challenges to assumptions about sex and gender and the role that they
play in shaping both scientific research and what counts as scientific
knowledge suggest that while feminist approaches start with an
examination of these categories that very examination motivates
fundamental rethinking of them. Just such a rethinking is taken up as
an aspect of queer science studies. Queer science studies is queer
both in its challenge to beliefs about what are "ordinary"
or "natural" features of the world (beliefs about sex and
sexuality, for example) and in its subject matter--behavior and
subjects that have not traditionally been topics of science.



While queer perspectives are not equivalent to feminist
perspectives--there are feminists who do not consider the gender
binary to be a problem in itself, for example--they may
nonetheless be thought of as extending approaches that feminists have
taken to critiquing dominant assumptions about sex and gender. Queer
studies does so more radically, however. Consider the distinction
between sex and gender. The distinction arose as a way of separating
biological characteristics through which humans are classified into
sexes from social attributions through which they are gendered.
Roughly, characteristics directly associated with reproduction or
secondary sex traits were to be classed as the former whereas the
social roles, clothing, and behavior associated with the different
sexes were said to belong to the latter category. The idea allowed
feminists to argue that biological distinctions should not determine
social role--that biology was not destiny. Some feminists
ultimately challenged the distinction in part because of the presumed
"naturalness" of sex, its associations with a
"natural" sexuality, and the recognition of the role that
such assumptions play in science, including biology (ideas about
reproduction) and scientific work on sexuality. In addition, the way
social understandings of sex--beliefs about gender--shaped
these sciences also has become clearer. (See the discussion in
 section 2.2.)
 Thus, in practice, ideas of sex and gender turn out to be difficult
to separate. Although the distinction has not been without
benefit--Deboleena Roy and Banu Subramaniam point out how the
distinction gave rise to productive work countering claims of
biological determinism by providing tools for discussing the social
construction of the body, for example (Roy & Subramaniam 2016:
25)--it has problems as well. 



Queer science studies have been more explicit about addressing
difficulties with the distinction and the reasons for doing so. Of
particular concern is the way medicine is implicated in the lives of
intersex and trans individuals and the role of problematic assumptions
underlying that medicine. Prominent among these are the assumptions
that sexual identity is based in nature (biology) and also the belief
that characteristics that are stereotypically identified with one or
another gender are natural (based in biology). For example, Dussauge
and Kaiser, voice such a challenge to the first of these and argue
that it should be replaced with an understanding of sexual identity as
constructed through "complex heteronormative power relations and
sex/gendered norms" (Dussauge & Kaiser 2012: 122). This
alternative framing encourages new approaches to scientific research
from a queer perspective.



A recent collection, *Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader*
(Cipolla et al. 2017), emphasizes the connection to feminism both in
its title and in the editors' introduction where the focus is on
the dualisms that are part of the sex/gender framework (e.g.,
nature/culture, male/female, normal/deviant) and how they shape
society and consequently the social practices of scientific
research.



> 
> 
> [W]e argue that queer theory sharpens feminist engagements with
> science by turning critical attention to the imbrication or dependence
> of center and periphery, inside and outside, natural and artificial,
> and normativity and deviance. Rather than being opposed, these terms
> are coentangled divisions produced through specific histories. Thus,
> there is now a rich array of queer work that contests the
> naturalization of the categories of normal and deviant sexuality and
> binarized notions of sexed anatomy, gender identity, sexual desire,
> and sexual identity. (Cipolla, et al. 2017: 12)
> 
> 
> 



Anne Fausto-Sterling's research on the historical emergence of
the idea that there are two sexes exemplifies the kind of critique
that informs queer science studies. She traces this particular binary
to the increasing involvement of science in deciding the fate of
intersexual individuals, beginning in the nineteenth century. This
development was partly a result of the emergence of sexuality as a
proper subject of scientific study at this time, coupled with a belief
that science describes nature as it really is and hence should be
appealed to when we were uncertain about nature. Fausto-Sterling
identifies several questionable assumptions underlying this research.
The first is that science is indeed able to provide objectivity on
issues of sexual identity and sexuality. Second, that the
classification of humans into two sexes is natural. The final
assumption she identifies is that science will find this
classification in nature through identifying the defining or essential
characteristics of each of the two sexes.



Fausto-Sterling addresses each of these assumptions in turn. She
argues that science does not provide an objective account of
biological sex, since science is a social and historical human
activity and many of the ways of thinking about sexuality and sexual
identity were guided by pre-existing conceptions of gender (also see
the discussion of objectivity in
 section 4.2).
 As an illustration, she examines the gendered understanding of female
sexuality as passive and the way that understanding influenced the
design of experiments meant to test the effect of sex hormones on the
sexual behavior of rats (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 195-232). These
hormones were themselves classified as male and female, in spite their
having other functions besides those related to reproduction and in
spite of their presence in both those identified as male and those
identified as female. The results of these experiments were in turn
used to make claims about behavior and sex in humans. This move is
problematically circular and additionally depends on analogical
reasoning to human sexual behavior from the behavior of rats.



As for the other two assumptions, that there are only two sexes and
that they are to be identified through essential characteristics,
Fausto-Sterling points out that the idea that there are only two sexes
should be rejected on the basis of two sorts of evidence, social and
scientific. The social evidence indicates that there are cultures that
recognize more than two sexes and the evidence from science indicates
this as well. In addition, various different forms of intersexuality
belie the notion that there are two mutually exclusive and jointly
exhaustive sexes (Fausto-Sterling 2000: Chapter 4). The belief that
there are essential characteristics that are identifiers for each of
the two sexes is rejected through similar arguments.
Fausto-Sterling's discussion is in the context of the harms done
to intersexual persons--usually as infants who are unable to make
choices for themselves--and so her concerns focus on the
injustice done in the name of a science that fails to examine these
assumptions. 



Sarah Richardson's work on the human genome also
illustrates the problematic intertwining of assumptions about gender
and research on sex (Richardson 2013;
 section 2.2).
 In a 2012 article, she focuses on how the X chromosome came to be
identified as "female"--something that happened in
spite of the anomalous presence of male sperm genes on X chromosomes
and the fact that males also have X chromosomes (Richardson 2012,
reprinted in abridged form in Cipolla et al. 2017).



Fausto-Sterling and Richardson provide examples of the sort of
thinking that queer science studies is engaged in. The challenges to
traditional understanding of sex, sexuality, gender, gender identity,
what is natural and what is cultural, what is normal and what is
deviant seek to disrupt conventional thinking and approaches. Insofar
as sexist thinking is conventional, it too will be challenged.


### 5.2 The New Materialisms



Much of the feminist work discussed thus far has focused on how the
world is conceptualized--that is, various different ways of
representing what is studied and the effects of these different
representations. The new materialisms challenge this emphasis on
representation, arguing that it treats matter as passive and that this
sort of analysis is not sufficiently attentive to the material aspects
of embodiment. As Pitts-Taylor puts it, "matter matters".
As part of the corrective she proposes that science studies take the
following steps--some of which we have already seen in some of
the feminist work discussed. The first is breaking down the
distinction between the social and biological by recognizing how they
are intertwined. The second involves documenting the way the
biological can be shaped by human needs which are in turn shaped
through modes of power. Finally, she proposes rejecting dominant
dualisms of the sort that queer science studies challenges
(Pitts-Taylor 2016b: 1).



Although Pitts-Taylor recognizes these moves may grow out of feminist
approaches to science, the new materialisms are also critical of some
feminist thinking about science, claiming that science is too often
recognized as an instrument of oppression, but not engaged with
sufficiently to support the development of feminist science. The new
materialisms note that this is particularly true of feminism's
lack of engagement with the physical sciences--those areas of
science concerned with the basics of matter.



Karen Barad's work seeks to correct this, developing a view that
she calls it "agential realism". For Barad, 



> 
> 
> phenomena are not the mere result of laboratory exercises engineered
> by human subjects; rather, *phenomena are differential patterns of
> mattering* ("diffraction patterns") produced through
> complex agential intra-actions of multiple material-discursive
> practices.... (emphasis in the original). 
> 
> 
> 



Such patterns may or may not involve humans, however these practices
constitute "boundaries between humans and nonhumans, culture and
nature, science and the social" (Barad 2007: 140).



Barad's metaphor of "diffraction patterns" is taken
from Donna Haraway (see particularly Haraway 1992), who proposed
diffraction as an alternative to the metaphor of reflection. While
both are optical metaphors, Barad notes that reflection emphasizes
sameness and so evokes essentialism--the discovery of what is the
same in what is under investigation. Diffraction is about differences
and moves the researcher towards tracing the histories of these
differences, rather than fitting them into preconceived binaries
(Barad 2007: 29-30). Barad describes this process of knowing the
material world as "intra-action" rather than interaction.
In doing so, she emphasizes that agency is not an
attribute--something that someone has--but rather is the
involvement in the iterative practices that constitute materiality
(Barad 2007: 178). For Barad this intra-action entails the
inseparability of science, ontology, epistemology, and ethics and
hence the pun on "matter" that runs throughout the new
materialism. Our practices matter both in the sense of making a
difference and in the sense of being involved in the configuring and
reconfiguring of the material world.


## 6. Recent Areas of Study: The Brain and Human Behavior



The work in the previous sections has focused primarily on examples of
feminist perspectives in biology and the social sciences. This may not
be surprising since in much of biology, sex is relevant and thinking
about sex has been among the issues that feminists have explored. The
social sciences examine various aspects of society and the way gender
structures society has again been a major concern for feminists. Barad
and the new materialists suggest ways in which feminist (and queer)
critique can be extended to the physical/material sciences. There are
other areas of scientific research that have also drawn the attention
of feminists however. Two of particular interest are neurofeminism
which focuses on sexism in the study of the brain and feminist
critiques of the closely related field of cognitive science.


### 6.1 Neurofeminism



The development of neuroscience in the twentieth and twenty-first
century resulted in feminist examination of these
fields--particularly in connection with cognitive science and
research on differences in the brains of men and women (Bluhm,
Jacobson, & Maibom 2012; Fine 2010; Pitts-Taylor 2016a;
Jordan-Young 2010). Feminist work in this vein approaches neuroscience
in ways similar to the approaches described in the previous sections.
It involves investigating sexist bias through examining background
assumptions and other means through which such bias could enter, as
well as identifying background beliefs that shape research.



It may be somewhat misleading to treat neuroscience as a new area of
interest from a feminist perspective. As Bluhm, Jacobson, and Maibom
point out, 



> 
> 
> Feminist neuroscientists were among the first to critique androcentric
> theories and assumptions in their disciplines,.... (Bluhm,
> Jacobson, & Maibom 2012: 6) 
> 
> 
> 



However, the twenty-first century has seen substantial advances in
neuroscience and cognitive science coupled with new tools for studying
the brain. These advances have been accompanied by worries about how
androcentric assumptions have persisted in research and how they
manifest in the use of new ways of investigating the brain, such as
fMRI.



One research area that has attracted feminist attention is the study
of sex differences in the brain. There is a considerable range of work
that might qualify under this heading. As an example, Rebecca
Jordan-Young's book *Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of
Sex Differences* (2010) focuses on a dominant approach in that
area of study which she dubs "brain organization
research". She argues that the main theoretical framework
guiding sex difference research is that 



> 
> 
> prenatal hormone exposures cause sexual differentiation of the
> brain--that is, early hormones create permanent masculine or
> feminine patterns of desire, personality, temperament, and cognition.
> (Jordan-Young 2010: xi) 
> 
> 
> 



The prenatal hormone exposure referred to here is the flooding of
androgens during fetal development prior to which the there is no sex
differentiation between fetuses. The organizational hypothesis is that
this same infusion of androgens that determines differential
reproductive development also determines brain development and
ultimately differential brain structure in males and females.
Jordan-Young is particularly interested in how conclusions are drawn
about sexuality from brain organization research. Her main concern
about the uncritical use of the hormonal theory of brain organization
is that alternative hypotheses--specifically the hypothesis that
social factors, expectations, and learned behaviors play a role in
brain organization--fail to be considered adequately.



As Jordan-Young acknowledges, most brain organizational researchers
claim to be interactionists--that is, they recognize that social
factors play some role and that both hormones and society affect the
brain. However, she argues that their accounts are typically additive
rather than truly interactive, with the hormonal influence acting
first and social influence coming in later. Additive accounts treat
the causal factors as separable whereas a truly interactive account
would not do so. Jordan-Young credits Doell and Longino's work
on the topic with having pointed this out decades ago (1988: 59).



The failure to question organization theory is one point of
Jordan-Young's account, but she also considers other assumptions
about hormones, the relationship between sex and gender, and
sexuality. Specifically, in considering other assumptions about
hormones, she notes that the understanding of steroid hormones from
the onset of this research was that some were masculine and some
feminine. (For this account she relies on the work of Nelly Oudshoorn
(1994)). Further, she argues that thinking of hormones in this
way--as androgens (male hormones) and estrogens (female
hormones)--is not without problems for researchers that make
these assumptions, since both types of hormones are present in both
males and females--an anomaly the approach does not account for
(see also
 section 5.1).
 She identifies this as a failure to take into account evidence that
does not fit with the prior interpretation of hormones as sexed. Thus
features of accounts depending on organization theory appear to be
both value-laden and held dogmatically.



Jordan-Young is using patterns of feminist critique similar to those
described in previous sections. She interrogates unexamined
assumptions, traces the ways in which those assumptions shape the
understanding of the objects of inquiry and determine what will count
as evidence. She reveals the line of thought from the
assumptions--the conceptualization of hormones as sexed--to
understandings of the world that are problematic including conclusions
about sexual desire, sexual orientation, and "sex-typed"
interests and behaviors.


### 6.2 Cognitive Science



The last of these brings us to cognitive science, which focuses more
specifically on connections between the structure of the brain and
behavior--such as career choices. Arguments from brain
differences to a differential ability of men and women when it comes
to math and science (see
 section 1.1)
 are not unusual. Such moves and the scientific research on the brain
that surrounds them have led Cordelia Fine to identify these
approaches as part of a pattern that she calls
"neurosexism" (Fine 2010). Simon Baron-Cohen's work
provides an example (2003) in that he connects the different
structures of the brain with behaviors that are identified as
specifically male or female. His argument relies on combining two
theoretical tools--brain organization theory and evolutionary
theory. The resulting evolutionary psychology seeks to give an account
of differences in the behavior of men and women that result from the
different adaptive pressures that males and females have had to face
(the evolutionary portion of the argument relies on Darwinian sexual
selection). The sexual differentiation and brain differentiation go
together to produce differences in brains adapted for different
reproductive roles. In Baron-Cohen's account, these different
adaptive pressures result in a female brain that evolved for
empathizing with others (E brains) and a male brain that evolved for
systematizing (S brains).



Again, this sort of approach relies upon organizational theory, which
is not critically examined, and is extended to non-reproductive
behavior, such as the ability to do science--an ability claimed
to be greatly diminished in the sex that (on average) does not have a
systematizing brain. The fundamental point that these approaches are
resistant to the consideration of alternatives is at the heart of this
feminist critique.



Additionally, there is some dispute about whether the claimed sex
differences in behavior are real. As examples, Grossi and Fine
challenge the claim that mental spatial rotation skills are superior
for males. Recent evidence suggests that when girls and women practice
spatial rotation, say through video games, the differences in
performance rapidly disappear (Feng, Spence, and Pratt 2007). Similar
arguments can also be made about empathizers. Sex differences in
language proficiency tend to disappear as children grow older. There
are also reasons to doubt the accuracy of the tests used to produce
evidence of cognitive sex difference given that not all methods of
testing produce the same results (Grossi and Fine 2012: 78). Finally,
when there does seem to be evidence of sex differences in behavior
these differences are highly sensitive to the social context. Girls
whose performance is poorer on math tests when they are reminded of
their gender, do better when gender is made less salient (see the
discussion of stereotype threat in
 section 1.1).



Feminists have offered several other lines of response to claims that
differences in brain structure and behavior are linked. Letitia
Meynell argues that the illusion of transparency in brain imaging
through fMRI and the consequent understanding of these images as
objective evidence disguises the ways they are read and interpreted
through our already existing notions of gender (Meynell 2012). Ginger
Hoffman (2012) appeals to the plasticity of the brain and a truly
interactive understanding of the relationship between the brain and
the social environment in which it functions to challenge the idea
that observed differences in brain structure indicate immutable
differences between the sexes. Victoria Pitts-Taylor (2016a) argues
for understanding the brain as both biological and social--shaped
by its bodily/social presence in the world.



These last points reinforce that the assumptions underlying the
critiqued accounts (e.g., that organizational theory is correct, that
hormones are sex hormones) are held dogmatically. It is worth noting
that this is not an idle claim--these assumptions can be and have
been investigated. For example, the assumption about the
"maleness" of testosterone and its causal relation to
certain "male" behaviors is challenged by recent research
that indicates that engaging in stereotypically male behaviors (making
movements that are associated with wielding a sword) can increase the
production of testosterone in both males and females (van Anders,
Steiger, & Goldey 2015). This sort of research lends plausibility
to a more interactive account and erodes a sharp distinction between
biology and society.


## 7. Conclusions



In spite of the wide-range of topics covered in this entry--from
equity issues, philosophy of science, queer science studies, and
neuroscience--the focus has been incomplete in its focus on
feminism in the global North. The entry thus fails to fully represent
feminist perspectives on science. It is more accurate to describe it
as presenting *some* feminist perspectives on science. Those
that are presented here have been important to those working in these
traditions and to some degree they include elements that have informed
other feminisms, but not all. An example of the sort of work that has
not been considered is research on colonial, postcolonial, and
decolonial science studies (see Harding 2017 for an example of the
last). And, as Uma Narayan has pointed out, because western feminist
philosophers of science have so often targeted the value-free ideal
associated with positivism (see
 section 4.2),
 they sometimes fail to see the usefulness of that ideal for
nonwestern feminists who may use it as a tool to challenge, for
example, oppressive religious values within their own culture (Narayan
2004: 216-217). Another area of interest also not addressed here
is data science and questions about how power hierarchies are
often reinforced through the categories and algorithms used in the
collection and interpretation of data--including but not limited
to gender classifications (D'Ignazio & Klein 2020). There is
also an increasing body of work on the intersection of sex/gender,
race, class, and how science is implicated in the oppressions such
intersections support. Also missing are discussion of disability and
its problematic intersection with science, as well as reproductive
technologies and feminist concerns (for example, see de
Melo-Martin 2017).



The result is that the entry provides background, but there is much
more that could be said and those interested would do well to begin
with the additional readings. What is covered here only gives a
starting point from which to investigate the many ways in which power,
sex/gender, sexuality, and science are intertwined.