If there is a single point on which all feminist scholarship over the past decade has converged, it is the importance of recognizing the social construction of gender, and the deeply oppressive consequences of assuming that men and women are, in Simone de Beauvoir's words, "born rather than made." All of my work on gender and science proceeds from this basic recognition. My endeavor has been to call attention to the ways in which the social construction of a binary opposition between "masculine" and "feminine" has influenced the social construction of science. I argue that it is only by recognizing the social character of the construction of both gender and science that we can realize the emancipatory value--for men, for women, and for science--of transcending that opposition. The first step, of course, is to abandon the myth that the opposition between "masculine" and "feminine" is somehow "natural," and therefore fixed. ...
Evelyn Fox Keller Objects To Editor's Title
I was shocked and dismayed at the headline, or title, attached to my article in the October 15 issue of The Scientist [page 15]. The title not only was different from my original title--"Issues of Sex and Gender in the Pursuit of Science"--but entirely contrary to the meaning of my article, as it was, indeed, to all my efforts over the past decade. If there is a single point on which all feminist scholarship over the past decade has converged, it is the importance of recognizing the social con
Written byEvelyn Fox Keller
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