Some concluding observations on the KNOWING project

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Some concluding observations on the KNOWING
project

• Helen Longino

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Feminist science studies

• Understand and change aspects of scientific
  content
• Why?
• Understand and change aspects of scientific work
• Why?

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Tensions

• Content research
• Science as problem for women
• Work/occupational research
• Scientific career as a good which should be as
  accessible to women as to men

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work
product
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work
product
practices
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work
product
Policy and funding
practices
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audit society
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Joan Scott Gender as a Useful Category of
Historical Analysis (AHR (1986)) Gender not an
object of analysis, but an analytical lens.
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• Gender
• A constituent element of social relations based
  on perceived differences between the sexes, and
• a primary way of signifying relations of power
• Changes in one always correspond to changes in
  the other

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As element of social relations based on perceived
differences between the sexes a. culturally
available symbols (multiple, sometimes
contradictory, representations) b. normative
concepts that interpret the symbols, generally
binaries that fix the meaning of male and female,
masculine and feminine in particular
contexts. c. constructed and maintained through
institutions (labor market, education,
politics) d. central to subjective identity
(through identification or resistance)
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• As primary way of signifying relations of power
• persistent and recurrent way of enabling the
  signification of power in the West, in
  Judeo-Christian as well as Islamic traditions
• b. gendered concepts of power, though they may
  build on gender, are not always literally about
  gender itself

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Gender invisible and pervasive mode of
legitimating differential assignments of and
access to power and resources. Operates in
contexts that are overtly gendered as well as
those that are not overtly gendered in the sense
of being predominantly male or female. ? Hence
the vagueness, the assembly and reassembly that
frustrates systematic accounts of gender in
KNOWING.
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Boundaries Between and within
disciplines Natural science / social
science Molecular biology / field
science Hard / soft Quantitative / qualitative
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Excellent science and its others feminization
of the others Universal science of policy
imaginaries metaphorically and historically
masculinized
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Philosophy of science Physics and the special
sciences Fundamental and universal
versus limited and partial
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Legitimates imposition of NS criteria of
assessment on SS regardless of lack of
fit. Implicit subordination and feminization of
the SS in relation to NS.
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Togetherness Gender lens What forms of
togetherness are privileged? How do some forms
of being together produce loneliness in
individuals?
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Mobility Privileging of mobility (of
persons/ideas) as reinscribing gender Role of
mobility in NS career requires the freedom of the
masculinized social position to move
around. Does the comparative non-mobility of SS
career replicates the feminized social position
of staying at or close to home?
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Together alone How do the symbolic and
material gender orders interact to make the
individuation necessary for success easier for
one gendered position than for another?
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Time and trajectories Construction and
privileging of the normative linear career
reproduces the gendered order Materially
whose lives lend themselves to pursuit of the
linear career? Symbolically linear -gt progress
through a sequence -gt detachment from previous
stage/level non-linear -gt cyclical -gt immersion
in one stage
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Back to feminist goals KNOWING Project focused
on science as work and animated by the goal of
making science as an occupation better for
women. Coincides with the aims of policy-makers
position the EU in the global economy position
member states within the EU knowledge economy.
EU Imperative increase the talent pool.
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Feminist imperative?
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If we treat the space of knowledge production as
a gender neutral space only contingently
inhabited by men (or masculinized individuals),
I.e. fail to apply gender lens, we will miss the
ways in which implicit genderings of space and
time will continue to reproduce (in a modified
way) the forms of gendered togetherness,
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the gender configurations, norms, and values that
no longer exclude biological women, but
differentially channel individuals into
differentiated roles within science, thereby
gendering them and reproducing in inclusive
science the gender orders which previously
excluded women.
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work-life balance as knotty node for
investigation Collision of different orderings
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Feminists want to change the world, envisioning
the change, living the change, developing new
models of interaction with the natural world and
one another. Have to come back to the content or
product of scientific work knowledge or the
models by which we know and interact with the
world.
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audit society
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must change the dynamics of reinscription of
gender in spaces, times, and boundaries to permit
not the production of exceptional individuals,
but of non-conformist knowledge.
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By opening up relational spaces, times, and
boundaries to examination with the gendered lens,
KNOWING has taken a crucial step forward .
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By opening up relational spaces, times, and
boundaries to examination with the gendered lens,
KNOWING has taken a crucial step forward
. Thanks to all the participants in the project
for their hard work and perseverance!