What role does gender play in scientific research and the development of technologies? This book provides methodological expertise, research experiences and empirical findings in the dynamic field of Science and Technology Studies. The authors, coming from computer science, social sciences, or cultural studies of science, discuss how to ask questions about gender and give examples for the application in interdisciplinary research, development and teaching. Topics range from the design of information and communication technologies, epistemologies of biology and chemistry to teaching mathematics and professional processes in engineering. Contributions by Anne Balsamo, Wendy Faulkner, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Barbara Orland, Els Rommes, and others.

The question of gender in science and technology is pursued by scholars from different disciplines and perspectives: historians study the lives of women scientists within the context of institutions that for centuries held women at arm's length; sociologists uncover women's access to the means of scientific production; biologists scrutinize how science has studied female and male bodies; cultural critics explore normative understandings of femininity and masculinity; philosophers and historians of science analyse how gender has influenced the content and methods of science and technology. Now, this new four-volume collection from Routledge enables users to make sense of the interlocking pieces of the gender, science, and technology puzzle: the history of women's participation in science and engineering; the structure of research institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge. The volumes bring together important representative publications treating these issues from antiquity to the present, and across cultures.

This reader provides an introduction to the gendering of science and the impact women are making in laboratories around the world. The republished essays included in this collection are both personal tales from women scientists and essays on the nature of science itself, covering such controversial issues like the under-representation of women in science, reproductive technology, sociobiology, evolutionary theory, and the notion of objective science.

Why are there so few women scientists? Persisting differences between women's and men's experiences in science make this question as relevant today as it ever was. This book sets out to answer this question, and to propose solutions for the future. Based on extensive research, it emphasizes that science is an intensely social activity. Despite the scientific ethos of universalism and inclusion, scientists and their institutions are not immune to the prejudices of society as a whole. By presenting women's experiences at all key career stages - from childhood to retirement - the authors reveal the hidden barriers, subtle exclusions and unwritten rules of the scientific workplace, and the effects, both professional and personal, that these have on the female scientist. This important book should be read by all scientists - both male and female - and sociologists, as well as women thinking of embarking on a scientific career.

An interdisciplinary investigation of the co-creation of gender and technology Each of the ten chapters in Women, Gender, and Technology explores a different aspect of how gender and technology work--and are at work--in particular domains, including film narratives, reproductive technologies, information technology, and the profession of engineering. The volume's contributors include representatives of over half a dozen different disciplines, and each provides a novel perspective on the foundational idea that gender and technology co-create one another. Together, their articles provide a window on to the rich and complex issues that arise in the attempt to understand the relationship between these profoundly intertwined notions.

Inventing Women explores important and controversial debates about the gendering of science and technology and their relationship to women. This book discusses how such gendering occurs, the scientific basis for claims of sex difference, the medicalization of women's bodies and the political issues raised by reproductive technology. The book also examines women as producers of science and technology, both as professional scientists and as unskilled workers. It concludes by looking at women as consumers of technology and science - domestic technology and computers - and at their relationship with Nature. Inventing Women raises the question of whether feminism can produce not only a critique of science and technology, but a new feminist science and technology, and the systems and artefacts that go with it. This volume includes contributions which represent some of the best feminist scholarship in their fields. It can be used as a textbook and it will appeal to a wide audience in feminism and women's studies, sociology, education, science and technology, and medicine and health.

Science has been gender biased for centuries across cultural contexts. Different ideological constructions of gender through different eras have restricted women's access to science. The twentieth century, especially its second half, witnessed certain important changes in terms of women's status in society. Gender and Science: Studies across Cultures includes essays by leading academics and researchers from different parts of the world, who discuss gender and science in their society and explore the relevance of gender theories. The book is divided into two broad sections. The first section provides conceptual reflections on gendered science and the second section examines the gender-science relationship using examples from various cultural contexts. This unique volume tries to answer several important questions such as these: Could science become free from gender biases? Could gender and science issues go beyond race, class, colonization and social and geographical distinctions? Are gender and science relations universal as assumed by the 'ethos of science' or vary with the culture? The book also tries to strike a balance between analyses of the gender dimension of science itself and the role of the wider social, economic and cultural factors. This interdisciplinary volume will be an important resource for graduate students and research scholars of gender studies, social history, psychology and sociology. Those interested in gender and science as well as cross-cultural issues will also find this book useful.