Some concluding observations on the KNOWING project Helen Longino

Feminist science studies Understand and change aspects of scientific content Why? Understand and change aspects of scientific work Why?

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

product work

product work practices

product work practices Policy and funding

“audit society”

Joan Scott: “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (AHR (1986)) Gender not an object of analysis, but an analytical lens.

Gender: 1)A constituent element of social relations based on perceived differences between the sexes, and 2)a primary way of signifying relations of power Changes in one always correspond to changes in the other

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)

As primary way of signifying relations of power: a.“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”

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.

Boundaries: Between and within disciplines: Natural science / social science Molecular biology / field scienceHard / soft Quantitative / qualitative

Excellent science and its others: feminization of the others Universal science of policy imaginaries: metaphorically and historically masculinized

Philosophy of science: Physics and the “special sciences” Fundamental and universal versus limited and partial

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.

Togetherness Gender lens: What forms of togetherness are privileged? How do some forms of being together produce loneliness in individuals?

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?

“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?

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 -> progress through a sequence -> detachment from previous stage/level non-linear -> cyclical -> immersion in one stage

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.

Feminist imperative?

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,

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.

work-life balance as “knotty node” for investigation Collision of different orderings

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.

“audit society”

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.

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!