Electronic Journal of Communication, Information & Innovation in Health

[www.reciis.cict.fiocruz.br] ISSN 1981-6286

Essay , Democracy, and DOI: 10.3395/reciis.v1i1.39en

Sandra Harding Graduate School of Education and Information Studies – University of California, Los Angeles, United States [email protected]

Abstract Feminist and philosophies of science have challenged conventional standards for objectivity, rationality, “good method” and “real science.” This paper looks at the stronger standards for maximizing objectivity which feminists have demanded, and the challenges to conventional philosophies and histories of science arising from non-Western science and technology traditions. Sciences and philosophies of science which want to advance social progress and social justice cannot do so if the ignore these challenges from groups located at “the peripheries of the Enlightenment.”

Keywords Gender, democracy, philosophy of science, feminist epistemologies, non-Western science

Introduction main themes in these literatures, and then, even more It is now three decades since critics began to look briefly, turn to their implications for theories of at the theories and practices of science and technology democracy and philosophies of science. (S&T) through the distinctive perspectives produced by the women’s movement in the U.S. and Europe. These Gender issues critics asked to what extent do modern S&T fail to give Five kinds of gender issues initially attracted the equal attention to women’s interests? How does a sexist attention of critics.2 Space permits only a brief mention social structure in science and society shape both of major themes in the first four approaches. One focused modern sciences’ patterns of and their on the absence of gender equity in the social structure patterns of ignorance? What can be done to increase of the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. the democratic effects of S&T projects? In the last Historians have provided accounts of ways women and decade especially, analyses that start off from the lives gender have influenced European and North American of women from racial and ethnic minorities in the North sciences, and social scientists have documented the and women in the Third World have added distinctive continuing obstacles to equality confronting women. 1 perspectives to these debates. Here I shall briefly review Today girls and women have largely gained access to

RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007 161 science, math, and engineering pre-professional and research styles, and interests in S&T than do their brothers. professional education, teaching and lab appointments, In the South, S&T literacy projects must also contend publication in research journals, and membership in S&T with women’s higher illiteracy rates in some cultures and societies. Yet the higher that one looks in S&T worlds, with the demand on girls and women for household services the fewer women one finds. In the North as in the (HARDING et al., 1996; ROSSER, 1986). South, few women direct the most prestigious laboratories, chair university science, mathematics and Feminist and philosophies engineering departments, or hold top positions in of science international S&T policy agencies or organizations. (HARDING et al., 1996; MIT, 1998; SCHIEBINGER, Perhaps most potentially revolutionary have been 1989; SCIENCE 1992, 1993, 1994) criticisms of conventional philosophies of science. These philosophies articulate the “logic” of what they identify The persistence of this discrimination against as the most desirable scientific practices based on their women raises other troubling questions. Would more understandings of the history of science. Feminists women’s issues be addressed by S&T projects if there asked how have the very standards for objectivity, were more women making S&T policy in the North rationality, good method, and good science and in the South? Moreover, does this gender disproportionately reflected the concerns of the discrimination damage the objectivity of the knowledge institutions that use S&T as resources to make legal, claims and the patterns of knowledge produced by S&T? health, educational, military, and economic policy? What Shouldn’t we always worry when those who hold would such standards look like if they were designed to economic, social, and political power and those who respond also to women’s interests, fears, and desires? determine what counts as truth are the same people? What would S&T look like if women, South and North, A second concern has focused on cases of sexist were also their subjects rather than only their often mis- and androcentric applications and technologies of S&T. perceived objects? (BRAIDOTTI et al., 1994; HARDING, Reproductive, household and workplace technologies, 1991; KELLER, 1984). architecture, and urban landscapes have been designed The most interesting feminist responses to such with little concern for women’s health, safety, or well- epistemological issues have carefully avoided unhelpful being. Feminist constructivist approaches to technology rejections of objectivity, rationality, good method, and have developed illuminating analyses that were blocked science itself. Women need more objectivity, rationality, by older conceptions of technologies as culturally neutral good method, and good science for projects that “hardware.” These accounts show how artefacts have originate in the needs of their lives. They don’t need the gender (COCKBURN, 1985; BERG et al., 1995; excessively narrow forms of these that have long been WAJCMAN, 1991). Critics have pointed to how so- favored in philosophies of science. called development practices have added sexist Northern assumptions of European and North American cultures, To take one example, consider feminist concerns international agencies and transnational corporations about standard ways of thinking about objectivity to those of Southern societies to decrease the likelihood (HARDING, 1998). Maximizing objectivity has required of women in the South receiving benefits of S&T maximizing value-neutrality. According to the research designed in either the North or the South. conventional view, it is the scientific methods specified Especially egregious examples of such discrimination by research designs through which the social values and have been documented in work on health, agriculture, interests that researchers inevitably bring to their work natural resources (energy, water, etc.), and environmental can be identified and eliminated. This approach certainly research (BAIDOTTI et al., 1994). has its virtues. Yet it is evident that it has only been able to achieve a weak form of objectivity since so many Third, sexist, racist, and imperialist and sexist and androcentric assumptions (not to mention “orientalist” results of scientific research in biology and assumptions shaped by class, religion, culture, national, the social sciences have justified legal, economic, and racial and imperial interests and values) have managed, social enforcement of women’s second-class citizenship. in what were claimed to be the most rigorous of While this kind of research began to flourish back in scientific research projects, to shape the results of the Nineteenth Century, it is still doing well today in research in S&T, especially in biology and the social sociobiology, and mainstream social sciences (FAUSTO- sciences. How adequate can the conventional standards STERLING, 1994). Especially powerful analyses have of objectivity be if again and again they sanction accounts emerged from scholars and activitists working on issues of women’s biological and social inferiority?3 of gender in Third World so-called development (BRAIDOTTI et al., 1994; SMITH, 1999; Critics identify three problems with this kind of VISVANATHAN et al., 1997). standard for maximizing objectivity. First, important scientific processes occur before scientific methods begin A fourth focus on science, math, and engineering and are not controlled by conventional notions of curricula and pedagogy has succeeded in shifting attention method. In this “context of discovery,” problematic from the reputed deficiencies of girls and women to the natural or social conditions are identified—for example, documented deficiencies of S&T curricula and pedagogy. poverty. Just what is problematic about them is Girls and women tend to have different learning styles, conceptualized: “too many mouths to feed”. Concepts

162 RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007 and hypotheses to guide research are formulated: neutrality has been assumed the only and always “overpopulation;” “population control;” “if women’s reasonable way to try to maximize objectivity, it has reproduction is controlled, there will be fewer mouths seemed counter-intuitive even to consider raising the to feed”. Then research is designed to test hypotheses. question of whether and how some social values and In the case considered here, today even the United interests might sometimes in fact advance objectivity. Nations recognizes (since the 1995 Cairo U.N. Jumping ahead for the moment to my final topic, we conference on population) that such purportedly can note that here is an important challenge to be objective research has failed to identify the sexist, racist, addressed by researchers who are interested in the soci- and class-based assumptions that have shaped many al responsibility of S&T. A central part of the challenge decades of research on population control issues. It is is to conceptualize how what researchers observe is always poverty that causes population growth in the first place, both given by nature and constructed by culture—that not the reverse. Poor families need children’s labor and is, to avoid both absolute naturalism and absolute wages in order to survive, and children must provide relativism. To put the point another way, a kind of the care for smaller children and, when they grow up, virtual reality is all that the sciences have ever charted for the elderly that governments, incomes, and inherited for us or ever could chart. wealth provide for middle and upper classes. Increasing As a start in responding to this challenge, we can women’s education and thus their income potential think how anti-democratic values and interests block turns out to be the single most effective way to decrease the growth of knowledge in the ways that they silence fertility. the most vigorous critical perspectives on anti-democratic Thus feminist approaches have demanded and other dominant ways of thinking. Pro-democratic systematic critical scrutiny of the “context of discovery” values and interests bring such perspectives into general as well as of the “context of justifiction.” Starting off visibility and so enlarge opportunities for maximizing research from women’s lives instead of from the the objectivity of research processes. Yet this perception conceptual frameworks of the dominant social is indeed just a beginning here, for we need to think institutions and the research disciplines that service further about what in particular we mean by democratic them can generate questions about “the conceptual values and interests (do we mean those evident in the practices of power” that are not available from the current tendencies toward global “democratization”, perspective of powerful institutions and their research where economic inequality is ignored and even agendas (SMITH, 1990). sometimes intentionally advanced? See ROBINSON A second criticism of weak objectivity is that its (1996) and about specifically how scientific and way of identifying social values and interests is to repeat technological research processes advance or retard them. observations by different individuals or groups of them; the methods of obtaining scientific results must be Many , many S&T interests replicable. While this requirement is effective at The preceding account may seem to suggest that identifying values and interests that differ between in- there is one and only one feminist position on dividual observers or research teams, it will not identify epistemology and philosophy of science issues. Yet this those that they all share. Sexist and racist beliefs are could not be and is not the case. Distinctive “public not the inventions of individuals or research teams; they agenda” feminisms have emerged during the last two are widely-held institutional and societal assumptions centuries in Europe and the U.S.. These have been that, prior to the emergence of feminisms and anti- shaped by the political philosophies—Liberalism, racisms, have seemed perfectly natural to almost everyone. Marxism, etc.— through which women and men have In the case of these kinds of deep and widespread made feminist demands on governments. Mary assumptions, it takes more than the exercise of standard Wollstonecraft and started off their notions of “good method” to identify distorting values thought from the women’s lives with which they were and interests. In these cases, it has taken collective most familiar. these were the lives of women in the political criticism to bring into general visibility the educated classes whose interests have remained central social values and interests shaping sexist and racist in more than two centuries of Liberal . Of assumptions. Again, starting off research from outside course today, when state-mandated education continually dominant conceptual frameworks brings fresh increases the population of the “educated classes,” one perspectives to bear on a culture’s common assumptions. could argue that Liberal Feminism both has vastly Of course no one can ever get completely outside their expanded its concerns and that its adherents come from culture. Yet even just a small liberation from prevailing a far broader economic and political spectrum than was assumptions can provide a valuable critical perspective, the case in the Eighteenth Century. Liberal feminists as social scientists have emphasized in reporting the have had different concerns about S&T than have other increased objectivity available to the stranger to a culture. feminist groups such as the Marxist and Socialist This brings us to a third problem with weak Feminisms that arose in the Nineteenth Century. objectivity. It cannot distinguish between those kinds Thus it is not surprising to discover that thinking of values and interests that advance and those that retard about S&T from the standpoint of the lives of racial the growth of knowledge. As long as maximizing value- and ethnic minorities in the North and of women in

RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007 163 the South also produces distinctive concerns and themes. other subordinate groups, frequently have lost social The account above suggests just a few ways in which status and resources. the concerns of this majority of the world’s women have In the second place, the multicultural and appeared within the critical categories constructed to postcolonial science studies show how the standards for account for large groups of Northern women’s S&T objectivity, rationality, good method, and even good interests. Yet, starting thought from outside these Libe- science itself have been defined not only in terms of ral and Marxist philosophic frameworks also raises their distance from qualities and practices associated entirely new issues for Northern S&T, feminist or not with the feminine, but also in terms of their distance (HARDING, 1993, 1998; HESS, 1995). from the primitive. The philosophic standards that guide After all, the attempts to add women’s concerns to modern Western S&T are also standards for certain the dominant conceptual frameworks of biology, forms of distinctively European (and North American) sociology, anthropology, economics, political philosophy masculinity. They mark not inclusively human ideals, and other fields have consistently revealed that the but only historically specific forms of masculinity. In frameworks themselves were resistant to such additive both ways these standards undercut the ability of projects. Women’s lives could not be objectively grasped Western modern S&T both to detect valuable conceptual within frameworks that had elaborated complex systems frameworks and practices that other cultures have of assumptions and categories for conceptualizing developed and to achieve an objective assessment of women’s biology as inferior and their contributions to the real strengths and limitations of Western modern history and social relations as minimal or even negative. S&T. But then, neither, could men’s lives be objectively grasped Women’s and non-Western S&T traditions have within such frameworks. If women, their natures and been shunned by conventional philosophies of science activities are not in fact inferior but merely different, on the grounds (among others) that the former are then neither are men, their natures and activities supe- embedded in culturally local values and interests and rior or deserving of the distinctive mark of the ideally therefore not trans-culturally disinterested and objective. human. The conceptual frameworks themselves have Yet these S&T traditions have provided systematic been challenged by the attempts merely to “add women knowledge about natural and social worlds that have and stir.” Similarly, attempts to add the lives of the enabled their cultures to survive and thrive. On the other majority of the worlds’ women to categorical schemes hand, the disinterestedness of Western S&T has enabled designed to explain the lives of relatively privileged its usefulness to the most powerful players in the minorities in the modern North have also shown the inequality-increasing global political economy of today, limitations of those Eurocentric frameworks for not to mention to a long history of other militaristic, objectively accounting for anyone’s lives. profiteering, and anti-democratic projects. Until we My point here is that we now have available multiple are ready to understand how ethics and politics shape illuminating feminist theoretical perspectives from which good science and not just “bad science,” we will not be to ask questions about the history and practices of S&T. effective at limiting the ways that S&T continue to ser- And the multicultural and postcolonial feminisms have ve the interests of political and economic power. raised a number of new issues that pose challenges to Finally, as the first two issues indicate, these Northern feminist as well as conventional philosophies feminist, multicultural and postcolonial S&T studies of S&T. Here I identify just three such issues. show how all knowledge systems, including Northern modern S&T, are historically distinctive, or “local”, in Multicultural and postcolonial feminist important ways. These studies undercut standard philosophic issues4 triumphalist narratives of Western modern S&T’s contributions to human progress. Insofar as different First, we need new histories and geographies of the cultures, or women and men within a culture, are assigned past and present distribution of human S&T knowledge. different interactions with natural and social No longer is it reasonable to assume that Western environments, have different interests, draw on different modern science is uniquely capable of telling the one discursive resources, and organize differently the true story about nature’s order. New histories show production of knowledge, they will tend to develop the richness of the older Chinese, Islamic and other distinctive bodies of systematic knowledge and South Asian S&T traditions and innovative practices systematic ignorance. For example, those who are in contemporary indigenous S&T traditions around the assigned infant care and those assigned care of globe today. They show the continual appropriation of motorcycles (to stick to stereotypes) will develop these other knowledge traditions into Northern S&T. distinctive patterns of knowledge and of ignorance of Within the expanded sense of S&T that such new nature and social relations. Thus women and men in accounts provide, women’s contributions to the history every walk of life, and different cultures, everywhere in and present store of human knowledge emerge into the world, insofar as they engage in distinctive kinds of visibility. Moreover, these accounts reveal that at the activities, will develop and maintain distinctive patterns moments marked as progressive in the standard of knowledge (and of ignorance). Moreover, all of these triumphalist histories of science, women, along with are “modern sciences” insofar as they are continually

164 RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007 put to the test of enabling their users to interact FAUSTO-STERLING, A. Myths of gender: biological effectively with changing environments and newly theories about women and men. New York: Basic arriving information and ways of thinking from other Books, 1994. peoples and cultures. GALISON, P.; STUMP, D. (Eds.) The Disunity of These issues challenge the remnants of the old unity Science. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. of science thesis, which held that there is one world, one “truth” (true account) about it, and one and only HARDING, S. Feminism Confronts the Sciences: one (historically distinctive, though trans-cultural) Reform and Transformation. In: Whose Science? science capable in principle of providing that true Whose Knowledge? Thinking From Women’s account. Few who reflect on the immense diversity of Lives. Cap. 2. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1991. ontologies, epistemologies, and methods that HARDING, S. (Ed.). The ‘Racial’ Economy of Science: characterize the so-called modern sciences today, let alone Toward a Democratic Future. Bloomington: In- on the multitude of other S&T traditions that have diana University Press, 1993. contributed to the storehouse of human knowledge, would admit to that unity of science thesis in its most HARDING, S. Is science multicultural? Post- restrictive forms (GALISON et al., 1996). Yet most of colonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies. us retain unity assumptions that make it difficult to Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. appreciate the scientific, philosophic, and pro-democratic HARDING, S.; MCGREGOR, E. “The Gender opportunities feminist, multicultural and postcolonial Dimension of Science and Technology,” UNESCO S&T studies have made available. What could a theory World Science Report 1996. Paris: UNESCO, of human knowledge look like that would build on the 1996. insights of these distinctive contemporary movements? HESS, D. Science and technology in a multicultural Notes world: the cultural politics of facts and artifacts. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995 1. Many central terms in these discussions, such as Third World, , development, feminism, KELLER, E.F. Reflections on gender and science. New and even science itself are contested. They must remain Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. so as the horizons of our understandings of how S&T MIT. “Women Scientists at MIT.” A Report, 1998. function in local and global social relations continue to expand. ROBINSON, W.I. Promoting polyarchy: globalization, 2. I have reviewed these issues in a number of places. U.S. intervention, and hegemony. New York: See, e.g., HARDING (1991). Cambridge University Press, 1996. 3. There is by now a large literature documenting these ROSSER, S. Teaching science and health from a claims for biology and the social sciences. For biology, feminist perspective. Oxford: Pergamon Press, FAUSTO-STERLING (1994) is a good place to start. 1986. 4. Multicultural and postcolonial S&T studies and their diverse feminist components have emerged into SCHIEBINGER, L. The mind has no sex? Women in international visibility since the mid-1980’s. Sources the origins of modern science. Cambridge: Harvard of and central themes in this literature may be found University Press, 1989. in BRAIDOTTI et al., 1994; HARDING, 1998; and SCIENCE. Women in science. v. 255, s.p, 1992; v.260, HESS, 1995. p.383-430, 1993; v.263, p.1467-93, 1994. SMITH, D.E. The conceptual practices of power: a Bibliographic references of knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. BERG, A-J.; MERETE L. Feminism and Constructivism: Do Artifacts Have Gender? Science, Technology, SMITH, L.T. Decolonizing methodologies: research and Human Values, v.20 n.3, p.332-351, 1995. and indigenous peopes. New York: Zed Books, 1999. BRAIDOTTI, R. et al. Women, the environment, and VISVANATHAN, N. et al. (Eds.) The women, gender sustainable development. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: and development reader. London: Zed Books, Zed, 1994. 1997. COCKBURN, C. Machinery of dominance: women, WAJCMAN, J. Feminism confronts technology. men, and technical know-how. London: Pluto University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Press, 1985. 1991.

RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007 165 About the author Sandra Harding Sandra Harding is a philosopher and a professor of Education and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She taught for two decades at the before joining UCLA in 1996. Since then, she directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1995-2000, and co-edited the journal : Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She is the author and editor of fifteen books and special journal issues, including: Science and Social Inequality: Feminist and Postcolonial Issues (2006); The Feminist Reader (2004); Science and Other Cultures: Issues in Philosophies of Science and Technology, co-edited with Robert Figueroa (2003); Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (1998); The Science Question in Feminism (1986). She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Costa Rica, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the Asian Institute of Technology. She has been a consultant to several United Nations organizations including the Pan American Health Organization, Unesco, the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and the U.N. Commission on Science and Technology for Development. She is currently working on a book on gender, science, and modernity.

166 RECIIS – Elect. J. Commun. Inf. Innov. Health, v.1, n.1, p.161-166, Jan.-Jun., 2007