Experimenting with Gender: How Science Constructs Difference
Keywords:
education, neuroscience, policyAbstract
Gender/sex plays a significant role in discussions around education and science for policy makers, educators and heads of institutions of higher learning working towards increasing the number of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. In recent times, evidence-based educational reforms have been championed by education psychologists. Neuroscience and gender studies are two disciplines heavily engaged in this discussion, each attempting to explain whether and/or why males outnumber females in higher-level research and business. While neuroscience approaches the problem from biology to behaviour, gender studies exposes the various ways in which power relations create difference. This paper sheds some light on what happens in a neuroscience laboratory when experimenting on gender/sex difference, elucidating the process through which experimental systems enable the appearance of gender difference and validate it within the hetero-normative norm. Taking the standpoint that gender/sex differences in cognitive performance result from a process that carefully assigns meaning to abstractions based on laboratory tools and components, this paper explores the constructedness of gender/sex differences by integrating perspectives from three disciplines namely neuroscience, science studies and gender studies. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of these practices.
&
&
Downloads
Additional Files
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
