As part of his attempt to secure a place for women in scientific
culture, the Cartesian Francois Poullain de la Barre asserted as
long ago as 1673 that "the mind has no sex?" In this rich and
comprehensive history of women's contributions to the development
of early modem science, Londa Schiebinger examines the shifting
fortunes of male and female equality in the sphere of the
intellect. Schiebinger counters the "great women" mode of history
and calls attention to broader developments in scientific culture
that have been obscured by time and changing circumstance. She also
elucidates a larger issue: how gender structures knowledge and
power.
It is often assumed that women were automatically excluded from
participation in the scientific revolution of early modem Europe,
but in fact powerful trends encouraged their involvement.
Aristocratic women participated in the learned discourse of the
Renaissance court and dominated the informal salons that
proliferated in seventeenth-century Paris. In Germany, women of the
artisan class pursued research in fields such as astronomy and
entomology. These and other women fought to renegotiate gender
boundaries within the newly established scientific academies in
order to secure their place among the men of science.
But for women the promises of the Enlightenment were not to be
fulfilled. Scientific and social upheavals not only left women on
the sidelines but also brought about what the author calls the
"scientific revolution in views of sexual difference?" While many
aspects of the scientific revolution are well understood, what has
not generally been recognized is that revolution came also from
another quarter--the scientificunderstanding of biological sex and
sexual temperament (what we today call gender). Illustrations of
female skeletons of the ideal woman--with small skulls and large
pelvises--portrayed female nature as a virtue in the private realm
of hearth and home, but as a handicap in the world of science. At
the same time, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women witnessed
the erosion of their own spheres of influence. Midwifery and
medical cookery were gradually subsumed into the newly profess
ionalized medical sciences. Scientia, the ancient female
personification of science, lost ground to a newer image of the
male researcher, efficient and solitary--a development that
reflected a deeper intellectual shift. By the late eighteenth
century, a self-reinforcing system had emerged that rendered
invisible the inequalities women suffered.
In reexamining the origins of modem science, Schiebinger
unearths a forgotten heritage of women scientists and probes the
cultural and historical forces that continue to shape the course of
scientific scholarship and knowledge.
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