Science Literacy Week 2014

Today, women earn a relatively low percentage of computer science degrees and holdproportionately few technical computing jobs. Meanwhile, the stereotype of the male "computergeek" seems to be everywhere in popular culture. Few people know that women were a significantpresence in the early decades of computing in both the United States and Britain. Indeed,programming in postwar years was considered woman's work (perhaps in contrast to the more manly taskof building the computers themselves). In Recoding Gender, Janet Abbate exploresthe untold history of women in computer science and programming from the Second World War to thelate twentieth century. Demonstrating how gender has shaped the culture of computing, she offers avaluable historical perspective on today's concerns over women's underrepresentation in the field.Abbate describes the experiences of women who worked with the earliest electronic digital computers:Colossus, the wartime codebreaking computer at Bletchley Park outside London, and the AmericanENIAC, developed to calculate ballistics. She examines postwar methods for recruiting programmers,and the 1960s redefinition of programming as the more masculine "software engineering."She describes the social and business innovations of two early software entrepreneurs, Elsie Shuttand Stephanie Shirley; and she examines the career paths of women in academic computer science.Abbate's account of the bold and creative strategies of women who loved computing work, excelled atit, and forged successful careers will provide inspiration for those working to change genderedcomputing culture.

Feminist scholars have long recognized the importance of addressing science in both theory and practice. This book begins with gender as its theoretical focus and the substantive focus raises questions on scientific authority.

Do women do science differently? And how about feminists--male or female? The answer to this fraught question, carefully set out in this provocative book, will startle and enlighten every faction in the "science wars."Has Feminism Changed Science? is at once a history of women in science and a frank assessment of the role of gender in shaping scientific knowledge. Science is both a profession and a body of knowledge, and Londa Schiebinger looks at how women have fared and performed in both instances. She first considers the lives of women scientists, past and present: How many are there? What sciences do they choose--or have chosen for them? Is the professional culture of science gendered? And is there something uniquely feminine about the science women do? Schiebinger debunks the myth that women scientists--because they are women--are somehow more holistic and integrative and create more cooperative scientific communities. At the same time, she details the considerable practical difficulties that beset women in science, where domestic partnerships, children, and other demanding concerns can put women's (and increasingly men's) careers at risk.But what about the content of science, the heart of Schiebinger's subject? Have feminist perspectives brought any positive changes to scientific knowledge? Schiebinger provides a subtle and nuanced gender analysis of the physical sciences, medicine, archaeology, evolutionary biology, primatology, and developmental biology. She also shows that feminist scientists have developed new theories, asked new questions, and opened new fields in many of these areas.

The rapid development of information technology and the Internet is making it increasingly impossible for women to avoid critical engagement with such matters. This text explores some of the major topics and questions with which feminist scholars of science are currently engaged. It is concerned with what constitutes science, how feminists have investigated it, and the possibility of generating new feminist discources of science.

This essential text contains contributions from a wide range of fields and provides role models for feminist scientists. Including chapters from scientists and feminist scholars, the book presents a wide range of feminist science studies scholarship-from autobiographical narratives and experimental and theoretical projects, to teaching tools and courses and community-based projects.

The prominent scholars featured in Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering explore how gender analysis can profoundly enhance human knowledge in the areas of science, medicine, and engineering. Where possible, they provide concrete examples of how taking gender into account has yielded new research results and sparked creativity, opening new avenues for future research. Several government granting agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the European Commission, now require that requests for funding address whether, and in what sense, sex and gender are relevant to the objectives and methodologies of the research proposed, yet few research scientists or engineers know how to do gender analysis. This book begins to rectify the situation by shedding light on the how and the why.

What is a specifically feminist perspective on science and technology? Focusing in particular on the socio-cultural implications of the latest scientific and technological developments, this book proposes a site of resistance to hegemonic discourses and practices of science and technology. Four sections cover science as a whole, the new technologies of the postmodern era, bio-medical discourses and nature. A distinguished cast of contributors explore the central feminist concerns in each arena, through the metaphors of monster, mother goddess and cyborg. They argue that feminists cannot ignore the emancipatory as well as the oppressive potentials of technology. Bringing together 'natural' and 'social' scientists, the book paves the way for a specifically feminist strategy for science, technology and health care.

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 scientific understanding 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.

Simians, Cyborgs and Women is a powerful collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as "creatures" which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology. Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists. Haraway's recent book, Primate Visions, has been called "outstanding," "original," and "brilliant," by leading scholars in the field. (First published in 1991.)

Are human beings innately aggressive? Does biology condemn women to remain the "second sex?" Taking up such biases cloaked as the findings of science, Reed explains that the disciplines closest to human life-anthropology, biology, and sociology-are permeated with rationalizations for the oppression of women and the maintenance of the established capitalist order. "A stimulating corrective to establishment academic doctrine and popular scientific vagaries. Recommended for scientific, women's, as well as nonspecialist collections." -Library Journal "An enjoyable book …. Reed shows, clearly and beautifully, how the mind of the scientist-usually male, white and middle-class-filters and processes the so-called facts …. [I]ntensely readable for non-specialists, but also stimulating for those who are not unfamiliar with the subject …. This is the sort of book that one should own, one should read, and one should pass along."-Status of Women News "Provides a useful antidote to obscurantic nonsense perpetrated by Ardrey, Morris and … Lionel Tiger."-Emergency Librarian "Dissects [Claude Levi-Strauss's] theses with precision and elegance."-News from Neasden Glossary, bibliography, index.

In this expanded edition of her bestselling 1989 CBC Massey Lectures, renowned Canadian scientist and humanitarian Ursula M. Franklin examines the impact of technology upon our lives and addresses the extraordinary changes in the bit sphere since The Real World of Technology was first published. In four new chapters, Franklin tackles contentious issues, such as the dilution of privacy and intellectual property rights, the impact of the current technology on government and governance, the shift from consumer capitalism to investment capitalism, and the influence of the Internet upon the craft of writing.

In 1891, 24 year old Marie, née Marya Sklodowska, moved from Warsaw to Paris, where she found work in the laboratory of Pierre Curie, a scientist engaged in research on heat and magnetism. They fell in love. They took their honeymoon on bicycles. They expanded the periodic table, discovering two new elements with startling properties, radium and polonium. They recognized radioactivity as an atomic property, heralding the dawn of a new scientific era. They won the Nobel Prize. Newspapers mythologized the couple's romance, beginning articles on the Curies with "Once upon a time . . . " Then, in 1906, Pierre was killed in a freak accident. Marie continued their work alone. She won a second Nobel Prize in 1911, and fell in love again, this time with the married physicist Paul Langevin. Scandal ensued. Duels were fought. In the century since the Curies began their work, we've struggled with nuclear weapons proliferation, debated the role of radiation in medical treatment, and pondered nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. In Radioactive, Lauren Redniss links these contentious questions to a love story in 19th Century Paris. Radioactive draws on Redniss's original reporting in Asia, Europe and the United States, her interviews with scientists, engineers, weapons specialists, atomic bomb survivors, and Marie and Pierre Curie's own granddaughter. Whether young or old, scientific novice or expert, no one will fail to be moved by Lauren Redniss's eerie and wondrous evocation of one of history's most intriguing figures.

The first book of its kind to provide a full and comprehensive historical grounding of the contemporary issues of gender and women in science. Women in Science includes a detailed survey of the history behind the popular subject and engages the reader with a theoretical and informed understanding with significant issues like science and race, gender and technology and masculinity. It moves beyond the historical work on women and science by avoiding focusing on individual women scientists.

Movement into academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has been slow for women and minorities. Not only are women and minorities underrepresented in STEM careers, there is strong evidence that many academic departments are resistant to addressing the concerns that keep them from entering careers in these fields. In light of recent controversies surrounding these issues, this volume, examining reasons for the persistence of barriers that block the full participation and advancement of underrepresented groups in the sciences and addressing how academic departments and universities can remedy the situation, is particularly timely. As a whole, the volume shows positive examples of institutions and departments that have been transformed by the inclusion of women and recommends a set of best practices for continuing growth in positive directions.

A contemporary study of Western views on women scientists from 1700 to the present and how the extraordinary accomplishments of these women helped change those views.

Women of Science is a collection of essays dealing with contributions women have made to various scientific disciplines, written by women scientists in those disciplines. The areas covered are: astronomy, archaeology, biology, chemistry, crystallography, engineering, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics. The women who have written these essays are, for the most part, not professional historians, but rather scientific professionals who felt the necessity of researching the contributions women have made to the devlopment of their fields. The essays are unique, not only because they recover lost women who made significant contributions to their disciplines, but also because they are written with a depth of understanding that only a scientist working in a specific area can have. The essays will be of interest not only to students (especially women students) of science who may be unaware of the many contributions women have made, but also to readers of the history of science whoses texts more often than not fail to include the work of most women scientists.

In volume one of this landmark study, focusing on developments up to 1940, Margaret Rossiter describes the activities and personalities of the numerous women scientists-astronomers, chemists, biologists, and psychologists-who overcame extraordinary obstacles to contribute to the growth of American science. This remarkable history recounts women's efforts to establish themselves as members of the scientific community and examines the forces that inhibited their active and visible participation in the sciences.

Why is it that some women have created successful careers in science, when historically there have been so many barriers that exclude women from engaging in scientific work? At last, here is a comparative history that illuminates some of the patterns that have emerged in the history of women in science. This book features some of the most influential and pioneering studies of women in the sciences, with a special focus on patterns of education, access, barriers, and opportunities for women's work in science. Spanning the 17th through the 20th centuries, the book demonstrates the meaning and power of gender experienced by women in the sciences. Individual chapters focus on exceptional women whose unusual initiativee and particular circumstance led them to engage in science: Laura Bassi, Nettie Stevens, Maria Winkelmann, and others. Chapters on women's access to science discuss collaboration with family members in the domestic sphere, the impact of primers and popular science writing, and formal education in public schools and advanced research institutions. There are examinations of the reasons for clusters of women working in "female friendly" sciences such as botany and physiology in the 19th century and astronomy in the U.S. during the early 20th century. This important and useful book provides a thoughtful and detailed overview for scholars and students in the history of science, as well as for feminist historians, scientists, and others who who want a comparative and historical analysis of women in the sciences. Contributors include Janet Browne, Paula Findlen, Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, Ann Hibner Koblitz, M. Susan Lindee, Carolyn Merchant, Margaret W. Rossiter, Londa Schiebinger, Nancy Leys Stepan, and Deborah Jean Warner.

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.