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Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine

What useful changes has feminism brought to science? Feminists have enjoyed success in their efforts to open many fields to women as participants. But the effects of feminism have not been restricted to altering employment and professional opportunities for women. The essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research. In archaeology, evidence of women’s hunting activities suggested by spears found in women’s graves is no longer dismissed; computer scientists have used feminist epistemologies for rethinking the human-interface problems of our growing reliance on computers. Attention to women’s movements often tends to reinforce a presumption that feminism changes institutions through critique-from-without. This volume reveals the potent but not always visible transformations feminism has brought to science, technology, and medicine from within.

Contributors:
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Linda Marie Fedigan
Scott Gilbert
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Evelyn Fox Keller
Pamela E. Mack
Michael S. Mahoney
Emily Martin
Ruth Oldenziel
Nelly Oudshoorn
Carroll Pursell
Karen Rader
Alison Wylie

272 pages | 1 halftone, 3 tables, 1 line drawing | 6 x 9 | © 2001

Women in Culture and Society

History: History of Technology

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Science
2. Doing Social Science as a Feminist: The Engendering of Archeology
Alison Wylie
3. The Paradox of Feminist Primatology: The Goddess’s Discipline?
Linda Marie Fedigan
4. Revisiting Women, Gender, and Feminism in Developmental Biology
Scott F. Gilbert & Karen A. Rader
5. Developing the Feminist Critique of Science
Evelyn Fox Keller
Technology
6. Feminism and the Rethinking of the History of Technology
Carroll Pursell
7. Man the Maker, Woman the Consumer: The Consumption Junction Revisited
Ruth Oldenziel
8. What Difference Has Feminism Made to Engineering in the Twentieth Century?
Pamela E. Mack
9. Boys’ Toys and Women’s Work: Feminism Engages Software
Michael S. Mahoney
10. Medicine, Technology, and Gender in the History of Prenatal Diagnosis
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Medicine
11. On Bodies, Technologies, and Feminisms
Nelly Oudshoorn
12. Rationality, Feminism, and Mind
Emily Martin
13. Gendering the Epidemic: Feminism and the Epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the United States, 1981-1999
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Contributors
Index

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