A Decade of Feminist Critiques of The Natural Sciences

A Decade of Feminist Critiques in the Natural Sciences: An Address by Ruth Bleier
Author(s): Judith Walzer Leavitt and Linda Gordon

Source: Signs , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 182-195
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3174666
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ARCHIVES
A DECADE OF FEMINIST CRITIQUES

IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES: AN
ADDRESS BY RUTH BLEIER
JUDITH WALZER LEAVITT AND LINDA GORDON
Introduction
On January 4, 1988, Ruth Bleier died in her home after a battle

with cancer. Exactly one month before-on December 4, 1987-the
paper that is printed here was presented at the Women's Studies
Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was
Ruth's last address, the last in a long line of academic and political
contributions that marked an exceptionally active career. We offer
it here in the informal style in which it was written, with minor
editing and clarifications, and the removal of some material very
specific to the University of Wisconsin.
A well-known neurophysiologist, Ruth Bleier was recognized as
a leading expert on the hypothalamus in animals and was the author
of three definitive books on this topic.' She is most well known
among feminist scholars for her two recent books, Science and Gen-
der: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women (New York:
1 The Hypothalamus of the Cat: A Cytoarchitectonic Atlas with Horsley-Clarke

Coordinates (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961), The Hypothalamus
of the Guinea Pig: A Cytoarchitectonic Atlas (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1983), and The Hypothalamus of the Rhesus Monkey: A Cytoarchitectonic
Atlas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984).
[Sigtts: Journal of Womten itn Culture and Society 1988, vol. 14, no. 1]
? 1988 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/89/1401-1111$01.()00
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Pergamon Press, 1984), and her anthology, Feminist Approache

Science (New York: Pergamon Press, 1986). Among the first schola
and scientists in the United States to examine critically the fo
dations of the modern biological sciences from a feminist pers
tive, Ruth has provided important insights and direction to ot
scholars. Women's studies courses around the country use her
ticles and books to provide students with core understandings
the complex issues regarding women's nature, biological determ
ism, and the nature of sex differences. Based on her own scientif
work in neurophysiology as it relates to the biological sciences
well as to psychology, sociology, political theory, and anthropolog
Ruth Bleier's work was truly interdisciplinary and integrative. Sh
demonstrated the profound influence of gender in science: the ge
der of the investigators, of the subjects of investigations, and
assumptions about gender that underlie widely accepted bodie
research conclusions in the biological and behavioral sciences.
most recent scientific work, which was a study of the corpus
losum in humans, refuted studies claiming to demonstrate anatom
ical sex differences in brain structure.2
Ruth Bleier's entire career was dedicated to her equally matche
passions of working for social justice and academic excellence. Aft
receiving her M.D. in 1949 from the Woman's Medical Colleg
Pennsylvania (opened in 1850, the longest lived of the instituti
that trained women exclusively; now the Medical College of Pe
sylvania), then interning at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Ruth
a general medical practice in Baltimore for almost ten years. Whi
giving birth to and raising two children, Mark and Kathy, Ru
practiced among the poor population of the inner city there.
was active in these years also in the Maryland Committee for Peac
for which she was subpoenaed and testified before the House
American Activities Committee (HUAC). She refused to cooper
with the committee's attempts to intimidate the peace movem
and instead delivered a brilliant defense of liberty and justice.
As a result of her political activity and lack of cooperation with
HUAC, Ruth was denied hospital privileges. She entered the Jo
Hopkins School of Medicine to study neuroanatomy with Profe
Jerzy Rose in 1957, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 196
and, giving up her medical practice, became an instructor in t
Adolph Meyer Laboratory of Neuroanatomy at Johns Hopkins
the next six years. After a brief visit as a guest worker in the Lab
2 R. Bleier, L. Houston, and W. Byne, "Can the Corpus Callosum Predict Gend
Age, Handedness, or Cognitive Differences?" Trends in NeuroSciences 9 (19
391-94.
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Leavitt and Gordon / BLEIER
oratory of Perinatal Physiology at the University of Puerto Ric

Ruth joined the Department of Neurophysiology at the Universit
of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967.
Beginning in 1970, her political priorities shifted, as she explains
in the paper below, from taking "pot shots" at the United States
government to improving the lot of women in higher education. At
the University of Wisconsin, she created (with others) the Associ
ation of Faculty Women (AFW), whose major business was to ensure
university compliance with affirmative action requirements. In time
AFW brought about an equity salary raise for faculty women, in-
tegrated the gymnasium with a media-worthy "shower-in" at th
men's locker room, and successfully pushed for the creation of the
Women's Studies Program in 1975. But, as Ruth once wrote, she
had no illusion that the civil rights legislation or its enforcer, th
Health, Education, and Welfare department, would bring about a
new world for women: "My own opinion is that the most significant
and basic change that has occurred has been in us, the women...
There is the sense of exhilaration that comes with the loss of iso-
lation, with the finding of some roots and connectedness, with the
ability finally to articulate and communicate doubts, needs, hopes.
... The experience for most of us has been like stepping on an
endless escalator that goes up only-an ever-heightening sense of
awareness, self identity, direction and strength."3 As a key member
of the founding faculty, and, in 1982 through 1986, as chair of wom-
en's studies, Ruth's political and academic interests came together.
The paper printed here has particular significance for all of us
at the University of Wisconsin because of the legacy Ruth has left
us. But its significance goes much beyond local boundaries. Ruth,
as one of a very few working scientists making contributions to
feminist critiques of science, made final ruminations that have value
for all scholars trying to understand the disciplines that claim to be
objective. Her analysis of the meanings of science and scientific
research is important to those of us who continue her work to in-
tegrate women fully into the academy, politically and academically.
Ruth's illness was a stunning blow to our whole community as
well as to Ruth, for she was an unusually fit and active woman. She
bicycled miles and swam long distances in Lake Mendota, well into
the cold autumn months. Most people took her to be much younger
than her sixty-four years. She was a mainstay of the women's com-
munity in Madison, always there when needed, fiercely committed
to the women's movement.
3 Ruth Bleiel; "History of the Association of Faculty Women at Madison"' in

University Women: A Series of Essays, ed. Marian J. Swoboda and Audrey J. Roberts
(Madison: University of Wisconsin System Office of Women, 1980), 3:19.
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The paper was written under the most difficult of circumstances.

It was planned in the spring of 1987 as the fourth in a series of talks
commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Women's Studies Re-
search Center.4 In the summer, Ruth learned she had cancer. Her
surgery, therapy, and other professional commitments-for up until
her last months she was functioning as a leader in our Women's
Studies Program-made it impossible for her to begin to write until
the fall. She had drafted half of the paper when she found herself
again hospitalized. Despite her pain and her anguish-she had so
much more she wanted to do, the world was not yet righted, she
was happy in her personal and professional life-Ruth, with some
help from friends who brought books and conversation, finished
the paper, literally handwriting it as she lay in bed. It was delivered
on schedule, December 4, 1987, by Judy Leavitt speaking on her
behalf to a crowded room, full of people who had come to value
and cherish Ruth's work and commitment. Ruth listened to a tape
of the session, which included a long and lively discussion, and
she felt her worlds coming together with some of the same optimism
she had voiced earlier: "I am convinced [we] will win out.... Our
movement at the deepest level challenges traditional structures and
ways of being. There is no doubt that the changes we can envisage
could effect a revolutionary reconstruction of society and its insti-
tutions. An end to personal oppression, acceptance of the right to
self-determination, mutual respect-all this we want; we expect
nothing less."5
Department of the History of Medicine (Leavitt)
Department of History (Gordon)
Women's Studies Program
University of Wisconsin-Madison
4 The series of papers is available for sale from the Women's Studies Research
Center, 209 N. Brooks Street, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706. The other essays are "Ten
Years of Research on the History of Women and Health" by Judith Walzer Leavitt;
"Ten Years of Research on Women and Politics" by Virginia Sapiro; and "New
French Feminisms Ten Years Later" by Elaine Marks.
5 Bleier, "History of the Association of Faculty Women at Madison," 19-20.
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* * *
A DECADE OF FEMINIST CRITIQUES IN

THE NATURAL SCIENCES
RUTH BLEIER
In the broad area of women's studies, the feminist criticis

analyses of science constitute an unusual field-unusual in it
of development, in the size and composition of its person
in the progress it has made in relationship both to other
feminist criticism and in its impact on its "father" discip
this talk, I shall discuss these aspects of the development
field and a series of questions that they raise.
The number of women's studies practitioners in science
be referring to those who have published and lectured re
over the past decade) can be counted on two hands, and o
only three are working scientists. The remainder of the two h
are philosophers or historians or sociologists of science. W
count the number of books in the field on less than two hand
only two by working scientists. There is one more handful of
books, with chapters by authors from the same mix of discip
Contrast this situation with other fields of feminist schola
where there are hundreds or thousands of books and articles.
if not all, who publish are working literary critics or histori
psychologists or anthropologists or political scientists who
tute a vital community of scholars interacting with and p
each other and who exert a dynamic and often influenti
within their disciplines. Their feminist criticism and theo
work is the work they do in their discipline. None of this ex
the natural sciences, with the single possible exception of
tology. I refer in particular to primate field work, which is d
to the long-term observations of primates and their behav
social relationships in their natural habitat.
This is a field in which the a priori organizing principle, a
but never tested, had been that all primate troops are orga
male dominance hierarchies, and male dominance hierarchi
found whether they existed or not. It was assumed that the do
males were those who were largest, fiercest, and most agg
This arrangement was seen as convincing since it fit so w
the theoretical schemes scientists had constructed for hum
tural evolution, and it reflected, as well, the idealized vers
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entists carried in their heads of their own familiar social world. It

was assumed that the dominant males, being large and aggressive,
had first choice of matings with the females who came into heat.
And so we had both an explanation for the natural selection of
"genes for aggressivity" passed on to the human male, as well as
pristine primate models for the aggressive and promiscuous human
male and the demur, coy, faithful, passive-nay, invisible-female.
Under the influence of the women's movement in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, women primatologists, who constituted a large
proportion of field workers, began to challenge these assumptions,
and they made female primates and their offspring objects of equal-
time study with the males. They asked a whole new set of ques-
tions-like, Where are the females and what are they doing while
the males are pounding their chests and mating?-and thus brought
about a critical examination of the long-standing paradigms of male
dominance, aggressivity, and reproductive success. These new ob-
servations indicate, for example, that many primate species or groups
have no dominance hierarchies, and, when they exist, females are
as likely as males to form stable dominance hierarchies, in some
reported cases with males deriving their status from their mother.
Dominance, when it exists, is not always related to size, strength,
age, or aggressivity, nor does it always appear to be correlated with
reproductive success. Furthermore, it is often the females, not the
males, who choose their mating partners.
Thus, in a field with a high proportion of women researchers
who raised new questions from a self-consciously female and fem-
inist viewpoint, dominant paradigms were toppled and fresh re-
search directions were taken. One wonders how many dominant
paradigms in other fields might never have existed had women been
present and influential.
But primatological field work may not be a completely valid
exception to the problem of the general absence of a feminist voice
in the sciences. While primatology is a natural science, it is an
observational, not an experimental, science, and it is experimen-
tation that is seen as the protector against subjectivity, values, and
beliefs. Furthermore, interest in the field of primate behavior is
strongly and consciously motivated by interest in human cultural
evolution, and its findings are strongly interpreted within the frame-
work of their implications for human behaviors and social relation-
ships. It is a science that is close to the social sciences, and its
theories and beliefs can usually be more obviously linked with the
subjectivities and the values of its practitioners than is the case in
the majority of the natural sciences. That is, it would make less of
a claim to objectivity.
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It is these differences between the natural sciences and the other

fields of women's studies that I should like to explore in the course
of my discussion of the ten-plus years' history of feminist critique
of science. Because of the small size of the field and because of m
intimate association with its beginnings, I want to begin with a bit
of personal history and to reveal what may be my idiosyncratic and
arbitrary perspective on a new field.
My own history, before the era of women's studies, from m
medical school days in the 1940s, was as a political activist, on th
left end of the spectrum, and my preferred activity was to agitate
and organize. With the advent of the current women's movemen
I became an agitator against the university administration and
organizer of women at the University of Wisconsin beginning
1970. (And that may be a much more gripping history than the on
I was asked to present here.)
In the University of Wisconsin's first official departmentall
sponsored interdisciplinary course in women's studies, in 1971-7
Joan Roberts, who convened the course through the Education
Policy Studies Department, asked several of us to assess presum
facts, concepts, interpretations, theories, and modes of investigatio
concerning women in our various disciplines. For me, a neuroan
atomist who was accustomed to viewing Truth through a micr
scope, this was a horrendous intellectual challenge. And if I h
been properly trained as a graduate student in the biological sc
ences, rather than as a physician who, after practicing medicin
had a two-year postdoctoral fellowship working on one tiny area of
the brain, I would probably have been overwhelmed and defeat
by the project. How could one even begin to look at the vast are
of evolution, genetics, zoology, molecular and developmental b
ology, and all the other fields a trained biologist is steeped in, a
perceive the fragile threads of gender ideologies? I didn't have t
knowledge base even to begin such an examination.
Fortunately the tiny area of the brain of interest to me was the
hypothalamus, the part connected anatomically and functionall
with the pituitary gland, which, in turn, participates in the reg
lation of all the other endocrine glands in the body. Those endocrin
glands, like the ovaries and testes, in turn, secrete hormones th
participate in their own regulation through feedback loops actin
upon the hypothalamus and the pituitary, in a manner somewh
analagous to a thermostat and furnace heating system. The stu
of the actions of some of those hormones (in particular androgens,
the main secretions of the testes) on the fetal rat brain, actions whi
later influenced behavior (a field called behavioral neuroendocr
nology), happened to be in the 1970s probably one of the mos
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influential research areas in the biological sciences. The mid-cen-

tury heyday of behaviorist psychology, with its environmentalist
and learning explanations for human behaviors and personality, was
over, and both psychologists and natural scientists were once again
determined, as they had been previously, to find biological bases
in genes, hormones, and the brain for gender differences in cognition
and personality.
While my own research was on the structure and organization
of the hypothalamus and not on behaviors or hormones, behavioral
neuroendocrinology was a closely related field, and I could read
the literature with an adequate degree of comprehension. I could
not have chosen a better field to reveal the subjectivities and value-
laden assumptions of scientists and to open up in flagrant array the
forms in which gendered ideologies enter the practice of science:
the unspoken cultural assumptions, the restricted and determining
forms of the questions asked and the language used, the selective
use of evidence, the narrow range of interpretations permitted, and
the questionable conclusions, predetermined by the structure of
the scientific methods used and by the social purposes and beliefs
motivating the research. This hormone-behavioral research was
popularized in contemporary science books like The Naked Ape,
The Territorial Imperative, and the Inevitability of Patriarchy, as
well as in the formulations of the influential sociobiology of E. O.
Wilson, appearing in 1975.
During the early 1970s, to my knowledge, no feminist critiques
of science yet existed, with the single brilliant exception of Ruth
Herschberger's Adam's Rib, published in 1948. And I did not place
my own work in a theoretical context of general critiques of the
natural sciences or, strangely enough, of women's studies, though
I found important connections with work being done by feminist
scholars in primatology and anthropology. Rather, I almost saw my
work as an extension of my guerrilla warfare in the political realm,
taking potshots at established authority, this time in the sciences,
and telling women that their biology was being violated in new and
esoteric ways.
After Roberts's course, I began to lecture in this area in a wom-
en's studies course and at a number of students' women's confer-
ences around the state. It did not occur to me to publish anything
until the University of Michigan Papers in Women's Studies re-
quested a paper, my "Myths of Biological Inferiority of Women: An
Exploration of the Sociology of Biological Research" (2:39-63),
which appeared in 1976. The Michigan paper seems to have been
at least one factor in stimulating feminist critical work in the sci-
ences by a group of women scientists associated with the Boston
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chapter of Science for the People, and they began to publish articles
and collections in 1977. Several papers and edited books appeared
in the following years, including Alice through the Microscope by
the Brighton (England) Women and Science Group in 1980 and the
psychologist Janet Sayers's Biological Politics in 1982. The first
book-length feminist critical analysis of science by a scientist was
my Science and Gender, which appeared in 1984. It was only in
the course of writing that book, beginning in 1980, that I began to
understand what I had been doing in a piecemeal fashion for the
previous eight years. Other books appeared in 1985, 1986, and 1987-
by Evelyn Fox Keller, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Sandra Harding.
These four books, each in its own way, challenged the gendered
nature and structure of science as the embodiment of the male
mind-rigorous, objective, value-free-and the identity of scientists
as quintessentially masculine, that is, objective and tough in how
they think and practice science. The authors question, to differen
degrees, the possibility of objectivity in the scientific method and
the view of science as the progressive discovery or uncovering of
the truths of nature. As have other critics of science, they see a
problematical the relationship of knowledge claims to nature. In
short, feminist critics challenge the very foundations and basic as-
sumptions of Western science and epistemology and their concept
of positivism and rationality. They also reveal the gendered natur
of the body of knowledge we call science and the preoccupation o
scientists since the time of Aristotle with establishing the reality of
gender differences and the natural, biological inferiority of Woman.
In the 1980s, as in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the most
publicized arena for demonstrating women's inferiority is once again
in my own area of research-the neurosciences. Specifically, the
effort has been to demonstrate that sex differences in the structure
and function of the brain underlie presumed gender differences in
cognitive abilities.
As one might expect, of the four authors under discussion, the
two biologists-Anne Fausto-Sterling and I-have presented our
critiques within the context of dominant issues in science, while
the other two-philosophers of science-have placed theirs within
the context of dominant issues in philosophy and psychology. My
own motivation has been the conviction that science creates awe
in many people and that even the bold, questioning, and critica
minds of feminist scholars have sometimes been mystified and in
timidated by the authority and proclaimed objectivity of the sci
entific voice. I see it as an important task for feminist scientists to
demystify science and undermine the authority of its voice, to mak
science with its gendered subjectivities accessible to the critical
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Autumn 1988 / SIGNS
minds of women. It is clear that the work of the few feminist scholars
in the field has opened science as an important area of education
and exploration by many women's studies programs in the United
States in the last few years.
What I have said so far raises at least three questions concerning
the peculiarity of the field of science with respect to feminist crit-
icisms. First, why the intensity of the resistance of the sciences to
feminist criticisms? Second, why so few women scientists engaged
in feminist theory in science or feminist critiques of science? Third,
why is the field so little advanced in comparison with other fields
in women's studies?
To begin with the first question: Why the intense resistance of
mainstream science to feminist criticism-in fact, worse than resis-
tance, the complete ignoring of feminist criticism, with rare excep-
tions ? For example, though Science reviews many books in the areas
of philosophy and sociology of science, it has yet to review any of
the feminist works on science, though three of the four I've dis-
cussed were reviewed by the New York Times. The only two fem-
inist books that Science has reviewed were Margaret Rossiter's
history, Women Scientists in America, reviewed in 1982, and Judy
Leavitt's book, Brought to Bed, reviewed in 1987.
My own misadventures may provide another example of the
resistance of science to feminist criticism and viewpoints.
Around the time Daniel Koshland became the editor of Science,
I submitted a review article describing conceptual, methodological,
and interpretive flaws in several important and widely accepted
areas of gender-differences research. One reviewer recommended
publication, the other reviewer wrote, "While many of Bleier's points
are valid, she tends to err in the opposite direction from the re-
searchers whose results and conclusions she criticizes. While Bleier
states, toward the end of her paper, that she does not 'deny the
possibility of biologically based structural or functional differences
in the brain between women and men,' she argues very strongly
for the predominant role of environmental influences." This is meant
to be an indictment of a completely untenable position. There is,
in short, only one direction in which one may err and still be pub-
lished in Science and other journals, since clearly those studies I
had criticized for their sloppy methods, inconclusive findings, and
unwarranted interpretations and conclusions about the biological
determinants of human behaviors, had all been published in Science
and elsewhere-and, of course, continue to be published.
In 1982, Science published a report (C. DeLacoste-Utamsing
and R. L. Holloway, "Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Corpus
Callosum," Science 216 [1982]: 1431-32), which claimed to provide
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the first reliable evidence of a true morphological gender differenc

in the human brain, a larger and more bulbous portion of the corpu
callosum in females. The corpus callosum is a sheet of nerve fibe
connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. The study was deeply
flawed conceptually and methodologically. Despite the fact that the
study was based on only fourteen brains, the authors claimed th
finding to be of great significance for theories of human evolution
and for theories of cognitive gender differences based on diffe
ences in cerebral lateralization.
Despite these basic scientific flaws-an unstated methodology
in sample selection and an unacceptable sample size, unsupport-
able assumptions leading to overblown interpretations, a "finding"
without a minimum standard of statistical acceptability-Science
found this paper important enough to publish. That the flawed meth-
odology of the study produced flawed results is amply demonstrated
by the failure of at least four subsequent studies independently to
confirm the finding of a sex-related anatomic difference. (R. Bleier,
L. Houston, and W. Byne, "Can the Corpus Callosum Predict Gen-
der, Age, Handedness, or Cognitive Differences?" Trends in
NeuroSciences 9 [1986]: 391-94; S. Demeter, J. Ringo, and R. W.
Doty, "Sexual Dimorphisms in the Human Corpus Callosum," Ab-
stracts of the Society for Neuroscience, 11 [1985]: 868; G. Weber
and S. Weis, "Morphometric Analysis of the Human Corpus Cal-
losum Fails to Reveal Sex-related Differences," Journal Hirnfor-
schungen 27 [1986]: 237-40; S. Witelson, "The Brain Connection:
The Corpus Callosum Is Larger in Ieft-Handers," Science 229 [1985]:
665-68.)
Our own study was based on magnetic resonance images (similar
in appearance to X-rays) of thirty-nine subjects (twenty-two female,
seventeen male). We repeated all of the measurements made by the
original study and added several of our own parameters. We sub-
mitted our paper, of course, to Science, which, of course, rejected
it. But this is not a question of self-correcting science. Despite the
four studies just cited, it is the bulbous female callosum that is
entrenched in the literature.
Science is the official journal of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS), and at the February 1987 meetings
of the AAAS in a panel discussion of gender issues in science, I dis-
cussed my particular problems with Science and contended that, de-
spite its editorial proclamation of dedication to the battle against
conformism, it in fact suppressed dissent. Following this, a reporter
for the San Francisco Examiner called the editor Daniel Koshland,
who said, "I am not saying we never make mistakes. I'm just saying
it's done fairly." She also called Holloway (one of the authors of the
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original study), who said he "felt horrible" about using such a small
sample. "But it was so intriguing we decided to publish. I didn't think
it was premature at all; I felt it was damned important to get it out
right away." He didn't want "to wait and wait like Darwin did-and
almost lose [credit for] the whole thing" (February 22, 1987).
I believe that the resistance of science is a response to a number
of interrelated challenges posed by feminist criticisms. First are the
challenges to positivism, a bedrock principle of Western episte-
mology, and to the objectivity and value neutrality that make of
science, in our society, the best if not the only route to knowledge.
Moreover, unlike the analyses of traditional sociologists of scientific
knowledge, feminist analyses are formulated in gendered terms.
These have implications for the gendered identity, structure, and
content of science, as well as implications for science's role in legiti-
mating society's most cherished gendered beliefs and structures,
namely, that hierarchical gendered social structures are based in
differently gendered human natures. I believe there is a relation-
ship between "scientific" theories of gender differences and of the
inferiority of women and the virtual exclusion of women as col-
leagues and equals from most science departments and other sci-
ence institutions.
Science has been defined at least from the time of Francis Bacon
as a masculine pursuit, as a manifestation of the male mind: tough,
rational, rigorous, objective, free of emotion and subjectivities-the
latter being the province of women and the presumed character-
istics of the female mind. Science is "inextricably intertwined with
the issue of men's gender identities," wrote Sandra Harding (The
Science Question in Feminism [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1986], 63). If women can do science as well as men, then
what does this say about deeply held beliefs concerning the male
mind, male gender identity, the female mind, and science itself?
Further, in science, as in most of life, the work of an army of women
of subordinate status-as wives, research assistants, technicians,
graduate students, and secretaries-has made possible the success
of men who have risen to the top. The overeager and uncritical
acceptance by scientists and the press of scientific theories of wom-
en's inferiority allows scientists-as well as the public-to believe
that women's absence or subordinate status reflects their lack of
drive and intellectual rigor and imagination.
Finally, let's face the fact that science doesn't have to pay any
attention to feminist commentary. It is huge, powerful, rich, and so
multifaceted in its approaches and goals, so lacking in a tradition
of self-scrutiny and self-criticism, that neither intellectual integrity
nor economic need makes it permeable to criticism of any kind.
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To go on to the second question: Why are there so few wome

scientists engaged in the feminist criticism of science? My original
description of active contributors over the past ten years may give
a skewed and overly pessimistic view of the field. While mainstream
science officially takes no notice of feminist scholarship, it is im
portant to note that some national organizations of women scientist
committed primarily to issues of equal educational and employment
opportunities in science, have finally taken official note of the ex-
istence of a feminist viewpoint on science and urged members t
acquaint themselves with the literature. There are, in addition,
judging from letters, syllabi, and manuscripts I receive, wome
scientists scattered throughout the country who view the emerging
feminist critiques as a factor in preserving their sanity while doing
science. With increasing numbers of women going into gradua
study in science, wherever you have a critical mass of women-a
in the Neuroscience Training Program on this campus-you also
have a feminist presence.
It is always difficult to do science that is fun, interesting, an
risky in the intensely competitive setting that today's Big Scienc
provides. Because of the intense pressures imposed by competitiv
mainstream science, off-beat ideas cannot be pursued, risky experi-
ments that might not produce "expected" results cannot be unde
taken, unexpected findings-the kinds that are often the basis f
new and provocative ideas and theories-must be ignored. These
are problems for all but the established elites in science. This helps
explain the low proportion of critical science of any kind, feminist
or nonfeminist.
But to get to the more specific question of why so few women
scientists are doing feminist theory in science. My first speculation
has to do with what I see as a contrast between women who went
into medicine and those going into science. Women who battled
their way into medicine as physicians in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century and early twentieth century saw themselves (or at
least said they saw themselves) as women, accepting society's ste-
reotypes of women as nurturing, maternal, the caring sex, et cetera,
and made the argument that medicine needed these qualities and,
therefore, needed them (Ruth Bleier, "The Cultural Price of Social
Exclusion: Gender and Science" [paper delivered at the American
Historical Association Meetings, Washington, D.C., December 29,
1987]).
In contrast, women who went into science, saw and see them-
selves as scientists. They may also have accepted social stereotypes
of women, but saw themselves as having male minds, as "thinking
like men," that is, like good scientists. They rejected the notion of
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Autumn 1988 / SIGNS
women's values or viewpoints as being relevant to good science.

These attitudes might explain, at least in part, why so few wome
scientists are feminists or identify with the women's movement.
For example, a relatively large number of women scientists study
gender differences. Of the approximately twelve who publish in
the area of sex differences in brain structure and function under-
lying presumed gender differences in cognitive functioning, only
two of us dissent from the dominant paradigm that assumes cog-
nitive gender differences and the existence somewhere of explan-
atory brain differences. This is in contrast with the fifty-fifty
proportion among the men in the field. Doubtless the women add
luster to their already exceptional status with theories that make
them even more exceptional.
A second and rather obvious and practical reason why there are
so few women scientists doing feminist criticism in science is that,
with rare exceptions, you cannot be both an experimental scientist
and a philosopher/sociologist/critical theorist of science. Recogniz-
ing that the struggle is still far from over in other fields, neverthe-
less, work in women's history can be a part or all of one's scholarship
in the field of history, as is true for feminist literary criticism, et
cetera. Feminist criticism in science is not only not a part of but is
antithetical to a scientist's "real" work. To be a scientist means to
do experiments, to publish, and to get grants so that you can do
experiments and publish and have a job.
These problems are, of course, exacerbated simply by being a
woman in a science department, a circumstance that means one's
seriousness and dedication to science cannot be questioned for a
moment. The situation has changed but little in science since 1970.
Finally, why is the field so little advanced compared with other
areas of women's studies? One obvious answer is, of course, the
size-there are so few working in the field. There is no community
of feminist scholars-no Berks of science, no MLA caucus for the
exchange of papers and ideas and support. And the literature is
relatively small. In addition, because of the small numbers, a lim-
ited range of scientific fields is represented. Therefore there may
be a lack of breadth of experience and knowledge necessary to
stimulate new theories and approaches.
But the work has begun and progress will continue to be made
as more women scientists and feminist scholars, no longer awed by
science, become engaged in the task.
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A Decade of Feminist Critiques of The Natural Sciences

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A Decade of Feminist Critiques in the Natural Sciences: An Address by Ruth Bleier

Author(s): Judith Walzer Leavitt and Linda Gordon

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3174666

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