Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences
By Hilary Rose
Polity, 1994. $39.95
Reviewed by Neville Spencer
Hilary Rose covers a diverse spectrum of issues in Love, Power and Knowledge — feminist theories of science, the role of women in science, eugenics and reproductive technology, and feminist science fiction writing. It is possible to comment only on some of them here.
Although women are under-represented in almost all areas of academic study and research, their absence from science is particularly stark. Some improvements have taken place since the rise of the feminist movement in the early '70s. In the US the proportion of doctorates awarded to women has moved from 7% to 16% in the physical sciences, 7% to 34% in life sciences and from less than 1% to 7% in engineering.
This does not, however, represent a steady march toward equal participation. The proportion of women in science generally diminishes the further one moves up the ladder of prestige. In fact other figures demonstrate backward steps. For instance, in 1870, 33% of US academic staff were women whilst in 1970 the figure was 25%.
Shut out
As Rose explains, women are both shut out of science and socialised to shut themselves out. As well as the general discouragement, those who still have the will and capability have often had their work under-valued or have even faced deliberate obstacles to keep them out of the world of the scientific elite.
Women scientists often work with male scientists, and credit is usually assumed to belong to male scientists only. Whilst the name of Albert Einstein is almost synonymous with the term scientist, his more mathematically capable wife Mileva Einstein Maric is practically unknown. Though both names originally appeared on the manuscript of the famous 1905 article which outlined the theory of relativity, her name was removed from the published version. Similar and even more serious incidents are not uncommon.
The elite institutions of science have been especially tenacious in guarding themselves from women scientists. Rose cites the example of the prestigious Royal Society in Britain, which had exclusively male membership for over 300 years. Even once it had become clearly illegal to exclude women, the society manoeuvred to continue its policy of exclusion, eventually capitulating only in 1945.
Nobel laureate Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin recalls a conversation she had with physicist Desmond Bernal on the steps of the Royal Society. After discussing her work, Bernal told her she would surely get a Nobel Prize. When she replied that she would rather be elected to the Royal Society, Bernal told her, "that's more difficult."
The equivalent institution in France, the Academy, barred women until 1979. This is a particularly stark demonstration of sexism given that it meant refusing membership to both Nobel laureate Irene Curie and double Nobel laureate Marie Curie. In other cases, scientific recognition has usually been forthcoming from other institutions once the Nobel committee (itself not beyond charges of sexism) has recognised women scientists.
Necessary scepticism
The treatment of women within male-dominated sciences has hardly demonstrated science's objectivity. Consequently, feminism has been a significant challenge to the claims of science to be the final arbiter of truth. Modern feminism grew up alongside those who were challenging the threat of nuclear annihilation and the high-tech destruction of Vietnam and its people, making its sceptical attitude toward science all the more necessary.
Feminism challenged the traditional enlightenment view of scientific knowledge as something lying above the conflicts of society. Notably, it was largely the feminist movement which challenged the rise of sociobiology in the '70s.
Sociobiology sought to explain all human behaviour on the basis of biology. Knowledge of a person's genetic construction, it claimed, would yield knowledge of their personality and behaviour. This also meant that it would yield knowledge of the social status which arose therefrom. The low social status of the poor or blacks or women was simply a product of their inferior genetic make-up.
Many feminists subjected sociobiology to devastating critiques, clearly exposing this attempt to use science to defend the status quo. In spite of this, their critiques have not always been recognised; because sociobiology arose from within the male-dominated institutions of science, it has been widely accepted as science, while feminism has not.
The use of science to deny women their rights has brought most feminists to realise the socially constructed nature of science, but this has not always resulted in an accurate conception of science. Rose notes the tendency toward a monolithic rejection of science, "throwing out the baby of feminist rationality along with the bath water of masculine rationality".
Rose tries to tread a path between strong social constructionist views such as anti-scientific postmodernism and the blind acceptance of science as truth. She demonstrates how feminism can be used as a critique of science without abandoning rationalism and realism.
The exclusion of so many women from science has meant that not many women have been in a position to provide a similar critique. Although feminist critiques have challenged and developed many areas of human knowledge, few women have been able to challenge science from within. Books such as Love, Power and Knowledge are consequently both rare and valuable.