7th European Feminist Research Conference
“Gendered Cultures at the Crossroads of Imagination, Knowledge and Politics”
4-7 June 2009, Utrecht University
Abstracts to the Panel:
Crossing Perspectives on Gender and Physics
Session No. 66
Sunday, June 7, 9:00 - 11:30 am
Ruppert Building, Room C
Physics is done in a cultural and social context, structured by gender, which can be
experienced by the active physicist. However, the scholarly exploration of this
experience is most often done within the disciplines of gender research. Until now
little dialogue has taken place between active physicists and gender researchers.
With the aim to bridge that gap, an international research collaboration has been
recently created at the Centre for Gender Research at the University of
Uppsala/Sweden. The group integrates expertise from science studies and history of
science, education, social and political science with a training in physics, where the
majority has begun their professional careers, some are still working in physics
research.
Thus crossing disciplinary perspectives has become substantial to the work of each
of us. It is essential to explore the complex linkages between social structure of doing
physics and the set-up of its cognitive problems, its goals and its results. The
dialogue between is seen as the precondition for change in both respects: the
participation of women and the shaping of research agendas.
The research projects of the group contribute to the following thematical fields:
Detecting Gender: Knowledge-Making in Physics
The Anomaly of a Woman in Physics
Dynamics of a Masculine Field: Learning & Teaching
Applying Physics at our Service
Our collaboration includes active networking to bring representatives from both fields
together and facilitate exchange of knowledge and perceptions. The panel intends to
communicate our objectives within a broader European context and enlarge the
network on the topics concerning gender and physics.
More information about the group’s activities within the GenNa-programme
“Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters” at the Centre for Gender Research at
the University of Uppsala/Sweden are available here:
http://www.genna.gender.uu.se/
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Martina Erlemann, Augsburg/Vienna (E-mail: erlemann@wzu.uni-augsburg.de)
Epistemic Cultures of Physics and their Gendering in Public Discourse
Many studies from feminist science and technology studies have shown that sciences
– among them physics – are far from being gender neutral. Physics has been shown
as being highly gendered in different perspectives: concerning the domination of men
in physics research and education, concerning the institutional structures of higher
education and research systems and – this is crucial – concerning knowledge
producing practices and epistemic ideologies. In other words doing physics is doing
gender. Doing physics is widely constructed as a masculine activity and provides
possibilities for physicists to perform – to refer to Robert Connell – the “men of
reason”, a form of masculinity that is grounded in an ideology of rationality. This is
entrenched with the epistemic ideologies of physics as gaining universal, objective
and value-neutral knowledge about nature in that the competence to follow these
epistemic ideals is rather ascribed to men than to women. Therefore this contributes
to the unequal gender distribution in physics. But the gendering of epistemic cultures
of physics is not restricted to within physics, it becomes visible also in public
discourses. In this paper I will discuss the gendering of physics in the German print
media coverage of physics. Coverage of current research in physics is dominated by
two styles of representations of doing physics, an emotionalising and an objectifying
style. In both styles doing physics is constructed as a set of epistemic practices which
are gendered as masculine so that women are presented as being incompatible with
doing physics. But there are also few articles that criticize the epistemic ideologies of
physics. So these ideologies that are gendering physics as a masculine activity are
more and more up for debate. But nevertheless also in these critical accounts in the
media there is still no reflection of the constructedness itself of the gendering of
physics.
Helene Götschel, Hamburg/Uppsala (E-Mail: helene.gotschel@gender.uu.se)
Gender Research in Material Sciences: Stories to tell and Cultures of
Knowledge
Gender studies in natural science (mostly biology) and technology have been carried
out in North America and Europe since the 1970s. By now researchers pertaining to
many different fields such as physics, philosophy, sociology, science studies, history,
cultural studies and other areas of research are working, reflecting and diffracting on
physics. They are exploring the possibilities, ways and means of applying relevant
approaches, methods and theories that have been developed in other disciplines and
trans-disciplinary areas to the field of gender & physics. They created a research field
that I suggest to structure by the following three levels of research questions: (i)
Actors and organisations in physics, (ii) Gender analysis of physical knowledge, (iii)
Gender-democratic production of physics. In my paper I would like to explicate these
three levels of gender and physics and illustrate them with some colourful examples
of studies that are reflecting and diffracting on physics from a gendered perspective.
This outline of the field might help us to discuss the questions of what has been done
and what is missing so far in the research field Gender & Physics. With this
introduction I hope particularly to make more physicists curious about this crossdisciplinary field and to inspire them to enrich gender & physics with their
competence and experience.
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Brigitte Bischof, Vienna (E-mail: brigitte.bischof@chello.at)
Re-searching women in physics in Vienna. Remarkable but forgotten
developments and biographies
The search for women in sciences was one of the first purposes of feminist
examinations in this field. Since the eighties of the last century you can find
numerous biographies, biographical collections and studies of women in science. In
my research I concentrate on the situation of women in science in Vienna. The
amount of women in science and especially in physics in Vienna was remarkable
right from the beginning since women’s admission to university. There can be found a
boom in physics at the University of Vienna in the thirties of the Twentieth Century,
and it is in the interwar years, that there were not only many female students but also
many female physicists continuing their scientific research. By using a broad variety
of methodological approaches, not only the careers of these women are recovered,
but also the role of a female physicist and its transformation in the context to the
social, cultural and political developments of the time will be questioned. Besides
telling the stories of the female physicists, who they were, where they came from,
where they went and what they were interested in – as individuals and as group,
another purpose of my investigation is to find explanations for the remarkable gender
distribution in the Viennese physics community. To what extend is the situation in
Vienna part of the general development of women in science and in how far is it a
product of particular conditions in Vienna? Are there scientific fields and/or research
practices, which seem to attract especially women scientists? The gender
perspective promises important findings concerning the history and culture of physics
in Vienna on the one hand, but also further insights in the development of career
possibilities of women in sciences respectively of exclusion mechanisms on the
other.
Helena Pettersson, Los Angeles (E-mail: hpettersson@ucla.edu)
Gender, Femininity and Masculinities in Oral Histories and Laboratory Culture
among Plasma Physicist
The aim of this paper is to analyze how gender, femininities and masculinities are
negotiated among experimental plasma physicists. The analysis is founded on
following observations and deep interviews with plasma physicists at a laboratory in
the west coast of the United States. The point of departure is my informant’s
definitions of laboratory work, which is a central activity and continuously defined
through daily practice and narratives. In addition to experimentation and analysis,
research meanings are articulated through hands-on knowledge and skills in building
equipment and machines. Even though the lab is described as a neutral space
without gender biases or hierarchy, different set of necessary skills are tied to values
of unspoken masculinities. In my informants’ oral histories, narrated and practical
skills are central stories when my informants’ construct the essence of experimental
physics as experimental physicists. The informants’ ability to conduct research is
dependent on their family situation, ability to move to other experimental sites and
participate in networks of other physicists. These gendered practices affect the
physicist’s idea of the requirements for conducting good physics. My work is situated
at the trisection of gender studies, science and technology studies and cultural
anthropology, where I focus on narratives on the construction of gendered research
identities, knowledge representations and embodied practices in laboratories. My
results can be used to further develop a feminist understanding of the relationship
between gender and physics, but can also be used to develop policies concerning
equality and the conditions for knowledge making cultures in the academy.
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Cathrine Hasse, Copenhagen (E-mail: caha@dpu.dk)
Cultural models of gender in science
How does culture influence female scientists career paths? Over the next decades
the general decrease in populations will affect all sectors of higher education and
research in Europe. It is a matter of utmost concern that well-qualified female
scientists seldom reach top-level positions to the same extent as their male
counterparts and often leave the research system prematurely. This is a fact that has
been well established in a number of studies. In the UPGEM-project (Understanding
Puzzles in the Gendered European Map, www.upgem.dk) we have, based on
research data, created three clusters of cultural models, which can pave or block the
way for female scientists: the Hercules, the Caretakers and the Worker bees culture.
From this point of departure we have also discussed different cultural models of
gender in science, which in some ways might suggest new challenges to mainstream
gender theory.
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