Editing Feminism (section)

== Science ==
{{Further|Feminist epistemology}}

[[Sandra Harding]] says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender, sex and relations within and between the social and natural worlds."<ref name=Harding_method>{{cite book |author=Harding, Sandra |editor=Nancy Tuana |date=1989 |title=Feminism & Science |chapter=Is There a Feminist Method |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gQQkAvU4S1oC&pg=PA17 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-20525-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/feminismscience0000unse/page/17 17] |url=https://archive.org/details/feminismscience0000unse/page/17}}</ref> Some feminists, such as [[Ruth Hubbard]] and [[Evelyn Fox Keller]], criticize traditional [[rhetoric of science|scientific discourse]] as being historically biased towards a male perspective.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hubbard, Ruth |date=1990 |title=The Politics of Women's Biology |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-1490-1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/politicsofwomens00hubb/page/16 16] |url=https://archive.org/details/politicsofwomens00hubb/page/16}}</ref> A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in scientific and academic institutions.<ref name="QCommRsrch">{{cite book |last1=Lindlof |first1=Thomas R. |last2=Taylor |first2=Bryan C. |title=Qualitative Communication Research Methods |url=https://archive.org/details/qualitativecommu00lind |url-access=registration |publisher=SAGE Publications |location=Thousand Oaks, Calif |date=2002 |isbn=978-0-7619-2493-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/qualitativecommu00lind/page/357 357]}}</ref> Physicist [[Lisa Randall]], appointed to a task force at Harvard by then-president [[Lawrence Summers]] after his controversial discussion of why women may be underrepresented in science and engineering, said, "I just want to see a whole bunch more women enter the field so these issues don't have to come up anymore."<ref>{{cite news |author=Holloway, Marguerite |title=The Beauty of Branes |url=http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-beauty-of-branes |date=26 September 2005 |work=Scientific American |publisher=Nature America |access-date=12 December 2011 |page=2}}</ref>

Lynn Hankinson Nelson writes that feminist empiricists find fundamental differences between the experiences of men and women. Thus, they seek to obtain knowledge through the examination of the experiences of women and to "uncover the consequences of omitting, misdescribing, or devaluing them" to account for a range of human experience.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hankinson Nelson, Lynn |date=1990 |title=Who Knows: From Quine To a Feminist Empiricism |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-0-87722-647-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whoknowsfromquin0000nels/page/30 30] |url=https://archive.org/details/whoknowsfromquin0000nels/page/30}}</ref> Another part of the feminist research agenda is the uncovering of ways in which power inequities are created or reinforced in society and in scientific and academic institutions.<ref name="QCommRsrch"/> Furthermore, despite calls for greater attention to be paid to structures of gender inequity in the academic literature, structural analyses of gender bias rarely appear in highly cited psychological journals, especially in the commonly studied areas of psychology and personality.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cortina |first1=L. M. |last2=Curtin |first2=N. |last3=Stewart |first3=A. J. |date=2012 |title=Where Is Social Structure in Personality Research? A Feminist Analysis of Publication Trends |journal=[[Psychology of Women Quarterly]] |volume=36 |issue=3 |pages=259–73 |doi=10.1177/0361684312448056 |s2cid=13065637}}</ref>

One criticism of feminist epistemology is that it allows social and political values to influence its findings.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hankinson Nelson, Lynn |date=1997 |title=Feminism, Science, And the Philosophy of Science |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-7923-4611-1 |page=61}}</ref> [[Susan Haack]] also points out that feminist epistemology reinforces traditional stereotypes about women's thinking (as intuitive and emotional, etc.); [[Meera Nanda]] further cautions that this may in fact trap women within "traditional gender roles and help justify patriarchy".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-epistemology/ |title=Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science |author=Anderson, Elizabeth |access-date=1 April 2024 |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=August 2000 |editor=Edward N. Zalta}}</ref>

=== Biology and gender ===
{{further|Gender essentialism|Sexual differentiation}}
Modern feminism challenges the essentialist view of [[gender]] as biologically intrinsic.<ref>{{cite book |last=Code |first=Lorraine |title=Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories |publisher=Taylor & Francis |date=2000 |isbn=978-0-415-13274-9 |page=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaoffe0000unse/page/89 89] |url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaoffe0000unse/page/89}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Bem |first=Sandra L. |title=The lenses of gender: transforming the debate on sexual inequality |date=1993 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-05676-1 |location=New Haven |pages=6}}</ref> For example, [[Anne Fausto-Sterling]]'s book, ''Myths of Gender'', explores the assumptions embodied in [[scientific]] research that support a biologically [[essentialist]] view of gender.<ref name="Fausto-Sterling">{{Cite book |last=Fausto-Sterling |first=Anne |title=Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men |date=1992 |publisher=BasicBooks |location=New York |isbn=978-0-465-04792-5}}</ref> In ''[[Delusions of Gender]]'', [[Cordelia Fine]] disputes scientific evidence that suggests that there is an innate biological difference between men's and women's minds, asserting instead that cultural and societal beliefs are the reason for differences between individuals that are commonly perceived as sex differences.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fine |first=Cordelia |author-link=Cordelia Fine |title=Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, And Neurosexism Create Difference |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |date=2010}}{{page needed|date=October 2012}}</ref>

=== Feminist psychology ===
{{main|Feminist psychology}}
Feminism in psychology emerged as a critique of the dominant male outlook on psychological research where only male perspectives were studied with all male subjects. As women earned doctorates in psychology, women and their issues were introduced as legitimate topics of study. Feminist psychology emphasizes social context, lived experience, and qualitative analysis.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Worell |first1=Judith |title=Feminism in Psychology: Revolution or Evolution? |journal=[[The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science]] |date=September 2000 |volume=571 |pages=183–96 |url=http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~pchsiung/summer/SCMEDIA/Worell.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714173114/http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~pchsiung/summer/SCMEDIA/Worell.pdf |archive-date=14 July 2014 |url-status=live |access-date=12 July 2014 |doi=10.1177/0002716200571001013 |jstor=1049142}}</ref> Projects such as [[Psychology's Feminist Voices]] have emerged to catalogue the influence of feminist psychologists on the discipline.<ref>{{cite web |title=Psychology's Feminist Voices |url=http://www.feministvoices.com |website=Psychology's Feminist Voices |access-date=12 July 2014}}</ref>