THE BOOKS

Hugh Munby and Peter Chin, Section Editors

Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine, edited by AngelaN. H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and Londa Schiebinger, 2001. University of ChicagoPress, Chicago, IL. xii + 244 pp. ISBN 0-226-12024-4.

Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine takes stock of theincredible amount of work that has been done by feminist scholars in, and the impact offeminism on, the fields of science, technology, and medicine over the last three decades inthe United States. The underlying assumption of all the essays is that science, technology,and medicine are not gender neutral and are socially constructed to reflect the values,prejudices, and gender biases of society. While feminism as a theoretical framework is theworking premise, feminism is also a product of a particular period and its definition haschanged over time making it difficult for many of the authors to be other than general aboutthe actual connection between feminism and the three fields. What the reader gets insteadis a rather generic definition of feminism (or an essential definition) with little discussionof feminisms and their influence. There is also a wistfulness in the book as scholars lookback to a time when feminists were much more optimistic about what they could change;although there is a sense that goals have not been reached, there is also an acknowledgmentthat compared to 30 years ago there has been a change in attitudes and conceptualization.

The book is divided into three sections. The first focusing on science consists of fouressays: “Doing Social Science as a Feminist: The Engendering of Archeology,” by AlisonWylie; “The Paradox of Feminist Primatology: The Goddess’s Discipline?” by Linda MarieFedigan; “Revisiting Women, Gender, and Feminism in Developmental Biology,” by ScottF. Gilbert and Karen A. Rader; and “Making a Difference: Feminist Movement and FeministCritiques of Science,” by Evelyn Fox Keller. The section on technology has five essays,although the last one by Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “Medicine, Technology, and Gender inthe History of Prenatal Diagnosis,” could just as easily have been put in the section onmedicine. The other four papers in the technology section are Carroll Pursell’s “Feminismand the Rethinking of the History of Technology,” Ruth Oldenziel’s “Man the Maker,Woman the Consumer: The Consumption Junction Revisited,” Pamela E. Mack’s “WhatDifference Has Feminism Made to Engineering in the Twentieth Century,” and Michael S.Mahoney’s “Boys’ Toys and Women’s Work: Feminism Engages Software.” The medicalsection has only three papers, which is ironic since the work in this field has more depthand sophistication that the other two. Three excellent papers, however, more than representthe quality of the work being done: “On Bodies, Technologies, and Feminism,” by NellyOudshoorn; “Rationality, Feminism, and Mine,” by Emily Martin; and “Gendering theEpidemic: Feminism and the Epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the United States, 1981–1999,” byEvelynn M. Hammonds.

There is a structural commonality among many of the essays, particularly those lookingat science and technology and specific fields within them. The structure tends to follow thechronological order in which feminist impact appeared and reflects an increasing complexity

C© 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.DOI 10.1002/sce.10102

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in that impact. The first might be termed the recovery stage, identifying women who hadworked in specific disciplines in the past. The second is evaluating how successful theshift in equity thinking has been in getting more women into a specific field. The third isassessing how influential the broader social context of feminism in society or the presenceof women in the various fields has been in changing the focus of what scholars considerlegitimate topics for investigation. The fourth, and the one which many of the authors feelis most significant as proof of feminism’s real effect, is whether or not there has been anychange in how people in the field do their work. Has feminism changed the essential natureof what a field is? In looking at this issue, there is a sense of disappointment that more hasnot been accomplished; but changing fundamental precepts is perhaps more revolutionarythan some of the authors might be willing to concede.

The four papers in the Science section conform to the above structure the most. Part ofthe recovery stage that Wylie describes in looking at archaeology is not women who inthe past worked as archaeologists but rather the recognition by archaeologists that womenwere part of the past. The actual impact of feminism and feminist thinking on specificfields is quite fascinating to read. Gilbert and Rader make it clear that feminism itselfinfluenced the language of biology and the way in which research programs in the fieldwere critiqued. But while impact in content can been seen in many of the field disciplines,there seems to have been little influence on the way in which any worked. Fedigan’s reviewof primatology acknowledges the success women have had in the field yet the reluctanceof so many of them to adopt the label of feminist. She argues three reasons for this: the fearthat “feminized” disciplines are devalued; that feminism is seen as political and thus notthe territory of scientists; and the belief that science is a different world (objective) fromthat in which feminism exists. If the fourth stage is defined somewhat differently then thereis some success. Keller’s overview and summary of what has been happening in scienceconceives the fourth stage as feminists reflecting on their own assumptions, which led togreater sensitivity to race.

The difference between the science and technology essays is that the former are largelywritten from within the discipline whereas some of those focusing on technology do sofrom the outside, critiquing it through an examination of the history of technology. Therecovery stage for the authors in this section exists but more as a given than as a focus. Ofmore interest has been what the recovery of women and their relationship with technologyhas illustrated. For example, in looking at the history of technology, Pursell introducesthe importance of women as makers of technology but also raises the presence of somewomen who act as antitechnocrats, challenging the forms technology takes. For Oldenzielthe significant change is recognizing that women were users of technology in a very activeway. In areas less welcoming to women, such as engineering, the focus is on getting womeninto the profession, which Mack traces in her paper. Mahoney is optimistic about the abilityof feminism to make a difference in software engineering, perhaps because unlike so manyof the other fields, scientific or technological, it is a relatively new.

The fact that medicine is given a separate section reveals its anomalous position asa science—it is and it isn’t—but also the tremendous scholarly work that has focusedattention on it. The work reflected in these papers is not about the profession per se butrather the way in which physicians and medical issues impinge on the lives and bodiesof women. While Cowan’s paper is placed with the papers on technology, it also workswell in the medical section since she looks at the contradictions within the contact zoneof feminism and medical practice. She exposes the irony of women using their agencywith respect to prenatal diagnosis to expand a procedure that medicalizes pregnancy. Indoing so she illustrates the need to break down the simplistic binaries of passive/active andvictim/agent.

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The three papers that are placed under medicine are more research oriented than the othersin the book, although Oudshoorn’s paper is more of a historiographical look at how scholarsin the field of the body shifted focus over time. In the early days of feminism, feminists didn’tlook at body but denied body. Once gender emerged as a concept, however, the body becamea historical body and thus a possible subject for the social sciences. Yet she is right to pointout “the sex-gender distinction did not challenge the essentialist notion of a natural body”(p. 200)—the wealth of research on women’s bodies contains the danger of suggesting thecentrality of the biological in women’s lives compared to men’s. Martin carefully takes thereader through the shifting interpretations of manic–depression. Whereas once seen as anillness, it is now being viewed as an advantage in certain areas; whereas once consideredpredominantly a problem of women, it is now seen as experienced by men as well. Theemotionality of the manic phase has become positive and thus open to male experience.Hammonds queries the strength or purpose of feminism itself in her examination of AIDS.In the 1980s women were placed in one of two categories: those infected by the HIV virusand those affected by those who had it. For feminist activists, the strategy was to makethe infected visible and to break down the stereotypes about them. Yet when the feministliterature of the 1980s is examined, AIDS does not loom large. Hammonds leaves us withthe troubling question: “When we say we are feminists, who are the ‘we’ and at what price?”(p. 240).

While the papers that focus on medicine seem rather different in concept than many ofthe others, they are responses to the central question of the book: what impact has feminismhad? The research agenda is so much more nuanced, complex, and reflective than it was30 years previously. This is in large measure a consequence of feminism.

WENDY MITCHINSONDepartment of HistoryUniversity of WaterlooWaterloo, OntarioCanada N2L 3G1

Understanding Science Lessons: Five Years of Science Teaching, by Michael J. Reiss(2000). Open University Press, Buckingham and Philadelphia, PA. v + 170 pp. ISBN0-335-19769-8.

This book reports a longitudinal study of the science lessons experienced by 21 schoolstudents, in a school in Cambridgeshire, England, during the years of their compulsorysecondary science education. The book opens with a quotation from Lea and West (1995,p. 178) “the autobiography of the researcher is always present.” Michael Reiss writes inthe first person throughout the book, being as explicit as possible with the reader about thepersonal interpretative lens through which the science lessons are presented. My review ofthe book could perhaps begin with this same quotation: while reading, I found myself remi-niscing about my own teaching career, the early part of which was spent in Cambridgeshire,and about my experience of English science teachers and learners. Reiss brings the sciencelessons, the students, and the teachers to life through his accounts, and I certainly enjoyedreading the book.

Understanding Science Lessons is structured around seven chapters. The first of thesegives an introduction to the aims and methods of the study. The next five chapters followthe school science careers of 21 students chronologically through the 5 years of secondary