I want to illustrate some of the challenges we face by describing my personal experience as a feminist in science. The concepts I will address are hierarchies of knowledge, science in a social context, the nature nurture debate, and the politics of knowledge.

Hierarchies of knowledge

I grew up on a farm in Central Pennsylvania. When I applied to college I chose to study the only thing I knew - agriculture. My father, a farmer, attended the undergraduate freshman orientation with me. He went to a separate session where they told him that Animal Science was a rigorous science curriculum and the majors maintained one of the highest grade point averages in the university. When he reported this to me, I felt a sense of pride. While growing up I faced the daily attitude among my high school peers and teachers that farmers, and rural people in general, were ignorant or simple minded. We were spoken to, treated, and referred to disrespectfully and dismissively. In college, as I took my courses in chemistry, biology, biochemistry, physics and calculus I learned more about hierarchies of knowledge. I learned that science students were smarter, and therefore better, than those in the social sciences and humanities. I learned that science was objective knowledge, based on facts. I learned that using the scientific method with rigorous experimental design and quantitative analysis was the supreme way of learning about the world. The elitism was a balm to my bruised rural soul.

Since I grew up during the 1960s and was an undergraduate in the early-mid 1970s, I also learned about the importance of social justice. Equality, freedom and justice were the ideals of the time. I don’t remember when I first heard about women’s liberation or feminism, but I always identified myself with those movements. The ideas immediately resonated with my spirit and vision. Feminist knowledge has its roots in validating women’s experiences and giving names to previously silenced or ignored knowledge and experiences. Through feminism, experiences and observations that resided in the margins of my consciousness and awareness were given names and clarity. I learned that subjective knowledge held truth also. I learned that the social sciences and humanities could give us analyses and explanations of the world equally as important as what I learned in science. I learned there were multiple ways of knowing. The enlightenment was healing to my lonely soul.

Science in a Social Context

The sciences are a social product. They have histories. They are developed by people and governments with political, economic and social agendas. As a behavioral geneticist, my Ph.D. advisor, was a fan of Sir Francis Galton, the British founder of modern statistics, regression analysis, the disciplines of psychometry, anthropometry and behavioral genetics .... and eugenics. Inspired by my advisor’s enthusiasm for Galton I read more about this creative genius. I learned that Galton coined the term eugenics and envisioned a world where people would marry and have children based on their intellectual superiority. He wanted to guide the human race in its evolution. Galton had a dim view of women’s intelligence, abilities, and their evolutionary worth. As a woman it was hard for me to identify with a man who had such a low opinion of my sex. I knew I wouldn’t be invited to sit and discuss his most recent findings.

I kept reading about eugenics. Beyond the theory of eugenics was the practice. In Great Britain the practice of eugenics resulted in changes in immigration laws to keep out the inferior, which included Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. In the United States the practice of eugenics resulted in tens of thousands of people labeled genetically inferior being forcibly sterlized in institutions and prisons. In Nazi Germany the practice of eugenics was called racial hygiene and supported the extermination of three groups of people labeled inferior: people with disabilities, Gypsies and Jews.

I knew about the Holocaust, but I didn’t know about the science that assisted it in theory and practice. I didn’t know that eugenics was developed by the leading geneticists at the time. I was appalled that I could receive a Ph.D. in genetics and never learn about eugenics. It hadn’t been mentioned in any course, any seminar, or any conversation. I wondered how fit geneticists were today if they didn’t know about the history of their discipline, or the uses that had been made of their science. I then realized the importance of learning the history and social context of science. To be a responsible geneticist one needed to know about prejudice and oppression and the social and political goals of science. One needed to understand these dynamics in history and the contemporary world around us. For example, right before us is the human genome project. What use will be made of the information that comes from that? How will we avoid future disasters if we know nothing of the past?

I was teaching a course in human genetics in the biology department at this time. I still naively thought that someone had forgotten to tell me about eugenics, that it was left out of the curriculum because so many important things had to be covered, that everyone thought that someone else was teaching it. I soon discovered that wasn’t the case. When I told faculty members of my intention to include a lecture on eugenics, I received frowns and looks of discomfort. I was urged to leave it out, or make only a brief mention of it at the end of the course. I then realized that eugenics hadn’t been accidentally left out of the curriculum, that teaching about the negative history of genetics was like airing science’s dirty laundry. I also learned that my colleagues were profoundly uncomfortable in discussing discrimination or inequalities, either past or present.

Nature or Nurture

The nature nurture debate about how much of who we are is determined by our biological makeup and how much is determined by what we learn in the world in which we live is a long, ongoing argument. Each side, while possibly giving lip service to the other, goes on researching and theorizing from their own perspective. The disciplines are structured in rigid ways that make this divide inevitable. Often conversations between the two are impossible.

As a graduate assistant in the genetics program I conducted experiments on the genetics of alcohol consumption in mice. Inbred strains of mice, which are 99.9% genetically similar, were used to assess the genetic influence on alcohol intake. Two inbred strains of mice, the C57Blks and the DBAs, consistently showed profound differences in their alcohol intake when offered the choice of water and a 10% alcohol solution. The C57Blks never failed to prefer alcohol to water. The DBAs never drank the alcohol solution. The difference was absolute, not mean differences. My advisor was the pioneer of this area of research. Long term studies he initiated demonstrated the genetic influence on alcohol consumption and tolerance to alcohol in mice. From a genetically heterogeneous stock of mice he selectively bred mice for preference and tolerance of alcohol. There was impressive response to the selection experiments which demonstrated that these behaviors were quantitative genetic traits, meaning that they were not due to single gene effects, but to the combined effect of many genes.

As part of my developing feminism I started volunteering at the local women’s center for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. There I met a lot of women and teenagers who were survivors of years abuse. I learned about the circumstances of their lives and how they used alcohol as a form of pain relief. They self-medicated to numb the emotional pain and escape the often daily horrors. It was impossible to connect their behavior with the mice in the lab.

I continued to volunteer at the women’s center and soon I was inhabiting separate worlds. My day work was based on scientific knowledge and the use of the scientific method as a way of knowing and learning about the world. My night work was based on feminist knowledge and empathy was the way of knowing and learning about the world. The two worlds were unconnectable - cognitively and emotionally. They seemed antithetical to each other. The people who populated these different worlds were hostile to the other. The one world was unmentionable to the other. The few times I thought I had a sympathetic hear, I was quickly frozen out. No one in the women’s center wanted to hear about laboratory experiments with mice, and no one in the lab wanted to hear about battered women and sexually abused children. Being caught between two unreconcilable worlds is lonely, alienating and deeply distressing. The only solution seemed to be to choose one or the other.

Politics of Scientific Knowledge

As a result of my feminist enlightenment and readings on the history of science I learned that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, was created by people, usually men, who, at times, had strong political views, and the scientific findings were used for political purposes.

As I progressed in my personal and professional development I refused to let go of either world I was occupying, although the going was getting rougher all the time. Eventually, I was teaching genetics and women’s studies simultaneously. One day I overheard a women’s studies student and campus activist say, "Well, even if scientists can prove there are biologically based gender differences between men and women, women can never accept them. You know they’ll just use them against us." I froze and became rooted to the spot. My mind split in two. My two selves, the geneticist and the feminist took up opposing positions and started to argue. The scientist scoffed at the woman, "Silly woman, she thinks she can put blinders on and pretend that facts don’t exist." The feminist righteously defended the woman, "She’s right. Every biological theory of gender ever created has cast women as the physical and intellectual inferiors to men." Eventually, my body moved on, but I walked around for days with the two part of my mind arguing with each other.

Through my education and experiences I have learned that there are different kinds of knowledge and different ways of knowing. All have value and can tell us different things. They complement one another. The goal is not to replace one type of knowledge with another. If science is taught in a social context, or with an understanding of how scientific knowledge is political, subjectivity will not replace the scientific method, as some fear. A curriculum project that enables exchange of knowledge among scientists, humanists, engineers and social scientists challenges hierarchies of knowledge and knowledge that is decontextualized and depoliticized.

Today, I can’t say that I’ve resolved the contradictions and lack of coherence among things that I know, or how I know them, but I’m not paralyzed and I don’t doubt what I know. I have learned things in one culture that are incomprehensible to another. I have learned that some holders of knowledge protect themselves and their culture by keeping out competing information and ways of knowing. I am encouraged by projects that aim to exchange information among different academic cultures and bodies of knowledge. I think this cross-fertilization of ideas and information enhances scholarship in all the disciplines. I think it also promotes social justice for all.