dc.description.abstract
The gender-math gap debate is an academic discourse drawing largely from
neuroscience research. Research in this field has been geared towards
identifying the origins behind the observation that more men than women are
represented in top level scientific research in Science Technology Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. For the past four decades, neuroscientists
have typically provided researchers and policy makers with ’hard data’ that
supposedly give biological and cultural justifications for why men do better
than women in these subjects. An experiment that has been used by researchers
to analyze mental acuity with regard to mathematical aptitude in males and
females is the Mental Rotation Task (MRT) introduced in 1971 by Shepard and
Metzler. The MRT measures visuo-spatial abilities. Despite the fact that this
experiment was originally designed to test the relationship of mental
processes to reaction time and task difficulty, contemporary discourse holds
it as the authority in linking abstract thinking to intellectual capacity.
Neuroscientists have claimed that visuo-spatial skills are utilized in
academic subjects like mathematics (Burnett, Lane, & Dratt, 1979), chemistry
(Barke, 1993), computer sciences (Norman, 1994), engineering (Sorby, Leopold,
& Go´rska, 1999) and other careers where abstract thinking is required;
academic programmes in which the largest sex segregation can be observed
(Meinholdt & Murray, 1999; Vetter & Babco, 1986; White, 1985). The aim of my
research has been to examine through empirical research the process through
which gender/sex differences in cognitive abilities are established. In
contrast to medical and biological disciplines that understand physical
characteristics, i.e. the difference in genitalia, as the absolute determinant
for a person’s gender/sex, I adopt the gender studies perspective that
identifies the political nature of gender/sex demarcations, pointing out that
intellectual attributions should not rest on physical characteristics. I argue
that cognitive differences are based on the legislation of power and pre-
defined norms that allow certain bodies to be interpreted in a manner that
reflects their societally assigned roles. The terminology ‘gender/sex’ that I
use here embodies the understanding that even biological sex, is malleable,
changeable, and ‘do-able’ just as gender is (Butler 1990). The question of how
‘difference’ is conceptualized forms a central theme in this research.
Following the multidimensional focus of this research, the project was broken
down into three working packages. The first part of the project took me into
the laboratory where I examined processes that enable the tangibility of
gender/sex, i.e. the making gender/sex ‘visible’ and objectifiable in
neuroscience labs for evaluation. To accomplish this, I observed the workings
of neuroscientists as they evaluated the role of gender/sex in psychological
performance in a kinematic task. The second working package traced the
contextualization and origins of the gender-math debate. Here I examined the
process through which these contexts shape laboratory work. I discuss the
articulation of prevailing historical social and political contexts through
empirical work. Empirical research is discussed here as an aspect of the moral
economy that embodies and mirrors popular discourse against a background of
power relations. In the third working package I study the transfer of social
ideas and values about gender/sex difference into actual empirical outcomes.
The process through which ideology explaining how and as what women/men are to
be characterized becomes embodied in the outcome of laboratory results,
resulting in the naturalization of social attributes is discussed explicitly.
I argue that the neuroscientists’ understanding of the concept of gender/sex
is limited to what is conciliatory to social and political power positioning,
i.e. without room to examine how power relations shape the expression of
gender/sex. WORKING PACKAGES I. EXPERIMENTING WITH GENDER: How science
constructs difference International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology,
Vol 4(1): 48-61 Kuria, E.N. 2012 This first package analyzed the role of
experimentation in materializing gender/sex in the laboratories. Here I
examined the role of experiments in establishing the existence of gender/sex
differences in psychological performance. I demonstrated that establishing
cognitive differences is not (at all) a straight forward process that results
from simple observation as might be assumed. Creating and visualizing
difference as a tangible, consistent and measurable variable is a technical
collaborative process that involves a set of props in the form of organized
activities, tools, closed terminologies and technologies. It is a process that
carefully assigns meaning to abstractions onto laboratory tools and
components. I argue that the understanding of gender/sex difference as a
simple outcome of empirical research has resulted from “blackboxing”.
Blackboxing (Latour, 1999) refers to the veiling-up or closure of the
processes that hypothesis go through before they become accepted and
integrated into the ‘thought collective’ (Fleck, 1981) of the scientific
community. This segment of my research explored the constructedness of
gender/sex differences in psychological performance. Perspectives from three
disciplines namely neuroscience research, science studies research and gender
studies research were implemented. Here, a kinematic experiment that evaluated
the influence of gender/sex attributions in psychological performance was
analyzed. In the kinematic experiment examined in this package, females and
males were enrolled for the task through announcements that were posted all
over the university campus. Participants enrolled themselves and received a
small monetary fee for taking part. Once they were in the laboratory, their
name and age were requested, but they were not usually asked about their
gender/sex. In general, the experimenter made the judgement of the
participant’s gender/sex based on visual cues like clothing and physical
appearance, i.e. body structure. Here, gender/sex difference in intellectual
performance is neither straight-forward nor obvious. Data has to be collected
along physical demarcations that the experimenter sets from the onset of the
experiment. This specific intervention by the scientist becomes part of normal
lab practice that is often not open for scrutiny or debate, shedding some
light on aspects of the blackbox. The intangibility of gender/sex and the need
for physical transformations is also another aspect of the blackbox discussed.
The readability of data within an experimental system (Latour, 1999; 24-79)
like the kinematic task examined in this section requires the implementation
of tools (i.e. table, computer, cameras, and infrared markers) and technology
(ELIGRASP system) that map observations onto new reference frames. Gender/sex
differences in this sense are not readily available for examination, and have
to be mined through organized procedures with assigned meanings. To illustrate
this point, I discuss the doing of gender/sex in this experiment. First
infrared markers attached to the participant’s thumb, index and wrist.
Kinematic motion of the hand was captured and traced by cameras at the four
corners of the table using the ELIGRASP software system. The cameras
transformed the marker’s motion into cardinal points on a virtual 3D grid on a
computer grid shown in the figure below. Neither the computer nor the cameras
could tell the gender/sex of the participants carrying out the task, so the
experimenter had to catalogue the observations i.e. same-sex, opposite-sex and
neutral interactions, thus giving gendered meanings to the data harnessed.
Finally, I illustrate that difference does not emerge as the outcome of the
experiment, but as a substance of the discourse created around the specific
experimental paradigm. Articulating gender/sex difference from laboratory work
requires specific scientific contexts that carry common understandings and
shared knowledge. For example, outcomes reported in this experiment became
relevant only in the context of previous research in the field that explained
how kinematic results are to be interpreted. These already stated outcomes
dictated where difference was to be sought. They also provided the relevant
meanings for the outcomes legible from the above-named experimental system. I
discuss the experimental system as the structure that makes the activities
around validating a concept become invisible including the scientist’s active
engagement in introducing implicit selectiveness into the experimental system,
hence blackboxing. II. Rethinking Gender Politics in Laboratories and
Neuroscience research: The case of spatial abilities in Math performance.
Medicine Studies, 3(2): 117-123 Kuria, E.N, Hess, V. 2011. The second section
of the three working packages analyzed the culturally rooted context within
which research in neuroscience regarding gender/sex disparities in STEM
subjects finds itself. Neuroscience research does acknowledge the role of
upbringing, training and context in shaping individual intellectual
performance. These discussions however do not extend to how social contexts
also shape laboratory work and results. In fact, not much research has been
carried out to point the exact influences of macro-power structures on the
field (of neuroscience) itself. My research takes on this challenge and argues
that the broader androcentric Western societal context, for example the fact
that women had been locked out of scientific activity for centuries, organizes
and shapes scientific discourse. In this section, the evolution of the Mental
Rotation Task MRT is examined as a tool that highlights the evaluation of
sex/gender difference in intellectual performance specific to the gender-math
gap within the wider social context. Highlighted are the contradictions that
surround the interpretation of the origins of difference as well as various
factors that directly affect outcomes. A feminist perspective is utilized to
discuss power structures and analyze what neuroscientists refer to as ‘social
influences’ in evaluating the interpretation and meaning of results
demonstrating difference in intellectual performance. Dominant preconceptions
placing women’s intellectual capacity below that of men existed even before
empirical research on the subject. Paul Broca , a prominent physician,
anatomist and anthropologist whose publications irrevocably shaped the focus
of cognitive neuroscience by proving that cognitive function could be
localized to distinct brain regions had the following to say about gender/sex
difference: “On average, the brain mass is larger in men than in women, in
clever men than in ordinary ones, and in superior races than in inferior ones
. . . There is an obvious relationship between intelligence and brain volume”
(Broca, 1861). Broca went on to carry out several experiments weighing the
masses of male and female brains in order to empirically demonstrate his
hypothesis. The relationship between brain mass and function has long been
disproved, but Broca’s notions indicate the conceptualizations of gender/sex
that confronted cognitive neuroscience at its inception. Theoretical
considerations such as these were the basis upon which man and woman,
gender/sex were understood and investigated at the turn of the 20th century.
Following this background, this section of the thesis explicitly argues that
scientific research on gender/sex reflects social and political ideologies in
its theory and practice as Ebeling and Schmitz (2006) elegantly demonstrate.
It is also demonstrated that cognitive differences are not stable, and they
are not fixed to any gender/sex, but rather, they are contextual, flexible and
changeable. Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2006) for example show that belief and
attitudes regarding gender/sex differences in math ability shape intellectual
performance in test settings: Women who are presented with evidence for no
gender differences in math performance during the MRT outperform women who are
convinced that there are either negative stereotypes or genetic reasons
related to women’s performance in math subjects (Coleman and Hong 2008). Feng
et al. (2007) demonstrate that spatial skills can be improved through
training, thus challenging any assumptions that might suggest that difference
is located in the biological structure of the brain. I conclude this segment
by demonstrating the role of power in shaping cognitive performance. The
research outcomes of Gneezy et al. (2003) demonstrate a relationship between
power and the enactment of gender. In their work, women’s competitive
attitudes within a patriarchal system versus a matriarchal system (e.g. the
Khasi in India) were examined. Results demonstrated that women were not
competitive towards men within patriarchal systems, but they competed actively
against other women. Within matriarchal societies, the opposite pattern was
observed where women were more competitive in general than men (Gneezy et al.
2009). This interdependence of competitive attitudes with (political) power
structures within communities of people introduces interesting considerations
that directly link our claim for the intersection of gender, science and
power. Guiso and colleagues (2008) have also confirmed a positive correlation
between gender equality and the gender-gap in mathematics i.e. its
disappearance in more power balanced communities like Norway and Sweden. They
forward social–political–cultural factors and power relations as sufficient
conditions for shaping cognitive performance. The reader will also note that
women are often measured against the background of the male (norm) who is
often reported to demonstrate no significant changes in attitude or aptitude
with changing social contexts. This is another aspect of gender/sex research
in psychological performance that is contested in this research. III. Los
desafíos de la investigación de género en neurociencia. Perspectivas
Bioéticas, Nº30: 62-84. Kuria, E. 2011. The third working package examined the
transfer of gender/sex social attributes from the powerstructured context
discussed in section II into laboratory results. This section discusses
various challenges under the sub-topics: terminology and inclusion (i.e. which
bodies/brains are seen to be male or female, which others are excluded?),
naturalization, extrapolation (borrowing research from animal studies),
ideology, stereotyping as well as ambiguity in the definition of ‘difference’,
i.e. is difference in the anatomy of the brain, or in the technique utilized
for problem solving, or in the neural network engaged in the task? Following
these demarcations, I studied the process that enables the naturalization and
absorption of gender/sex socialized notions of difference into cognitive
facilities in the context of neuroscience research within a framework that is
informed by feminist empiricism. I draw attention to the fact that current
research explaining disparities in access to power and resources are
established by obscuring the influence of socially instituted gender/sex
distinctions. The following example demonstrates how this evaluation is
achieved: Wang et al. (2007: 228) present an experiment that examined gender-
specific neural circuitry of psychological stress. Perfusion-based fMRI was
utilized in the measurement of cerebral blood flow responses to stress in 32
healthy people (16 males and 16 females). Psychological stress was elicited by
means of mental arithmetic tasks under varying levels of psychological
pressure to perform. Researchers report that men activated the left
orbitofrontal cortex which is implicated to the ‘fight or flight’ response,
while women activated the ventral striatum, putamen, insula and cingulate
cortex which form part of the limbic system. The researchers’ interpretation
and discussion of these results clearly reflect the background upon which
difference is examined. The outcomes were discussed in line with the
evolutionary theory that acknowledges a ‘fight or flight’ as the acceptable
reaction for a stressful situation. Difference in physiological stress
response is linked to women’s performance, and researchers explain this
difference by citing women’s care-giving and nurturing roles. Giving birth is
the important attribute cited to explains this ‘female’ psychological
reaction, and the examiners support this claim by stating that these
attributes and behaviours are ‘especially mediated by oxytocin’. Problematic
in this discussion is the linking of the limbic system to emotion, to care-
giving needs, to female reproduction and biology. This results in the
naturalization of social-cultural gender/sex roles that are implicated as
implicit mediators of the functioning of the brain in important gender/sex
demarcated ways, demonstrating the manner in which social and political
positioning about what it means to be female or male are made relevant for
psychological performance. This philosophy is echoed in economic studies that
suggest that men make better economic choices (because they are rational )
compared to women under similar conditions who are reported to engage with
their emotion (Van Vugt, De Cremer & Janssen, 2007). These elucidations
demonstrate the modern reconstruction of difference that integrates social
roles and females’ and males’ cultural experience into biological brain
matter. Several prominent neuroscientists including Cordelia Fine (2010) in
‘Delusions of Gender’ and Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) in ‘Sexing the Body:
Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality’ have criticized this logic
that builds on the idea that the ability to carry offspring affects how female
species relate with the world around them in significant ways. CONCLUSION The
outcomes of this research are as follows. I succeed in exhibiting the physical
process of constructing and making gender/sex difference materialize in the
laboratory by examining actual empirical work. This neuroscience-based
ethnographic research is amongst the first of its kind on the subject of
gender/sex difference. I demonstrate that gender/sex difference in cognitive
ability are distinctions that are embodied within a specific body of
knowledge, and a specific scientific ‘thought collective’ that construct it.
Difference is enabled by pre-conceptions of what and who man/woman is, and the
outcome of empirical research in neuroscience is a reflection of these pre-
conceptions. This thesis has set about to expose the relationship of socially
constructed conceptualizations of gender/sex difference to scientific
observations made in laboratory work, and arguments presented within the
Western global context. This project contributes to the growing body of
knowledge in the newly emerging sub disciplines of critical neuroscience,
neuroethics and philosophy of neuroscience research that are now discrediting
the neutrality of neuroscientific research by demanding a multidisciplinary
approach and mutual exchanges of subject areas that have especially long been
studied by other existing disciplines. IMPLICATIONS Student achievement in
STEM subjects has come under the lens of academics, mainly due to the
historical disparities in these subjects. The implications of gender/sex
research are far-reaching and demand a balanced perspective on the part of
policymakers whose role is to translate empirically presented results into
executable action plans. Although the proportion of women in STEM subjects has
increased, women scientists in Europe remain a minority (SHE figures 2009)
with most women dropping out of science before they can fill the top jobs.
According to Sadker and Sadker (1995), policy and legislation have influenced
women’s occupational choices. In the 1960s for example, their vocational
choices were restricted to secretarial, nursing and teaching careers, or
motherhood. In a study evaluating gender/sex differences at critical
transitions in STEM Careers, the National Research Council (2010) affirmed
that explicitly encouraging the hiring, promotion and tenure of women into
STEM and medicine careers, including the allocation of institutional resources
will substantially address the inequities identified. I further argue that
additional caution by neuroscientists who are wary of the consequences of
stereotyping and prejudices in their own research can further mitigate the
gap, especially because there is a new move by educational psychologists to
implement neuroscientifically-based outcomes to guide educational decisions
regarding teaching, learning approaches, strategies, and interventions.
Policy-makers seeking to narrow the gender-gap in science should consider
(even demand) the intellectual exchange between relevant stake-holders and
cross-border interactions among disciplines already engaged in the subject,
e.g. gender studies and feminist material. This could open up spaces for new
ways of thinking about difference, and perhaps provide alternative ways of
addressing the issues concerned.
de
dc.description.abstract
Um die ungleiche Verteilung von Männern und Frauen in naturwissenschaftlichen,
ingenieurswissenschaftlichen, technologischen und mathematischen Fächern zu
diskutieren, werden zunehmend Erkenntnisse aus neurowissenschaftlicher
Forschung herangezogen. Insbesondere auf dem Gebiet der educational
neuroscience wurden empirische Ergebnisse über kognitive
Geschlechterdifferenzen implementiert, deren ethische Relevanz kontrovers
diskutiert wird. Die zentrale Fragestellung meiner Dissertation liegt darin
auszuloten, auf welche Weise die Neurowissenschaften diese Differenz erklärt.
Ausgehend von einer Perspektive der Wissenschaftsforschung zeige ich, wie
Geschlechterdifferenzierungen im Labor hervorgebracht werden und welche Rolle
dabei auch Versuchsanordnungen und die eingesetzten Werkzeuge spielen. Indem
ich Arbeiten aus den Gender Studies vergleichend heranziehe, analysiere ich
diese Situationen als geprägt von spezifischen Machtbeziehungen, die
Geschlechterdifferenzierungen hervorbringen. Besonders beleuchtet wird dabei,
wie das subjektive Verständnis über Geschlechterdifferenzierung von
Wissenschaftler_Innen die Verfahren im Labor und die Interpretation der
Bedeutung der Ergebnisse beeinflusst. Meine Forschung habe ich in drei
arbeitschritte organisiert. Erstens habe ich im Labor Prozesse
[ethnographisch] untersucht, welche die „Greifbarkeit“ beziehungsweise
Konkretisierung von Geschlechterdifferenzen hervorbringen, mit anderen Worten:
die Sichtbarmachung und Objektivierung von Geschlechterdifferenz in
neurowissenschaftlichen Laboren. Zweitens bin ich mit einer
diskursanalytischen Methode den Ursprüngen der gender math debate in den
Neurowissenschaften gefolgt und habe ihre soziale Kontextualisierung
analysiert. Hier diskutiere ich die empirische Forschung als den Aspekt einer
“moralischen Ökonomie” die weitverbreitete Diskurse der
Geschlechterdifferenzierung widerspiegelt. Drittens gehe ich dem Transfer von
Ideen und Werten über Geschlechterdifferenzen in neurowissenschaftlichen
Fachartikeln nach. Die Rolle des sozialen Kontexts, in dem diese Versuche
stattfinden, wird betont, um eine kritische Position zum Verständnis von
Wissenschaftler_Innen zu Geschlechterdifferenzierung und den darunterliegenden
Hypothesen zu entwickeln. Meine Arbeit zeigt, dass Geschlechterdifferenz
nichts Gegebenes ist, sondern dass das Auffinden von geschlechterspezifischer
kognitiver Performance nur durch ein kontextualisiertes Verständnis von
Geschlechterdifferenz möglich wurde. Darüber hinaus zeigt meine Studie die
politische Notwendigkeit einer ausbalancierten Perspektive für Gesetzgebung,
Pädagogik und Psychologie, wenn wissenschaftlich gewonnene Daten Eingang in
relevante Entscheidungen über das Bildungssystem und Lehrstrategien finden.
Aus historischer und globaler Perspektive können solche Interventionen eine
bessere Einbeziehung von Frauen in die Naturwissenschaft und Mathematik
bewirken.
de
