Gender and the Science of Difference

Cloth Price: $72.00  
Paper Price: $26.95

Subtitle: Cultural Politics of Contemporary Science and Medicine
Edited and with an introduction by Jill A. Fisher
Subject: Gender Studies, Sociology
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-5046-6
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5047-3
Pages: 272 pages
Publication Date: July 2011
Series: Studies in Modern Science, Technology, and the Environment

Praise:

"This refreshing volume comes at a critical time, lending clarity and intelligence to current issues of gender and biological determinism."—Susan Lindee, Historian of Science, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Description:

How does contemporary science contribute to our understanding about what it means to be women or men? What are the social implications of scientific claims about differences between "male" and "female" brains, hormones, and genes? How does culture influence scientific and medical research and its findings about human sexuality, especially so-called normal and deviant desires and behaviors? Gender and the Science of Difference examines how contemporary science shapes and is shaped by gender ideals and images.

Prior scholarship has illustrated how past cultures of science were infused with patriarchal norms and values that influenced the kinds of research that was conducted and the interpretation of findings about differences between men and women. This interdisciplinary volume presents empirical inquiries into today's science, including examples of gendered scientific inquiry and medical interventions and research. It analyzes how scientific and medical knowledge produces gender norms through an emphasis on sex differences, and includes both U.S. and non-U.S. cases and examples.

JILL A. FISHER is on the faculty of the Center for Biomedical Ethics & Society at Vanderbilt University. She is author of Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials (Rutgers University Press).