CfP: Governing Science and Technology
The
history of women in science and technology has witnessed a real
renewal of historiography these past few years. Recent studies have
notably shown that their presence in these fields, despite growing in
strength from the late nineteenth century onwards, was far from being
the result of a continuous and inevitable process: their accession
has been difficult and reversible, and important forms of
discrimination have been maintained to this day.
This
conference aims to contribute to this historiographical trend, but is
perhaps less interested in women in science and technology as
actresses of situated practices rather than in focusing upon a
dimension that is nowadays increasingly under scrutiny: the place and
role of women in the government of
science and technology, and in government through
science and technology.
This
conference thus seeks to understand and historicize the various and
cumulative mechanisms that determined—that is to say blocked,
delayed or promoted—the careers of female scientists and engineers
and their access to high levels of responsibility, beginning in the
late nineteenth century when women began to enter the fields of
science and technology thanks to the growing education of girls.
Paradoxically, although these fields have been crucibles for the
ideology of progress and emancipation, women in them have always been
subordinates: even today, only a few hold positions of authority. Yet
seeking to answer the question of women’s access to the authorities
that govern science and technology requires the adoption of a wide
perspective that, while avoiding the shoal of the mere collection of
biographies, analyses how women although excluded nevertheless
managed to influence the government of science and technology—be it
through their work or by accessing peripheral roles. In turn, this
requires an analysis of the policies that various actors introduced
in order to promote women in these fields and overcome the forms of
resistance they encountered, and notably the role that science and
technology played as resources for policies that actively sought to
favour women.
This
conference therefore aims to study a dual process in which women are
both subjects and objects of the government of science and
technology.
All
the fields of science and technology can be considered, from the
oldest to those that became established during the twentieth century
and in which the place and role of women may have changed—especially
the aerospace, nuclear and computer industries. Similarly, different
cultural areas and/or political regimes (liberal and authoritarian)
may be studied. The example of Russia, where after the October
Revolution the Bolsheviks claimed to be emancipating women while
arguing that their project for social transformation was based upon
scientific and technical knowledge, clearly shows the interest in
shifting the focus in order to compare different cultural areas
and/or political regimes; this comparison should in turn enable us to
question national, cultural and/or political divides.
Various
lines of enquiry are possible.
The
first of these focuses upon women having reached positions of
authority: their scientific or technical education and training,
their career, and the factors that enabled them to access high rank
in education, research or industry. The case of biochemist Marjory
Stephenson in Great Britain, the first woman to join the Royal
Society in 1945 despite legal barriers to accessing scientific
societies and universities having been removed in 1919, shows the
Royal Society’s resistance to lifting discriminatory statutes, as
well as the role of reactions in the press criticizing their removal
in 1943. The enquiry does not merely focus upon the absence or
presence of women, but also considers the work of scientific and
technical institutions, including the nomination of their members:
the task is to characterize the ‘glass ceiling’ that female
scientists and engineers encountered and to identify the historical
and concrete forms it took. Work will also seek to understand the
ways in which women sought to go around the difficulties that some
put in their way in the legitimate spaces of production and tuition
of science and technology by involving themselves in others, such as
scientific associations and societies.
A
second line of enquiry could be to ask if female scientists and
engineers, having reached a position of authority, carried out
specific policies. However, this question of a typically female
government of science and technology is a tricky one: the matter was
already brought up in the historiography with regard to the
production of knowledge, and has shown its limits. That said, the
example of chemist Ida Maclean—who after having been made assistant
lecturer at Manchester University’s Department of Chemistry in
1906, became in 1920 the first woman to be admitted to the London
Chemical Society, where she pursued her long-standing commitment to
women at university—invites us to focus upon at least two
phenomena. The first relates to measures taken within scientific and
technical institutions to improve the situation of women. The second
concerns problems privileged by women having attained positions of
responsibility: the aim is to see if they dealt with matters that men
had neglected or ignored, and what measures they took to resolve or
at least address these problems.
A
third line of enquiry aims to analyse how different protagonists
resorted to science and technology to reduce gender inequality in
society. The historiography has underlined the extent to which
knowledge—particularly but not exclusively in the field of
biology—reproduced gender-based prejudice and naturalised
inequalities between men and women. Always with the goal of probing
the neutrality of science, the question here, however, relates rather
to the way in which knowledge sometimes contradicted gender-based
stereotypes and norms, in order to understand how knowledge was used
to carry out policies seeking to improve women’s statutory
recognition and/or pay. The most famous example is without doubt that
of the United States where, thanks to the positive discrimination
introduced in 1967 for female students and teachers, universities
became centres of action and thought for the feminist movements. But
the State has not been the only actor to support women in society:
foundations and large companies also have and continue to do so. By
studying these initiatives, the goal is also to shed light upon
connections between scientific knowledge, statutory recognition and
economic redistribution. When these initiatives coexisted with
emancipatory measures aimed at other social groups, the ways in which
they may have intersected will need to be analysed.
A
last line of enquiry concerns the ways in which the success of women
in science and technology is narrated. The goal is to study not only
how commentators describe and explain such success, but also how
female scientists and engineers having attained senior positions did
so themselves. For it appears that the narration by men and women of
these paths to success often resorts to clearly sexual motifs, and
these narratives influence gender-based prejudices and stereotypes by
consolidating or on the contrary undermining them. Portraits of the
mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, for example, have sometimes
emphasized her analytical abilities or underlined how lacking she was
in feminine qualities. The study of such narratives could therefore
help us to understand the weight of representations that bears down
upon women’s career choices.
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This
conference is being held in memory of Larissa Zakharova (1977-2019),
a specialist of the Soviet Union who devoted much of her work to the
history of technology
(https://www.cercec.fr/membre/
The
conference, where English will be the language of communication, will
be held on 2020 June 29th-30th
in Moscow. Its aims include publishing a book, and participants are
therefore invited to submit unpublished work.
Papers
must be sent at least two weeks before the seminar, and articles for
submission by the 1st
of November 2020.
As
far as possible, the organizers
will cover the cost of travel and accommodati thanks to the sponsors
listed below.
Proposals
(max. 3,000 characters) must be submitted in English or in French
before the 20th
of December 2019 on the academic website of the conference:
https://gst2020.sciencesconf.
For
any question, donnot hesitate to write to : gst2020@sciencesconf.org.
Organizers
Alain
Blum (CERCEC / EHESS / INED)
Patrice
Bret (CAK / CNRS)
Valérie
Burgos Blondelle (Comité pour l’histoire du CNRS)
Françoise
Daucé (CERCEC / EHESS / IUF)
Grégory
Dufaud (Sciences Po Lyon / CEFR de Moscou / LARHRA)
Liliane
Hilaire-Pérez (Université Paris-Diderot / EHESS / IUF)
Isabelle
Lémonon Waxin (CAK / Cermes3 / Women’s Commission of the DHST)