The Role Of Sexism In Science

Introduction

Science, according to the Oxford dictionary, is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. As plainly as anyone can see, this definition does not entail a specific gender to the field of science. Why then does it seem that gender roles and gender views of the modern day seem to lurk constantly in the shadows of the scientific word? Why are we repeatedly shown proof of how deeply rooted our gender association is in even the “objective” observations of the material world? Ultimately, for the reasons W and X, Y successfully responds to the threat posed by sexism in science.

Explanation of the Threat

Sexism

When discussing this example in class it was brought up that many scientific historians and archaeologists would automatically assume a tool discovered from primal times to be a weapon thought of, created, and used by men to hunt and defend their people. This was followed with the fact that it has recently been found that often times, these tools were used for gathering, not hunting, and therefore used by women and not men. This automatic assumption closes the eyes of the scientists and causes a blindness of the mind to the truth and facts that are laying right in front of us. This blindness is the major issue with sexism in science. With sexism having such a strong grasp on the minds of the male, and occasionally female, scientists of the present day we are unable to see the ultimate truth and reality that is our

However, I do believe there are some limitation to the success of my proposal, and this limitation is twofold. The first being in regard to current scientists. Since there is no way to mandate that they go to one of these seminars or listen to the TED talk, there is no way to ensure that the message will reach them. The only way this could be fixed would be to team up with corporations and employers. In this we could them require their employees, current and new, to attend a conference or seminar or watch the TED talk, but once again this doesn’t guarantee 100% dissemination of the message. The second limitation is an internal one. By internal I mean each scientist’s own personal beliefs. This limitation is due to the fact that not everybody can be reached on the same topic by the same approach. This means our approach would have to be more varied and specifically tailored by person. This, however, would be very costly and still leave potential for people who are just unreceptive to the message in general to prevent 100%