From ‘Women in Science’ to ‘Gendering of Knowledge’: A Review Essay on Feminist Studies of Science in India

Feminist Studies of Science (FSS), as an interdisciplinary field, continued to be of marginal influence on the academic discourse on gender in India until recently. Yet, there are clear indications from recent years that the field is making its presence felt with an increasing number of feminist scholars interested in engaging with science. This two-volume work edited by Sumi Krishna and Gita Chadha, which is the focus of this review essay, represents the maturing of this trend.

The roots of feminist engagement with science in India go back to the 1970s. Two studies appeared in the second half of the decade which attempted to capture the experiences of women scientists. A few papers were published on career challenges faced by women researchers in the next decade. ¹ Eventually by 1990s, more studies appeared on women in science which emphasised patriarchal social structure that prevented women from choosing science as a career option and identified special hurdles faced by those who entered scientific institutions.

A radically new perspective called cultural ecofeminism developed during the period, which challenged the positivist view on science by criticising modern Western science as founded upon a patriarchal, violent and reductionist epistemology. This critique of science that found its best portrayal in Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive (1988b) was in tune with the new theoretical trend within FSS in the West, mainly receiving inspiration from the pioneering works of Carolyn Merchant, Sandra Harding and Evelyn Fox Keller. As a radical departure from the earlier ‘women in science’ framework that looked at scientific institutions as pestered with male domination and patriarchal attitudes, this new trend attacked the very epistemological core of science, which they argued, was moulded within patriarchal, Western values. The ecofeminist critique upheld that indigenous knowledge traditions, especially those processed by women, offer fresh possibilities for building a ‘non-violent science that respects the integrity of nature and man [sic] and truth and seeks liberation of the people, which is what science is, or should be, all about’ (Shiva, 1988a, p. 255).

An important work that stood apart from these two methodological trends was the collection of essays authored by Maithreyi Krishnaraj, a doyenne of Indian women’s studies. Her book titled Women and Science: Selected Essays (1991) underscored the importance of engaging with problems that women scientists face and theoretically linked it with the structural characteristics of Indian society. Most of the essays in Krishnaraj’s book were published in the 1980s, a period when FSS was in its infancy even in the West. The book appealed to the feminist movement in India to critically engage with modern science as being practiced in India. Her book expressed a deep theoretical commitment to developing a new feminist perspective on science with firm anchoring in a ‘feminist-materialist approach’ which she wished to develop as a new standpoint different from the ‘women in science’ perspective as well as the cultural ecofeminist position. ‘A feminist-materialist approach’, she notes, ‘views women as a distinct disadvantaged group … and sees the underlying processes that create this disadvantage as inherently of material origin’ (Krishnaraj, 1991, p. 7). From this vantage point, she identifies colonialism and capitalism as two major forces which shaped the Indian reality. Unlike women in the science perspective, she is attentive to these wider forces behind patriarchal values that inform the Indian scientific establishment. At the same time, she does not relinquish modern science for its capitalist and colonial moorings as Shiva did. She argues that ‘[c]olonialism and capitalism loosened fetters for sections of Indian women but retained some other fetters or altered some of them in form’ (p. 7). Therefore, she opines that the ‘existing career status of women in science can be understood as the outcome of the way science has developed and of the way women’s position has changed under capitalism and colonialism’ (p. 7). Such a nuanced approach to gendering of science from the feminist-materialist ground (which she agrees was still in its infancy) was largely neglected in the 1990s.

Krishnaraj’s book explored the factors behind the entry of middle class women into science, the ‘subordinate status’ of these women in science and the ‘job segregation’ they faced, the specific factors in the capitalist mode of production that made women’s entry into science possible by modifying traditional patriarchy and its consequences for women in general, and the relationship between ‘career motivation’ and patriarchy under capitalism. Although sometimes slipping into the Bernalist–Marxist perspective of understanding science as a purely asocial cognitive process constrained by the ‘capitalist system’ in which it is embedded in, the framework she offered reveals its potential to go beyond this general view on science.

Her stress on the need for more women participation in the production of scientific knowledge (p. 121) portends the emerging concern in FSS regarding the production of better, robust knowledge(s) that would help transcend the patriarchal cultural biases of science. It is true that this feminist democratic ideal is in its rudimentary form in Krishnaraj’s book; however in the ‘afterword’, she articulates this shift in perspective more confidently, linking it with her own feminist-materialist standpoint:

An even more fundamental challenge has come from feminists in the West. They are raising basic questions of the fundamental theoretical premises of science. Why does science have the model of ‘domination over nature’ as its core inspiration? Why are its models of life of universe one of domination-subordination, of conflict and aggression? …. The feminist scientists attribute this to male socialisation that privileges aggression and competition as values of male-hood and virility. This is a partial view. That science has these models built into it can be also explained as due to the fact that modern science developed in tandem to [sic] industrial capitalism.… Science has been shaped not only by capitalism but also by patriarchy. (pp. iii–iv)

What is interesting to note in this pioneering work is an acute attentiveness to the Indian context and a desire to develop a feminist-materialist standpoint within FSS. Krishnaraj hence neither limited herself to the Mertonian sociological perspective of women in science nor preferred traditional/indigenous knowledge(s) to modern science; her attempt was to build a new approach to the science question in feminism from within the Marxist-socialist tradition. ²

Unfortunately, the field of FSS continued to stay largely within, women in science, paradigm in the 1990s. ³ Despite the deliberations on feminist epistemology of science in India in the late 1990s, ⁴ most of the empirical research published in the new millennium also continued within the old tradition. ⁵ Abha Sur’s monograph that examined the caste and gender underpinnings of Indian science was therefore a new milestone (Sur, 2011). Her book strongly challenged the historiographical insensitivity of Indian social historians of science towards the complexities of gender and caste.

The two-volume work, Feminists and Science, edited by Sumi Krishna and Gita Chadha with its theoretically nuanced and empirically rich analysis on the gendered nature of science is a unique attempt to showcase the diversity of contemporary research in the field of FSS. The book can confidently claim its lineage to the methodological path opened by Krishnaraj in her seminal work. The book project was kick-started in 2006 when the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) took an interest in building new scholarship on feminist knowledge production (see p. xi). Several seminars and workshops were organised as part of this initiative, eventually leading to the publication of the book. ⁶ Krishna points out in her editorial introduction that the objective behind the project was to ‘work towards a more comprehensive and grounded understanding of gender and science in India’ by mapping the complexities of the relationship between the scientific and the social (pp. xiv–xv). From this point of view, she claims that the project explores ‘how science represents gender, how the disciplines and methods of science are shaped by gender, and how the gendered structure and culture of scientific organisations influences practice’ (p. xv). Instead of reductively focussing on women’s entry into Indian science and technology (S&T) system or writing off modern science for its ‘malevolent epistemology’, these volumes adopt an approach that addresses diverse dimensions of knowledge production in science. The project is firmly grounded in the interdisciplinary field of FSS which draws its theoretical insights from Science, Technology and Society (STS) Studies and Women’s Studies, as Chadha acknowledges in her editorial remarks. There are two chapters which critically engage with the theoretical resources of the field expanding the methodological debate initiated in the introductory essays by the editors. Kanchana Mahadevan’s essay (Chapter 14) critically engages with the work of Helene E. Longino, a renowned feminist philosopher of science. Gita Chadha in Chapter 22 theorises the creative process in science. Madhumita Majumdar (Chapter 21) analyses the coupling of scientific rationality and masculinity within the nationalist discourse in colonial India. It is quite gratifying to see that most authors take a conscious effort to engage with theoretical debates in FSS.

The contributors to these volumes belong to various backgrounds; they are social scientists, natural scientists, feminist activists and educationists. The project is guided by a strong feminist ethical commitment and affirms that S&T are important sites for feminist intervention in our struggle for a better world. This helps the project to bring in new feminist techno-social imaginations and alternative practices of participatory knowledge production into its fold. The project underscores the significance of practicing FSS, and several chapters analyse practical engagements. Some chapters revisit the conventional questions posed by women from a science perspective and give them a new theoretical spin. The strong schism between the ‘women in science’ and ‘gendered science’ perspectives is therefore absent in the book, and a wide array of themes and problems at the intersection of science and the social are addressed here from a feminist perspective. ‘Science’ is defined in the book more broadly, and the chapters address the gender dynamics in several disciplines and fields of knowledge. Also, a wide range of technologies appear in the book’s analytical spectrum.

The book is organised into two volumes and the editors claim that this division is based on two unique concerns: The first volume presents critiques of knowledge production practices and epistemologies of sciences, and the second discusses alternative conceptualisations and practical interventions. However, this does not appear as a convincing logic of organisation in the book, for both the volumes contain chapters with either of the two concerns; sometimes the same chapter weaves both the emphases together.

Generally, the book is sensitive to the question of intersectionality. An interesting exercise in this regard is Chapter 1 titled, ‘Feminists Discuss Caste and Gender in Science: An Online Dialogue’. The chapter provides excerpts of an online email conversation between feminists (which includes both natural and social scientists, and activists) provoked by Abha Sur’s book. The dialogue demonstrates the urgent need of bringing in caste as a methodological category into feminist analysis of science in India but also reveals how difficult this is to achieve. Despite this opening conversation, most chapters avoid the caste question altogether in favour of purity of gender as a category of analysis. Other than Chapter 1, there are two more chapters which analyse the interstices of caste and gender. Jayasree Subramanian in Chapter 2 discusses the ‘merit conundrum’ in Indian science. She states that caste, among other factors, plays a central role in complicating gender discrimination in Indian scientific institutions. She observes that ‘a large percentage of women in science come from Brahmin or upper-caste Hindu Families’ (p. 25). However, an analysis of the intersection of caste and gender beyond this is not attempted, she concedes. Meena Gopal’s essay (Chapter 15) on the experiences of the midwives of the barber caste in south Tamil Nadu is the best move in direction of bringing the caste question into FSS. She argues that the knowledge produced by lower caste women who are involved in caste-based occupations, such as midwifery, are neglected, discarded or appropriated by the modernisation discourse. Even the women’s health movement has disowned the knowledge and skills of lower caste women healers. Therefore, Gopal calls for a renewed engagement of feminists with women healers. By addressing the caste question, though limitedly, the book indicates the necessity of engaging with dalit feminism (among others) to expand the analytical gamut of Indian FSS. ⁷

Apart from analytical essays, the editors have included conversations with veteran practitioners of science. Other than the opening conversation on gender and caste, there are three more chapters based on conversations with pioneering women scientists/practitioners—Vidita Vaidya (neuroscientist and behavioural biologist), Dr V. Shanta (oncologist) and Neera Adarkar (architect)—in Chapters 17, 18 and 23 respectively. The questions asked to them are well informed by the concerns of FSS so that these interviews successfully open up the ‘black boxes of science’ to see how gender shapes specialised fields of knowledge. The biographical essay on Ajita Chakraborty, the first practicing woman psychiatrist in India, also is worth mentioning here (Chapter 7).

A major strength of the volumes, as mentioned earlier, is their emphasis on feminist praxis. The chapters that share the fieldwork experiences of an agricultural scientist working on soil management (Chapter 16) and a medical doctor interacting with traditional birth attendants (dais; Chapter 20) explore the possibilities of bringing together different streams of knowledge from a feminist perspective. A key argument that emerges from the field interventions (also see Chapter 15) is that the inclusion of women knowledge practitioners (who practice either traditional/indigenous knowledge or modern science/engineering) in knowledge governance is inevitable for developing sustainable alternatives.

S&T education is a central concern for the book, and there are five chapters discussing its various dimensions. Chapter 12 by Chayanika Shah and Gita Chadha discusses their pioneering experiment in designing and teaching FSS in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, in 2009. Chapters 10 and 11 discuss feminist endeavours to redesign curricula for agricultural scientists and health professionals, respectively. These chapters narrate the institutional resistance they had to face in the process and sometimes their experiments were only partially successful.

The gender politics of reproductive technologies is discussed in two chapters. Anita Ghai and Rachana Johri (Chapter 5) approaches infertility from a feminist disability studies perspective. They examine the biomedical approach that engenders infertility as disability and brings to our attention the biomedical practices and technological procedures that address ‘impairments’ of the embryo/foetus. Chayanika Shah (Chapter 19) argues that the manipulation and control of women’s reproductive capacity by biomedicine is actually ‘at the cost of their health and well-being’ (p. 134). She invites an active feminist conversation across natural and social scientific disciplines and social movements to create ‘new feminist visions of the body and the “scientific” knowledges around it’ (p. 143).

This consistent thrust on the urgency of an ethical commitment to creating new, democratic social imaginations in the book also acknowledges feminist science fiction (SF) literature as an important site of envisioning new egalitarian socialities. Suchitra Mathur’s Chapter 13 studies two SF novels—Rimi B. Chatterjee’s Signal Red (2005) and Vandana Singh’s Distances (2008)—which portray research institutes as their central novum. Ipshita Chanda in Chapter 24 analyses the Bengali SF for children authored by Lila Majumdar. It would have been better if the book also included papers on Indian SF cinema that attracts a lot of scholarly attention of late. The feminist cultural studies of S&T is a frontier area of investigation within FSS, which unfortunately does not inform the conceptual frameworks of the chapters on SF.

The book, in several ways, represents the coming of age of FSS as a field of study in India. Even the conceptual gaps and methodological constraints of this book offer important lessons for scholars who engage with the question of gendering of science. From a pedagogical point of view, these volumes are extremely useful for the STS and Women’s Studies classrooms, with their richness and diversity in terms of themes, cases and contexts. This collection of essays that showcases the contemporary moment of feminist engagement with scientific knowledge in India, undoubtedly, is a critical signpost for future researchers who work on gender and knowledge.