.
(PMCID:PMC3546634)
Social Studies of Science
Soc Stud Sci. 2013 February; 43(1): 136–158.
PMCID: PMC3546634
Valerie Bevan, Department of Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK;
Valerie
Bevan, Department of Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster
University Management School, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster
LA1 4YX, UK. Email: ku.oc.navebv@navebv
Abstract
We
explore healthcare scientists’ accounts of men in healthcare science
laboratories. By focussing on subtle masculinist actions that women find
disadvantageous to them, we seek to extend knowledge about women’s
under-representation in senior positions in healthcare science – despite
women being in the majority at junior levels. We maintain that
healthcare science continues to be dominated by taken-for-granted
masculinities that marginalize women, keeping them in their ‘place’. Our
aim is to make visible the subtle practices that are normally invisible
by showing masculinities in action. Principally using feminist
analyses, our findings show that both women and men are often unaware of
taken-for-granted masculinist actions, and even when women do notice,
they rarely challenge the subtle sexist behaviour.
Keywords: feminist research, healthcare science, taken-for-granted masculinities, under-representation of women, women in science
Introduction
Why are women seriously under-represented in senior positions within UK healthcare science?1 The puzzle is particularly striking because women healthcare scientists2
are in the majority – in stark contrast with science, engineering and
technology (SET) professions and associated professions generally, where
women represent only 15.5 percent of all scientists (Kircup et al., 2010:
74). National figures are not available, but the major employer of
healthcare scientists in which this study was largely based (called
‘PQR’ for the purposes of this article) employs 1600 healthcare
scientists, of whom 60 percent are women. However, all 13 healthcare
scientists in the most senior grade are men, as are more than two-thirds
of the 110 staff in the two grades below. A similar pattern exists in
academic posts in biosciences more generally where comparable numbers of
women and men gain PhDs, but fewer than 10 percent of professors in
biosciences are women (Kircup et al., 2010: 60).
In
this article, we seek to contribute to an understanding of the
marginalization of women that leads to their under-representation in
senior posts in healthcare science, an analysis that will be of
relevance to scientists more generally. In doing so, we especially seek
to challenge the failure highlighted in much of the mainstream
literature on scientific life:
We are also concerned, therefore, to
challenge the gendered division of labour more generally in healthcare
and other sciences. We note, for example, women’s lower pay overall, and
the lack of esteem for those scientists (overwhelmingly women) who work
on part-time or on temporary, contracts (Crompton and Lyonette, 2011; Valian, 2004); we also note that salary progression and gaining tenure happen more slowly for women (Valian, 2000).
To
address these challenges, we present readings of interviews with
UK-based healthcare scientists conducted between 2006 and 2008.3
Our readings are particularly influenced by traditions within feminist
research concerned with the apparently mundane and taken-for-granted
discursive construction of gendered differences: ‘the ways in which
power is relayed in everyday practices … [in the] minutiae of social
relations … [and] through seemingly trivial incidents and transactions’ (Morley, 2006: 543).
We
are also informed by the experiences that one of us has had from a
lifetime’s career as a healthcare scientist herself. The first author
started work as a laboratory technician in the 1960s and quickly learned
her ‘place’ (Miller, 1986: 75; Newman, 1995:
19) in the hierarchy of the healthcare science laboratory – an
environment dominated by men. This environment was similar to that
described by Kemelgor and Etzkowitz (2001)
in academic science: where women face ‘ongoing subtle and overt
exclusion’ (p. 240), where ‘two worlds’ (p. 242) exist, one for men and
another for women, and where women are denied access to communication
and support mechanisms that are available to men. However, although
always perturbed by such difficulties, she had no language through which
to question and oppose – or even fully articulate – these difficulties
and ‘assum[ed she was] … deficient’ (Miller, 1986: xiii).
Like
the women interviewed, the first author rarely challenged the
masculinist actions for much of her working life. This began to change
around 2000, upon taking a part-time master’s degree in management
studies, when, for the first time, she became exposed to feminist
concepts that had previously been (at best) on the periphery of her
consciousness. She then started to see ways to articulate better the
sorts of concerns she had long been bothered by but had not been able
properly to name. Indeed, enthusiasm for more feminist ideas was such
that she continued to study part-time until 2009, gaining a social
science PhD, while working full-time in PQR. Hence, we wish to emphasize
that we are seeking to be politically engaged in this article – to
produce ‘passionate scholarship’ (Dubois, 1983: 108) – because of our personal stakes in the issues studied.
However,
readings that emphasize the subtle nature of women’s disadvantage in
healthcare science are offered, not merely because they resonate with
the experiences one of us has had as a woman working in healthcare
science, but also because arguments of this nature are underplayed in
many of the official, policy-orientated reports intended to improve the
numbers of senior women in UK healthcare science. Subtle forms of
discrimination have become the commonest sort of explanation for the
under-representation of women in science (Rhoton, 2011) and other similarly prestigious occupations, at least among social scientists (Bendl, 2008; Benokraitis and Feagin, 1995; Fotaki, 2011; Jeanes et al., 2011; Morley, 2006; Pringle, 1998; Risman, 2004; Wajcman, 1998; and see specialist journals including, for example, Gender & Society and Gender, Work & Organization).
However, any kind of research of this nature appears to have been more
or less unknown to the scientists interviewed in our study, participants
(both women and men) still appearing to favour theories of women’s
‘lack’ to explain gendered inequality.
We
speculate that the novelty of our work for many healthcare scientists
may arise in part from the hegemonic status still accorded to the
experimental paradigm and the idea that ‘science values control and
subordination’ (Martin, 2001: 608; see also Albert et al., 2008). While experimental methods are clearly appropriate for the conduct of healthcare science as science,
its hegemony is problematic nevertheless because it appears to have led
to a disregard for interpretive social scientific research in the study
of the social practices within healthcare science. As Albert et al. (2008:
2529) observe ‘our findings suggest that social scientists who pursue
qualitative methodologies currently have the support of only a subset of
biomedical scientists, mainly those who have been exposed to social
science research.’ We use qualitative methods influenced by feminist
ideas in the belief that they represent a means to explore issues that,
without their use, are difficult to see, or even to name.
Our
aims, then, are twofold. The first aim is to highlight how our findings
in healthcare science share affinities with, but also significant
differences from work using similar methods and assumptions conducted in
other areas of science. In other words, we aim to contribute to
knowledge about gendered relations in healthcare science and in science
more generally. Our second aim is complementary to the first. It is to
use our research as a vehicle to suggest how things might be changed in
science – especially, though not exclusively, in healthcare science.
This
article proceeds as follows: First, we review some of the key findings
about the position of women in science and how these findings have been
used (or not) in relation to current policymaking concerning gender
equality in healthcare science. After an account of methodology, we turn
to the empirical materials. Following further discussion, we conclude
with suggestions about how feminist ideas, while hardly guaranteeing
change, have the potential to make a positive difference to the
situations of women and men in healthcare science.
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