Article ID: CBB137850505

Gendered Boundary-work within the Finnish Skepticism Movement (July 2021)

unapi

Pia Vuolanto (Author)
Marjo Kolehmainen (Author)


Science, Technology, and Human Values
Volume: 46
Issue: 4
Pages: 789-814
Publication date: July 2021
Language: English


As a worldwide social movement, skepticism aims to promote science and critical thinking. However, by analyzing texts published in the magazine of the Finnish skepticism movement between 1988 and 2017, we find that the movement carries out its mission in a way that maintains and produces gendered hierarchies. We identify six forms of gendered boundary-work in the data: (1) science as masculine, (2) questioning women, (3) complementary and alternative medicine as feminine, (4) debating the status of gender studies, (5) gender within the skepticism movement, and (6) supporting equality. Gender is an important aspect of the boundary-work undertaken by the movement to establish boundaries between science and nonscience. The forms of gendered boundary-work contribute to the idea of “true” science as a masculine and male-dominated domain, excluding women from both science and the skepticism movement. Even when the exclusions are subtle, hidden, or humorous, they nevertheless produce gendered inequalities by excluding women, belittling women’s knowledge production, or granting women-only dismissive recognition. Indeed, our analysis indicates that there is a need to look deeply into science-based social movements: exclusive structural tactics are part and parcel of such movements’ mundane activities, as our examples from Skepsis ry’s popular magazine demonstrate.

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Authors & Contributors
Fox, Mary Frank
Siri Lamoureaux
Rottenburg, Richard
Sonnert, Gerhard
Wang, Hsiu-yun
Gaughan, Monica
Journals
Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Science, Technology, and Human Values
Engineering Studies
Social Studies of Science
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Publishers
Duke University Press
Concepts
Gender
Science and technology studies (STS)
Women
Postcolonialism
Science
Work environment
People
Keller, Evelyn Fox
Harraway, Donna
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
Places
Taiwan
Germany
Sudan; South Sudan
Tanzania (Tanganyika, Zanzibar)
Uruguay
Uganda
Institutions
University of the Republic
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