Event Title

“Warning warning uptake failure”: Epistemology of ignorance, liberal individualism and the underrepresentation of women in science

Presenter Information

Carla J. Fehr

Start Date

26-6-2010 1:00 PM

End Date

26-6-2010 2:30 PM

Description

This presentation is part of the Women in Science and Philosophy: Empirical Investigations and Their Use track.

“Warning, warning, uptake failure,” The epistemology of ignorance, liberal individualism and the underrepresentation of women in science. Over the past three years, with the support of the National Science Foundation, I have conducted several workshops designed to train senior scientists and university administers about (1) the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering, (2) the career advancement barriers that these women face and (3) the social science data that can be used to explain and understand the underrepresentation of women and the barriers. Each of these workshops has two components: the first is a presentation of hard data and the second is an application of that data to a case study.

Analyses of the discussions of the case studies reveal that participants faced significant challenges giving the data uptake. For example, at our institution, significantly more women than men assistant professors quit pre-tenure. The workshop participants did not contest this fact, did not question the statistical analyses used to produce this fact and could use this fact with some familiarity in immediate abstract discussions. This suggests that it seemed to pass the test of justified true belief. However, in discussions of a particular case study related to issues of the retention of women scientists and engineers, this fact was often overlooked or ignored, with several respondents saying things such as, “I just don’t see how this is a gender issue.” Workshop participants seemed to both know and not know about the problems of attrition of women faculty members. They knew in the sense of holding a justified true belief. They didn’t know in the sense that they did not put this ‘knowledge’ to work in their discussions of a case study that was parallel to situations that they regularly encountered.

I diagnose this failure to put knowledge into practice in terms of the epistemology of ignorance. According to Nancy Tuana, ‘if we are to enrich our understanding of the production of knowledge in a particular field, then we must also examine the ways in which not knowing is sustained and sometimes even constructed’ (Tuana 2006, 3). This case looks at the difference between knowing in terms of being aware, or holding a justified true belief, and not knowing in terms of being able to use a piece of knowledge in order to mediate our understanding of the world and our interactions with other people. In particular, it is a case of workshop participants, most of whom are in central and powerful positions within the institution, systematically ignoring knowledge that, if recognized, would create a strong ethical impetus for changing basic structures within the academy. This is not only a daunting task, but a task that would entail substantially changing structures that privilege male academics, including scientists, engineers and administrators.

In these workshops, a mechanism producing practical not knowing was a rather tenacious focus on liberal individualism. Workshop participants tended to address the specifics of the case study in terms of individual resources, interactions and responsibilities, while ignoring the ways gender in its institutional context mediates those resources, interactions and responsibilities. For example, women faculty members, including scientists and engineers, tend to be more isolated from their colleagues than men, and this has been identified as a barrier to women’s professional advancement. Workshop participants were made aware of this, but still tended to respond to issues of isolation by saying things like, ‘this is not a gender issue, isolation would have a negative impact on men too,’ or ‘women, like men, need to be assertive and develop professional contacts.’ These kinds of responses tend to make gender disappear and tend to place responsibility on individual women, rather than social and institutional factors that make gender play a role in determining who is included or excluded in scientific communities. While this paper focuses on arguing that liberal individualism is a mechanism of the epistemology of ignorance in a particular series of workshops on the status of women in science and engineering, it is also a starting point for many other discussions about the relationships between ethics, epistemology and the representation of women in science (and in the academy more generally). In this case, practical not knowing about the status of women in science can frustrate efforts to address the underrepresentation of women in many scientific communities, which can be both an ethical and an epistemic problem.

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Jun 26th, 1:00 PM Jun 26th, 2:30 PM

“Warning warning uptake failure”: Epistemology of ignorance, liberal individualism and the underrepresentation of women in science

This presentation is part of the Women in Science and Philosophy: Empirical Investigations and Their Use track.

“Warning, warning, uptake failure,” The epistemology of ignorance, liberal individualism and the underrepresentation of women in science. Over the past three years, with the support of the National Science Foundation, I have conducted several workshops designed to train senior scientists and university administers about (1) the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering, (2) the career advancement barriers that these women face and (3) the social science data that can be used to explain and understand the underrepresentation of women and the barriers. Each of these workshops has two components: the first is a presentation of hard data and the second is an application of that data to a case study.

Analyses of the discussions of the case studies reveal that participants faced significant challenges giving the data uptake. For example, at our institution, significantly more women than men assistant professors quit pre-tenure. The workshop participants did not contest this fact, did not question the statistical analyses used to produce this fact and could use this fact with some familiarity in immediate abstract discussions. This suggests that it seemed to pass the test of justified true belief. However, in discussions of a particular case study related to issues of the retention of women scientists and engineers, this fact was often overlooked or ignored, with several respondents saying things such as, “I just don’t see how this is a gender issue.” Workshop participants seemed to both know and not know about the problems of attrition of women faculty members. They knew in the sense of holding a justified true belief. They didn’t know in the sense that they did not put this ‘knowledge’ to work in their discussions of a case study that was parallel to situations that they regularly encountered.

I diagnose this failure to put knowledge into practice in terms of the epistemology of ignorance. According to Nancy Tuana, ‘if we are to enrich our understanding of the production of knowledge in a particular field, then we must also examine the ways in which not knowing is sustained and sometimes even constructed’ (Tuana 2006, 3). This case looks at the difference between knowing in terms of being aware, or holding a justified true belief, and not knowing in terms of being able to use a piece of knowledge in order to mediate our understanding of the world and our interactions with other people. In particular, it is a case of workshop participants, most of whom are in central and powerful positions within the institution, systematically ignoring knowledge that, if recognized, would create a strong ethical impetus for changing basic structures within the academy. This is not only a daunting task, but a task that would entail substantially changing structures that privilege male academics, including scientists, engineers and administrators.

In these workshops, a mechanism producing practical not knowing was a rather tenacious focus on liberal individualism. Workshop participants tended to address the specifics of the case study in terms of individual resources, interactions and responsibilities, while ignoring the ways gender in its institutional context mediates those resources, interactions and responsibilities. For example, women faculty members, including scientists and engineers, tend to be more isolated from their colleagues than men, and this has been identified as a barrier to women’s professional advancement. Workshop participants were made aware of this, but still tended to respond to issues of isolation by saying things like, ‘this is not a gender issue, isolation would have a negative impact on men too,’ or ‘women, like men, need to be assertive and develop professional contacts.’ These kinds of responses tend to make gender disappear and tend to place responsibility on individual women, rather than social and institutional factors that make gender play a role in determining who is included or excluded in scientific communities. While this paper focuses on arguing that liberal individualism is a mechanism of the epistemology of ignorance in a particular series of workshops on the status of women in science and engineering, it is also a starting point for many other discussions about the relationships between ethics, epistemology and the representation of women in science (and in the academy more generally). In this case, practical not knowing about the status of women in science can frustrate efforts to address the underrepresentation of women in many scientific communities, which can be both an ethical and an epistemic problem.