Scholars Award: Women in the Early History of Genetics

学者奖：早期遗传学史上的女性

• 批准号: 0620308
• 负责人: Marsha Richmond
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Wayne State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-01-01 至 2009-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620308&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Scholars; Award; Women; Early; History

This is a proposal for Science and Society (S&S) research funding to study systematically how American and British women contributed to the development of genetics as a scientific discipline. The long-range goal of this project is to combine this data with similar studies of women in Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia in a book entitled, Women in the Early History of Genetics, written by the Principle Investigator in collaboration with Ida Stamhuis (Vrije University, Amsterdam) and Elena Aronova (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). The immediate objective is to conduct extensive archival research to collect data on women, both singly and collectively, who worked in genetics in the United States and Britain, primarily focusing on major university programs and the two leading private genetics research laboratories, the Cold Spring Harbor Department of Genetics (Long Island, New York), and the John Innes Horticultural Institute (Merton and Norwich, England). The specific aims are threefold: (1) Historical: to provide new data and analysis concerning women's participation in genetics research and practice, thereby expanding the historiography of genetics and of women in science; (2) Sociological: to provide (a) a more complex picture of the role gender played in the organization of research programs and laboratory life in genetics and how this affected the work produced in the discipline, and (b) a key case study to test premises explaining women's greater participation in new disciplines--that is, whether such fields are initially welcoming to women when few men are attracted to such as-yet unproven areas of research, or whether the interdisciplinary character of emerging sub-disciplines attracts women by offering future alternative job; and (3) Cross-National Trends in Science: to compare and contrast the opportunities and challenges faced by women in genetics in different national contexts, by which to provide general knowledge about how various cultural, sociopolitical, organizational, and contingent factors may influence not simply "styles" but also "opportunities" in science. The rationale for this research lies in the fact that underestimating women's contributions to the history of genetics has important historiographic implications, portraying an overly masculine and elitist account of the development of the discipline. Moreover, exploring women's work within laboratory practices will provide a more sophisticated sociological picture of genetics, revealing the gendered nature of disciplinary structure--including patterns of institutional support, training, advancement, and segregation within experimental regimes. The intellectual merit lies in the fact that it will provide the first comprehensive assessment of the contributions of women to the study of genetics between the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity in 1900 and the end of the classical period of genetics circa 1935. The broader impacts of this project will be to substantially expand our understanding of critical sociological, institutional, intellectual, and transnational factors contributing to women's participation in science and provide a unique comparative context of the establishment of a scientific discipline that revolutionized modern biology. As a result of its dual focus--on genetics and on women and gender studies--the project results will rightfully claim a place as contributing to the history of genetics, social studies of genetics, women in the history of science, and gender studies, mapping previously unexplored and strategic intellectual terrain.

这是一项科学与社会（S S）研究经费的建议，系统地研究美国和英国妇女如何促进遗传学作为一门科学学科的发展。该项目的长期目标是将这些数据与欧洲、斯堪的纳维亚和俄罗斯妇女的类似研究结合起来，编入一本名为《遗传学早期史中的妇女》的书中，该书由主要研究者与Ida Stamhuis（阿姆斯特丹Vrije大学）和Elena Aronova（莫斯科俄罗斯科学院）合作撰写。目前的目标是进行广泛的档案研究，收集在美国和英国从事遗传学工作的妇女的数据，无论是单独的还是集体的，主要集中在主要的大学项目和两个领先的私人遗传学研究实验室，冷泉港遗传学系（长岛，纽约）和约翰英尼斯园艺研究所（默顿和诺维奇，英格兰）。具体目标有三个：（1）历史：提供关于妇女参与遗传学研究和实践的新数据和分析，从而扩大遗传学和妇女参与科学的历史;（2）社会学：提供（a）性别在遗传学研究计划和实验室生活的组织中所扮演的角色的更复杂的画面，以及这如何影响在遗传学领域的工作。（B）一项关键案例研究，以检验解释妇女更多地参与新学科的前提-即，这些领域最初是否对妇女表示欢迎，而很少有男子被吸引到这些尚未得到证实的研究领域，或者新兴分支学科的跨学科性质是否通过提供未来的替代工作而吸引妇女;以及（3）科学的跨国趋势：比较和对比不同国家妇女在遗传学领域面临的机遇和挑战，从而提供关于各种文化、社会政治、组织和偶然因素如何不仅影响科学领域的“风格”，而且影响科学领域的“机遇”的一般知识。这项研究的基本原理在于，低估女性对遗传学史的贡献具有重要的史学意义，描绘了一个过于男性化和精英主义的学科发展。此外，在实验室实践中探索妇女的工作将提供一个更复杂的遗传学社会学图片，揭示学科结构的性别性质-包括实验制度内的机构支持，培训，晋升和隔离模式。其学术价值在于，它将首次全面评估从1900年孟德尔遗传定律重新发现到大约1935年遗传学经典时期结束之间，女性对遗传学研究的贡献。该项目的更广泛的影响将大大扩大我们对关键的社会学，制度，智力和跨国因素的理解，有助于妇女参与科学，并提供一个独特的比较背景下建立一个科学学科，革命性的现代生物学。由于其双重重点-遗传学和妇女与性别研究-该项目的成果将理所当然地在促进遗传学史、遗传学的社会研究、科学史上的妇女和性别研究方面占有一席之地，描绘了以前未探索的战略知识领域。