Doctoral Dissertation Research: Reproducing Difference in Biomedicine: The Case of Sex as a Biological Variable

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This project examines how biological differences are reproduced through the regulation of inclusion in biomedicine by considering how sex is reproduced as binary, biological, and distinct from gender at an institutional level. It does so by examining the emergence of a new policy mandate of the US National Institutes of Health. Called 'Sex as a Biological Variable,' these policies require the inclusion of equal numbers of male and female cells and animals in all pre-clinical research funded by the NIH. While scholars have shown that the production of biological knowledge is shaped by the assumptions of scientific researchers, far less is known about the role of government agencies and regulatory processes in reproducing certain forms of biological difference. Using archival data and other textual materials, as well as interviews with stakeholders, this project examines the processes by which the NIH developed policies mandating the examination of sex differences in basic and pre-clinical research. The overall aim is to show how particular accounts of sex and gender become institutionalized through regulation and rule-making. This is a multi-method investigation into the ways in which embodied difference, knowledge, institutions, and rule-making serve to produce sex and gender as distinct categories of personhood. The specific case study underlying this investigation is a new policy mandate at the US National Institutes of Health that requires the inclusion of equal numbers of male and female cells and animals in all pre-clinical research funded by the NIH. The project synthesizes data from archives, public policy documents, and interviews with stakeholders to understand how biological difference comes to be constructed as an object of scientific and medical inquiry that is knowable by certain experts who are granted legitimacy as knowledge-producers, while other accounts are denied institutional support. In doing so it advances literature in science and technology studies on the intersection of gender roles and regulatory interventions and on the influence of gender ideology on the work of scientific researchers and medical practitioners. Overall, the project seeks to explain how certain forms of difference come to be presumed biological and privileged as such within research policy and to examine how actors and organizations located outside of the NIH influence or attempt to influence such policies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.