Why can’t Women be scientists?
In the article, Objectivity or Heroism? On the Invisibility of Women in Science, Naomi Oreskes explains how “in America, the false mythology of science as an almost exclusively male preserve has been made possible by the near invisibility of women scientists.” Okreskes goes into detail about the objectivity first. She begins by talking about how objectivity “rests heavily on male and female children articulating their adolescent identity through fundamentally divergent responses to the maternal bond.” She says to “forge their identity as men, male children must detach themselves from their primary love-object, whereas female children forge their identities as women in continuing identification with their mothers.” She goes on to explain how females are more empathetic and males are untainted by strong emotion. Now, by Merriam Webster’s definition, objectivity means the quality or character of being objective or lack of favoritism toward one side or another. The overall statement she is trying to make is how when you think of scientists you think of a white male, white lab coat. Women are overshadowed due to “over-abundance” of emotion. “Women tend to do science in a less objective, i.e., less detached or more contextualized, manner than their male counterparts, and therefore have their work misinterpreted, undervalued, or harshly judged.” (Oreskes, 1996). She then talks about heroism. She states how “heroism involves the glorification of the individual.” She says that only 2 examples of auto-experimentation about women “and both of those cases casts their contributions as acts of labor or love, rather than heroic bravery.” By definition, heroism means someone who shows great courage and great bravery. The overall statement she is trying to make her is how, in a sense, male figures come “Steal the Shine”, it will never be just about a woman, but how she did it because of the push/help from a man. Women are looked at always as the nurturer and on the side as opposed to being the “main character” and doing the hard work.
Race intersects with gender because just how someone doesn’t think you’re capable of doing something or at a disadvantage just because of your skin color, they will do the same thing to you with your gender. Now, before reading the article Oscar-nominated “Hidden Figures” was whitewashed — but it didn’t have to be,”I thought this movie was a great portrayal of Katherine Johnson’s role, however, after reading the article it definitely opened my eyes to things I was blind to. The fact that in the movie they had Johnson running across the work place to get to a colored bathroom and then once her white boss sees what she went through he “saves the day” and knocks the colored sign down off the bathroom and says, “we all pee the same color..” but Johnson explained how she never used the colored bathrooms to begin with, she just “went on in the white ones” and nobody said anything to her, that could’ve been shown in the movie and I feel it would’ve sent the same message.
I feel that the overall goal of the movie was achieved, and that was to tell the main story of Katherine Johnson’s life, but I also feel like the producers still had to give the white hero in this movie to “steal the shine” because if you let them tell it, “she wouldn’t have been able to do it without them” when in real life, she did. And it was without them. They could’ve made this movie and her be seen as the full hero in the real story and not with the help from a man.
