Why Not a Woman?
Three different topics/themes that have interested me the most from this semester so far would have to be the Feminist Standpoint Theory, Hidden Figures, and All About Perspectives.
I feel these themes are all related and intertwined. The hidden figures one is basically about women doing hard work and not getting credit for it, that can go into the feminist standpoint theory which say that there should be more women practicing/being shown in sciences than there are, and then that goes right into all about perspectives, some people think women aren’t right/don’t know how to figure things out and they don’t take the suggestions of these women because they’re just assuming they’re wrong.
A specific question that I would pursue about this theme would have to be “Why Not a Woman?” Why can’t a woman be a scientist? Why is a woman being over emotional a bad thing? Why don’t men believe women? Why aren’t women capable of doing those same things? Those are just the little questions that goes with the broad question of Why not a woman.
The readings I would use to inform my thinking would definitely be the Feminist Standpoint Theory and the two basic principles involved, one being “all knowledge is situated, interpreted, and thus local.” And two, “those belonging to marginalized groups are situated in ways that allow them to see more than those who are not” (Redniss, 2011). I would use the article about Objectivity and Heroism and how in American, “the false mythology of science as an almost exclusively male preserve has been made possible by the near invisibility of women scientist” (Oreskes, 1996). One more article I’d choose to inform my thinking to get my question(s) answered would be the one about Hidden Figures the movie being white washed. In this movie, while telling her story, the makers of this movie also added in some extra scenes and things that didn’t really happen. I feel if they would have kept everything how it actually was without putting made up stories in there would’ve sent the same message, if not better, about how Johnson was standing up for herself in real life but was getting pushed over in the movie.
All of these articles can be used for each topic. We can use examples from all the articles I chose because like I mentioned before these all play into each other, there is evidence within each article about each question I have posed.
There is no simple answer to any of these questions I have asked, there is no way to change how it was in the past. All we can do is be the change we want to see in the world. It wont happen in a day, heck it wont even happen in a year, but as long as we keep fighting for what is right and keep pursuing whatever it is that we want to do no matter who (man or woman) is in the way we can slowly but surely change the stigma around scientists.
