What matters to women in science? Gender, power and bureaucracy

Abstract

This text is about women and science although it does not specifically or directly examine the position and experience of practising scientists who carry out experiments, publish and are otherwise engaged in academic traffic. Building on John Law’s modes of mattering (2004), the authors explore the enactments of ‘women and science’ in various locations where gender and feminist approaches, science policies and support activities for women in science meet in the European context. By exploring some of these ‘trading zones’ (Galison, 1999), the authors offer some suggestions on power and marginalization in the flagship of European research, the European Research Area. By introducing the notion of a mode of ‘retrenchment’, they argue that while gender equality has been co-opted into European science policy, an enactment with a feminist potential that emerged at the beginning of the new millennium has been gradually displaced by one building on an economic perspective of utility, resources and waste.