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Women, feminism and biology: The feminist challenge
Book reviews
488
Women, Feminism and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. By Lynda Birke. Brighton, UK:
The Harvester Press, 1986. Feminist biology
Lynda Birke’s recent book is the best that I have read (including Hubbard et al., 1982; Sayers, 1982; Sapiro, 1983; and Bleier, 1984) on the interlocking questions of the relationships between human female sexual biology and the modern women’s movement; the women’s movement and feminism; feminism and the sexual biology of human females; and between biological sex and cultural gender. For too long, she says (p. 55), ‘biology has been rejected as irrelevant to feminist theorizing . . . . What is needed now is . . .integration’. In regard to biology, her selected emphases are on (1) human development; (2) environmental interactions; and (3) the creation of a feminist science. Dr Birke is an experimental biologist whose laboratory animal of choice is the rat; and in her scientific reports on rodent behaviour she writes for standard journals in her field [such as Developmenful PsJ&obiologlt (Birke & Sadler, 1985)] under the gender-neutral name L. I. A. Birke. Contrariwise, Lynda Birke is a widely published lesbian feminist (Birke, 1982; p. 90) and leading member of such English women’s organizations as the Brighton Women and Science Group (e.g. Birke 8~ Best, 1980). Biosocial feminism, biological determinism and macho science
Birke is among a tiny minority of women who are self-professed (and also generally recognized to be) feminists, and who not only believe but are willing to state for publication that a problem is posed by the dearth of biological knowledge among the mass of non-feminist women to whom arguments about sexist biological determinism are addressed. Birke points out (p. 5) that ‘feminists must grapple with biology in order to deal effectively with [biological arguments often used to oppose feminism. However] a greater concern with women’s biology emerged from the success of the women’s health movement’. But (p. 165), ‘In other areas of biology, the information available within feminist literature often becomes oversimplified and distorted’. She asserts also (p. 8) that ‘science is intimately part of capitalist patriarchy . . .[so] the simple critiques of biological determinism are not enough’. In the introductory chapter, Birke presents a figure indicating that feminism is particularly opposed to biological determinism (irrespective of whether it deals with supposed special female virtues, or vices); and also to science [as satirized by satyric mallard rapists (pp. 20-21) and sexist selfish genes (p. 40; and cf. Birke, 1984) of sociobiology -not to be confused with ‘social biology’]. Science is a masculine technology that excludes women from its ideology and practice alike, while exploiting women and girls as experimental animals (through medical ‘science’)-although the verdict remains in doubt with specific regard to reproductive technology (i.e. more ‘liberating’ or more ‘restricting’?). On the other hand, Ecofeminism is praised (and see Merchant, 1980; MacCormack & Strathern, 1980; Caldecott & Leland, 1983; and Schubert, 1988) together with its identification of Nature as female and of culture as male. And concepts of sex (genetic/biological) and of gender (cultural/social) are perceived (at least, by Birke) as more neutral for use in describing both female and male human development-although either ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ can be and frequently are used in a reductionist way by determinists who fail to comprehend, or to accept, epigenesis (citing Waddington, on p. 102; and cf. Schubert, 1981, 1985) and transactional effects in growth and behaviour.
Her next three chapters develop the theme of biological determinism (with respective emphases on its impact for feminism; politics; and reductionism of women). But Birke takes a much more positive stance in Chapters 5-7, where she discusses the epigenesis of gender development; ecofeminism; and [unlike any other feminist I have read (and the references list to Schubert, 1988, includes more than 500 items; and see Schubert, 1983, 1987)] quanfum feminism (e.g. pp. 132, 137, 139) as one facet of ‘New Age’ politics in relation to ecofeminism. Thus, Chapter 7 leads directly into her concluding Chapter 8, on the prospects for building a feminist science (and cf. Bleier, 1984, chapter 6; and Fee, 1986, chapter 3).
Sex/gender identity, epigenetic development and feminist science We ‘need to acknowledge’, she says (p. 49) ‘the importance of social factors in the construction of gender, while simultaneously admitting the significance of biology within the theory’. And (p. 94), ‘interactive processes in development do involve change and transformation’. Thus, An alternative way of looking at the problem of how we acquire our sense of gender is to emphasize the extent of the interaction between any biological factors and the environment in which they are expressed, including such things as parental and social expectations. Interactions, of course, can occur at all stagesof development, from the moment of conception. As these occur, they in themselves help to create a new environment in which the biology is expressed; at each stage, new patterns and interactions emerge (p. 54). Moreover (pp. 103-104) sex identity is a dynamic developmental throughout the life span:
construct for humans
both with respect to themselves and to other people around them. That is, gender is itself part of interactive processes,rather than being a fixed property of individuals. Among other things, this [continuously] reconstructed senseof gender could include more directly awareness of the biological self. Becauseit is assumed to be constructed early in life, the only biological component that has been included in theories of gender is the structure of the genitals. . . The biological changes of puberty occur long after gender is assumed to have been largely acquired, according to existing theories . . [Similarly] adult biological experiences, such as menstruation or childbirth . . . influenc[e] . . self-perception of gender . . . . I cannot accept that adult biological processeshave no impact upon our [conlception of ourselvesas women or men . . Apart from the biological experience, such changes have huge social significance, which itself alters the ways in which people view their physical selves. . . [and] adult gender identify, as woman or man, can only be understood as the present, dynamic point in a continually evolving process which . . includes the real lived experience of our biological selves as well as the social meaning and economic context of our lives. For Birke, the policy goals of feminist biological science must include moving towards greater appreciation and use of human biology, in relation to the differences between the biological and social experiences of black and Third World women in contrast to those of Western women. Feminism, in her view, is working for change to establish better societies in which women are neither devalued nor oppressed. That involves major change in science itself, ‘which not only perpetuates our oppression at present, but threatens also to destroy humanity and all other species with whom we share this earth’ (p. 171). Such a feminist science would substitute holism for positivism; sexual equality in opportunity instead of patriarchy; and female values in harmony with nature in place of masculine exploitation and destruction of nature. It would emphasize such other values as animal rights; the priority of human needs over militaristic waste and destruction of human lives and economic goods, and likewise over the production and sales criteria
490
Book
reviews
of capitalism; and with particular regard to human needs for medical care, their fulfillment in lieu of the profits of pharmaceutical manufacturers and/or the convenience and status enhancement of the medical profession; the subjective relevance of much of life, as compared to the hyperrationalism of male science; and the virtues of decentralization and communalization (in addition to generalizing democratization far beyond scientific laboratories and the homes of the scientists themselves). Female values and psychobiological epigenesis
Birke is mistaken, however, in her repudiation of ‘female values’ as a positive force that can be used in the reconstitution of patriarchal male science (p. 117). By female values she means (p. 122; and cf. her affirming remarks on pp. 13 1, 141, 142) that, ‘It is undoubtedly true that in contemporary society women are on average more likely to be nurturant, affiliative, and life-loving’-because they are socialized to behave that way, ofcourse. But Birke suggests that many commentators-male and female alike, and even including many biologically naive feminists-attribute ‘female values’ to female Nature; and they believe also in ‘feminity as both intrinsic to women and fundamentally desirable’ (p. 117). This she criticizes as the basis for a belief that feminism (because of its commitment to female values) might provide salvation from Science, which in Birke’s opinion is merely biological determinism in disguise. However, ifthe values are a social fact and an epigenetic consequence of culture acting on human female genomes-and vice versa -then it is irrelevant that other persons including other feminists (who do not understand epigenesis) invoke biological determinism as their rationale for ‘female values’. Birke is a rat experimentalist, not a specialist in human psychobiology; and she repeats the standard feminist critique of sex differences in human brain lateralization, dismissing neurobiological research by female American scientists who are specialists in such empirical questions as modal sexual differences in language, as distinguished from spatial skills (e.g. Wittig & Peterson, 1979; Parsons, 1980; McGlone, 1980; McGuinness, 1985; and also that by a male, Harris, 1978) which Birke dismisses as the biologically (i.e. evolutionary theoretical) deterministic byproducts of Man-the-Hunter myths (pp. 30-3 1). What she apparently forgets here is that just as pink-bootied babies are conditioned to become nurturant and empathetic, so also are those with blue booties conditioned to get out and explore their environments and to play with rocks instead of dolls (Bruner et al., 1976; Baldwin & Baldwin, 1977; Peters, 1978; Calvin, 1982, 1983). In the absence of any research designed to (1) assume the possible conjoint influence of sex genome as well as of gender socialization differences, epigenetically) and (2) attempt to test the respective effects of sex and gender differences (if any) on the spatial skills of boys as compared to girls; then (3) there is no basis for any deterministic causal attribution-either for genes or for roles. Nitty gritty
Birke is an English feminist, which I mention now only because that may explain such an oversight as her description of Gerda Lerner as a ‘black woman writer’, perhaps a mistaken inference from the coincidence that Birke’s quotation of Lerner is at second hand (from Bell Hooks, who is a black American feminist) and that Lerner’s book (1973) is a history of black American women. Gerda Lerner neither presented nor described herself as black when she spoke in the auditorium of the Korean Studies Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the spring of 1986, at a meeting sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program of that university, where she discussed another and then
Book
reviews
491
forthcoming book before an audience that included me. And Gloria Watkins (whose nom de plume is Bell Hooks) comments (Hooks, 1981; p. lo), in the book from which Birke quoted (but elsewhere than the quotation), that ‘Gerda Lerner, a white women [sic] born in Austria, edited Black Women in White America . . . [and] it is significant that in our society white women are given grant money to do research on black women but [not vice versa]‘. No doubt it is a reflection of the process by which books get published nowadays that the printing of three-fourths of the footnotes for Chapter 4 of Birke’s book are out of sequence (pp. 183-195). The first half of note 8 is identified as note 8 and the remainder as note 9; thereafter what should be notes 9-38 are identified as notes 10-39; and whatever should be footnote 39 is missing.
Conclusion Lynda Birke has done a big favour to both biological and social scientists, as well as to both feminists and women generally, by her production of this scholarly, literate and judicious introduction to feminist biology. That is the bottom line.
References Baldwin, J. D. & Baldwin, J. I. (1977). In (S. Chevalier-Skolnikoff & F. E. Poirier, Eds): Primate Bio-Social Devefopnwnr. New York: Garland Press,pp. 343-406. Birke, L. (1982). In (R. Hubbard, M. S. Henifin & B. Fried, Eds): Biological Woman: The Convienf Mvtlr. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman, pp. 71-90. Birke, L. (1984). New Sci. 16, 40-42. Birke, L. & Best, S. (1980). In (Brighton Women and Science Group, Eds): Alice Through rhe Microscope. London: Virago, pp. 89-107. Birke, L. I. A. & Sadler, D. (1985). Develop. Psychobiol. 18, 467-475. Bleier, R. (1984). Science andGender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories of Women. New York: Pergamon Press. Bruner, J. S., Jolly, A. & Sylva, K. (Eds) (1976). Play: Its Role in Development and Evolution. New York: Basic Books. Caldecott, L. & Leland, S. (Eds) (1983). Reclaim the Earth. London: Women’s Press. Calvin, W. H. (1982). Ethel. Sociobiol. 3, I 15-124. Calvin, W. H. (1983). Behav. Brain Sci. 6, 210-21 I. Fee, E. (1983). In (M. Lowe & R. Hubbard, Eds): Women’s Nature: Rationalizations of Inequality. New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 9-27. Harris, L. J. (1978). In (M. Kinsbourne, Ed.): Asymmetrical Function of fhe Bruin. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 405-522. Hooks, B. (1981). Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press. Hubbard, R., Henifin, S. & Fried, B. (Eds) (1982). Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth. Cambridge, Masachusetts: Schenkman. Lerner, G. (Ed.) (1973). Black Women in White America. New York: Vintage Press. MacCormick, C. & Strathern, M. (Eds) (1981). Nature, Culfure and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McClone, J. (1980). Behav. Bruin Sci. 3, 215-227. McGuiness, D. (1985). In (R. L. Hall, Ed.): Male-Female Diffrences: A Biocultural Perspecfive. New York: Praeger, pp. 57-126. Merchant, C. (I 980). The Deafh of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper & Row. Parsons, J. E. (Ed.) (1980). The Psychobiology of Sex D@erences nnd Sex Roles. New York: Hemisphere & McGraw-Hill. Peters, R. (1978). In (R. L. Hall & H. S. Shapr, Eds): Wolfand Man: Evolution in Parallel. New York: Academic Press, pp. 133-147.
492
Book reviews
Sapiro, V. (1983). The Polirical Integration o/’ Women. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Sayers, J. (1982). Biological Politics: Fern&t and Antijeminist Perspectives.London: Tavistock. Schubert, G. (1981). J. sot. biol. Sfrucf. 4. 287-296. Schubert, G. (1983). Pal. Lijt Sci. 1, 97-l 10. Schubert, G. (1985). J. sot. biol. Strut. 8, 233-253. Schubert, G. (1987). In (T. L. Becker, Ed.): Quantum Politics and Constitutional Transformation. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Manoa, Political SciencesDepartment. Schubert, G. (1988). Sexual Politics and Political Feminism. (In preparation.) Wittig, M. Kc Peterson, A. (Eds) (1979). Sex-R&fed D@zrences in Cognifive Funcrioning. New York: Academic Press. Glendon Schubert Department of Political Science, University of Halsaii at Manoa, Hololulu. Habvaii 96822, USA Women, Feminism, and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. By Lynda Birke. New York: Methuen Inc. (originally published in Great Britain by Wheatsheaf Books Ltd., a division of the Harvester Publishing Group), 1986. 210 pp. Lynda Birke offers a provocative argument against an array of treatments given gender differences principally by biological scientists but also by radical feminists. She examines and rejects explanations based solely on biological factors, those based solely on environmental/social factors and those which contend that the more basic and invariant biological characteristics express themselves differently in the less basic and more variable environmental and social conditions. She argues that theoretical and methodological reductionism (and, alternatively, holism) are forms of determinism which share its tendency to limit the amount of change which can be achieved. In the penultimate chapter, Birke urges caution on those who see, primarily in contemporary reductions in emphasis on mechanistic views of nature, signs of paradigmatic shift. And, in the final chapter, she concludes with a discussion of the characteristics of a potential biological science shaped by feminist principles. What Birke has not provided is much in the way of theories or methodologies which would advance the kind of biological science she envisions. And, from this political scientist’s point of view, it seems that Birke’s orientation toward the natural sciences may have narrowed her range of suggestions. Criticizing determinism (p. 75) which she sometimes seems to conflate with causation (p. 654, she turns to indeterminacy in quantum physics as an example of an alternative rather than turning to the causal but probabilistic or non-causal explanatory models of the social sciences. When she rejects ‘test one variable at a time’ methodological reductionism, she asserts that ‘the methodology may well evolve as the theory evolve[s]‘just as it did with changing conceptualization of the atom (pp. 99-100) rather than suggesting that alternative multivariate strategies may already exist in social science methodologies. Those multivariate methodologies of the social sciences have forced us to think about statistical interaction in which we have to cope with the possibility that two variables acting together effect a result which could not have been predicted on the basis of the action of either separately. In such circumstances, we cannot describe the general, overall effects of one independent variable controlling for the other. We have to conceptualize the joint effects of the two independent variables as if their combined conditions were a new, single independent variable or, at least, report separate descriptions of the effects of one independent variable for each condition of the other.
488
Women, Feminism and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. By Lynda Birke. Brighton, UK:
The Harvester Press, 1986. Feminist biology
Lynda Birke’s recent book is the best that I have read (including Hubbard et al., 1982; Sayers, 1982; Sapiro, 1983; and Bleier, 1984) on the interlocking questions of the relationships between human female sexual biology and the modern women’s movement; the women’s movement and feminism; feminism and the sexual biology of human females; and between biological sex and cultural gender. For too long, she says (p. 55), ‘biology has been rejected as irrelevant to feminist theorizing . . . . What is needed now is . . .integration’. In regard to biology, her selected emphases are on (1) human development; (2) environmental interactions; and (3) the creation of a feminist science. Dr Birke is an experimental biologist whose laboratory animal of choice is the rat; and in her scientific reports on rodent behaviour she writes for standard journals in her field [such as Developmenful PsJ&obiologlt (Birke & Sadler, 1985)] under the gender-neutral name L. I. A. Birke. Contrariwise, Lynda Birke is a widely published lesbian feminist (Birke, 1982; p. 90) and leading member of such English women’s organizations as the Brighton Women and Science Group (e.g. Birke 8~ Best, 1980). Biosocial feminism, biological determinism and macho science
Birke is among a tiny minority of women who are self-professed (and also generally recognized to be) feminists, and who not only believe but are willing to state for publication that a problem is posed by the dearth of biological knowledge among the mass of non-feminist women to whom arguments about sexist biological determinism are addressed. Birke points out (p. 5) that ‘feminists must grapple with biology in order to deal effectively with [biological arguments often used to oppose feminism. However] a greater concern with women’s biology emerged from the success of the women’s health movement’. But (p. 165), ‘In other areas of biology, the information available within feminist literature often becomes oversimplified and distorted’. She asserts also (p. 8) that ‘science is intimately part of capitalist patriarchy . . .[so] the simple critiques of biological determinism are not enough’. In the introductory chapter, Birke presents a figure indicating that feminism is particularly opposed to biological determinism (irrespective of whether it deals with supposed special female virtues, or vices); and also to science [as satirized by satyric mallard rapists (pp. 20-21) and sexist selfish genes (p. 40; and cf. Birke, 1984) of sociobiology -not to be confused with ‘social biology’]. Science is a masculine technology that excludes women from its ideology and practice alike, while exploiting women and girls as experimental animals (through medical ‘science’)-although the verdict remains in doubt with specific regard to reproductive technology (i.e. more ‘liberating’ or more ‘restricting’?). On the other hand, Ecofeminism is praised (and see Merchant, 1980; MacCormack & Strathern, 1980; Caldecott & Leland, 1983; and Schubert, 1988) together with its identification of Nature as female and of culture as male. And concepts of sex (genetic/biological) and of gender (cultural/social) are perceived (at least, by Birke) as more neutral for use in describing both female and male human development-although either ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ can be and frequently are used in a reductionist way by determinists who fail to comprehend, or to accept, epigenesis (citing Waddington, on p. 102; and cf. Schubert, 1981, 1985) and transactional effects in growth and behaviour.
Her next three chapters develop the theme of biological determinism (with respective emphases on its impact for feminism; politics; and reductionism of women). But Birke takes a much more positive stance in Chapters 5-7, where she discusses the epigenesis of gender development; ecofeminism; and [unlike any other feminist I have read (and the references list to Schubert, 1988, includes more than 500 items; and see Schubert, 1983, 1987)] quanfum feminism (e.g. pp. 132, 137, 139) as one facet of ‘New Age’ politics in relation to ecofeminism. Thus, Chapter 7 leads directly into her concluding Chapter 8, on the prospects for building a feminist science (and cf. Bleier, 1984, chapter 6; and Fee, 1986, chapter 3).
Sex/gender identity, epigenetic development and feminist science We ‘need to acknowledge’, she says (p. 49) ‘the importance of social factors in the construction of gender, while simultaneously admitting the significance of biology within the theory’. And (p. 94), ‘interactive processes in development do involve change and transformation’. Thus, An alternative way of looking at the problem of how we acquire our sense of gender is to emphasize the extent of the interaction between any biological factors and the environment in which they are expressed, including such things as parental and social expectations. Interactions, of course, can occur at all stagesof development, from the moment of conception. As these occur, they in themselves help to create a new environment in which the biology is expressed; at each stage, new patterns and interactions emerge (p. 54). Moreover (pp. 103-104) sex identity is a dynamic developmental throughout the life span:
construct for humans
both with respect to themselves and to other people around them. That is, gender is itself part of interactive processes,rather than being a fixed property of individuals. Among other things, this [continuously] reconstructed senseof gender could include more directly awareness of the biological self. Becauseit is assumed to be constructed early in life, the only biological component that has been included in theories of gender is the structure of the genitals. . . The biological changes of puberty occur long after gender is assumed to have been largely acquired, according to existing theories . . [Similarly] adult biological experiences, such as menstruation or childbirth . . . influenc[e] . . self-perception of gender . . . . I cannot accept that adult biological processeshave no impact upon our [conlception of ourselvesas women or men . . Apart from the biological experience, such changes have huge social significance, which itself alters the ways in which people view their physical selves. . . [and] adult gender identify, as woman or man, can only be understood as the present, dynamic point in a continually evolving process which . . includes the real lived experience of our biological selves as well as the social meaning and economic context of our lives. For Birke, the policy goals of feminist biological science must include moving towards greater appreciation and use of human biology, in relation to the differences between the biological and social experiences of black and Third World women in contrast to those of Western women. Feminism, in her view, is working for change to establish better societies in which women are neither devalued nor oppressed. That involves major change in science itself, ‘which not only perpetuates our oppression at present, but threatens also to destroy humanity and all other species with whom we share this earth’ (p. 171). Such a feminist science would substitute holism for positivism; sexual equality in opportunity instead of patriarchy; and female values in harmony with nature in place of masculine exploitation and destruction of nature. It would emphasize such other values as animal rights; the priority of human needs over militaristic waste and destruction of human lives and economic goods, and likewise over the production and sales criteria
490
Book
reviews
of capitalism; and with particular regard to human needs for medical care, their fulfillment in lieu of the profits of pharmaceutical manufacturers and/or the convenience and status enhancement of the medical profession; the subjective relevance of much of life, as compared to the hyperrationalism of male science; and the virtues of decentralization and communalization (in addition to generalizing democratization far beyond scientific laboratories and the homes of the scientists themselves). Female values and psychobiological epigenesis
Birke is mistaken, however, in her repudiation of ‘female values’ as a positive force that can be used in the reconstitution of patriarchal male science (p. 117). By female values she means (p. 122; and cf. her affirming remarks on pp. 13 1, 141, 142) that, ‘It is undoubtedly true that in contemporary society women are on average more likely to be nurturant, affiliative, and life-loving’-because they are socialized to behave that way, ofcourse. But Birke suggests that many commentators-male and female alike, and even including many biologically naive feminists-attribute ‘female values’ to female Nature; and they believe also in ‘feminity as both intrinsic to women and fundamentally desirable’ (p. 117). This she criticizes as the basis for a belief that feminism (because of its commitment to female values) might provide salvation from Science, which in Birke’s opinion is merely biological determinism in disguise. However, ifthe values are a social fact and an epigenetic consequence of culture acting on human female genomes-and vice versa -then it is irrelevant that other persons including other feminists (who do not understand epigenesis) invoke biological determinism as their rationale for ‘female values’. Birke is a rat experimentalist, not a specialist in human psychobiology; and she repeats the standard feminist critique of sex differences in human brain lateralization, dismissing neurobiological research by female American scientists who are specialists in such empirical questions as modal sexual differences in language, as distinguished from spatial skills (e.g. Wittig & Peterson, 1979; Parsons, 1980; McGlone, 1980; McGuinness, 1985; and also that by a male, Harris, 1978) which Birke dismisses as the biologically (i.e. evolutionary theoretical) deterministic byproducts of Man-the-Hunter myths (pp. 30-3 1). What she apparently forgets here is that just as pink-bootied babies are conditioned to become nurturant and empathetic, so also are those with blue booties conditioned to get out and explore their environments and to play with rocks instead of dolls (Bruner et al., 1976; Baldwin & Baldwin, 1977; Peters, 1978; Calvin, 1982, 1983). In the absence of any research designed to (1) assume the possible conjoint influence of sex genome as well as of gender socialization differences, epigenetically) and (2) attempt to test the respective effects of sex and gender differences (if any) on the spatial skills of boys as compared to girls; then (3) there is no basis for any deterministic causal attribution-either for genes or for roles. Nitty gritty
Birke is an English feminist, which I mention now only because that may explain such an oversight as her description of Gerda Lerner as a ‘black woman writer’, perhaps a mistaken inference from the coincidence that Birke’s quotation of Lerner is at second hand (from Bell Hooks, who is a black American feminist) and that Lerner’s book (1973) is a history of black American women. Gerda Lerner neither presented nor described herself as black when she spoke in the auditorium of the Korean Studies Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the spring of 1986, at a meeting sponsored by the Women’s Studies Program of that university, where she discussed another and then
Book
reviews
491
forthcoming book before an audience that included me. And Gloria Watkins (whose nom de plume is Bell Hooks) comments (Hooks, 1981; p. lo), in the book from which Birke quoted (but elsewhere than the quotation), that ‘Gerda Lerner, a white women [sic] born in Austria, edited Black Women in White America . . . [and] it is significant that in our society white women are given grant money to do research on black women but [not vice versa]‘. No doubt it is a reflection of the process by which books get published nowadays that the printing of three-fourths of the footnotes for Chapter 4 of Birke’s book are out of sequence (pp. 183-195). The first half of note 8 is identified as note 8 and the remainder as note 9; thereafter what should be notes 9-38 are identified as notes 10-39; and whatever should be footnote 39 is missing.
Conclusion Lynda Birke has done a big favour to both biological and social scientists, as well as to both feminists and women generally, by her production of this scholarly, literate and judicious introduction to feminist biology. That is the bottom line.
References Baldwin, J. D. & Baldwin, J. I. (1977). In (S. Chevalier-Skolnikoff & F. E. Poirier, Eds): Primate Bio-Social Devefopnwnr. New York: Garland Press,pp. 343-406. Birke, L. (1982). In (R. Hubbard, M. S. Henifin & B. Fried, Eds): Biological Woman: The Convienf Mvtlr. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman, pp. 71-90. Birke, L. (1984). New Sci. 16, 40-42. Birke, L. & Best, S. (1980). In (Brighton Women and Science Group, Eds): Alice Through rhe Microscope. London: Virago, pp. 89-107. Birke, L. I. A. & Sadler, D. (1985). Develop. Psychobiol. 18, 467-475. Bleier, R. (1984). Science andGender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories of Women. New York: Pergamon Press. Bruner, J. S., Jolly, A. & Sylva, K. (Eds) (1976). Play: Its Role in Development and Evolution. New York: Basic Books. Caldecott, L. & Leland, S. (Eds) (1983). Reclaim the Earth. London: Women’s Press. Calvin, W. H. (1982). Ethel. Sociobiol. 3, I 15-124. Calvin, W. H. (1983). Behav. Brain Sci. 6, 210-21 I. Fee, E. (1983). In (M. Lowe & R. Hubbard, Eds): Women’s Nature: Rationalizations of Inequality. New York: Pergamon Press, pp. 9-27. Harris, L. J. (1978). In (M. Kinsbourne, Ed.): Asymmetrical Function of fhe Bruin. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 405-522. Hooks, B. (1981). Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press. Hubbard, R., Henifin, S. & Fried, B. (Eds) (1982). Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth. Cambridge, Masachusetts: Schenkman. Lerner, G. (Ed.) (1973). Black Women in White America. New York: Vintage Press. MacCormick, C. & Strathern, M. (Eds) (1981). Nature, Culfure and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McClone, J. (1980). Behav. Bruin Sci. 3, 215-227. McGuiness, D. (1985). In (R. L. Hall, Ed.): Male-Female Diffrences: A Biocultural Perspecfive. New York: Praeger, pp. 57-126. Merchant, C. (I 980). The Deafh of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper & Row. Parsons, J. E. (Ed.) (1980). The Psychobiology of Sex D@erences nnd Sex Roles. New York: Hemisphere & McGraw-Hill. Peters, R. (1978). In (R. L. Hall & H. S. Shapr, Eds): Wolfand Man: Evolution in Parallel. New York: Academic Press, pp. 133-147.
492
Book reviews
Sapiro, V. (1983). The Polirical Integration o/’ Women. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Sayers, J. (1982). Biological Politics: Fern&t and Antijeminist Perspectives.London: Tavistock. Schubert, G. (1981). J. sot. biol. Sfrucf. 4. 287-296. Schubert, G. (1983). Pal. Lijt Sci. 1, 97-l 10. Schubert, G. (1985). J. sot. biol. Strut. 8, 233-253. Schubert, G. (1987). In (T. L. Becker, Ed.): Quantum Politics and Constitutional Transformation. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii at Manoa, Political SciencesDepartment. Schubert, G. (1988). Sexual Politics and Political Feminism. (In preparation.) Wittig, M. Kc Peterson, A. (Eds) (1979). Sex-R&fed D@zrences in Cognifive Funcrioning. New York: Academic Press. Glendon Schubert Department of Political Science, University of Halsaii at Manoa, Hololulu. Habvaii 96822, USA Women, Feminism, and Biology: The Feminist Challenge. By Lynda Birke. New York: Methuen Inc. (originally published in Great Britain by Wheatsheaf Books Ltd., a division of the Harvester Publishing Group), 1986. 210 pp. Lynda Birke offers a provocative argument against an array of treatments given gender differences principally by biological scientists but also by radical feminists. She examines and rejects explanations based solely on biological factors, those based solely on environmental/social factors and those which contend that the more basic and invariant biological characteristics express themselves differently in the less basic and more variable environmental and social conditions. She argues that theoretical and methodological reductionism (and, alternatively, holism) are forms of determinism which share its tendency to limit the amount of change which can be achieved. In the penultimate chapter, Birke urges caution on those who see, primarily in contemporary reductions in emphasis on mechanistic views of nature, signs of paradigmatic shift. And, in the final chapter, she concludes with a discussion of the characteristics of a potential biological science shaped by feminist principles. What Birke has not provided is much in the way of theories or methodologies which would advance the kind of biological science she envisions. And, from this political scientist’s point of view, it seems that Birke’s orientation toward the natural sciences may have narrowed her range of suggestions. Criticizing determinism (p. 75) which she sometimes seems to conflate with causation (p. 654, she turns to indeterminacy in quantum physics as an example of an alternative rather than turning to the causal but probabilistic or non-causal explanatory models of the social sciences. When she rejects ‘test one variable at a time’ methodological reductionism, she asserts that ‘the methodology may well evolve as the theory evolve[s]‘just as it did with changing conceptualization of the atom (pp. 99-100) rather than suggesting that alternative multivariate strategies may already exist in social science methodologies. Those multivariate methodologies of the social sciences have forced us to think about statistical interaction in which we have to cope with the possibility that two variables acting together effect a result which could not have been predicted on the basis of the action of either separately. In such circumstances, we cannot describe the general, overall effects of one independent variable controlling for the other. We have to conceptualize the joint effects of the two independent variables as if their combined conditions were a new, single independent variable or, at least, report separate descriptions of the effects of one independent variable for each condition of the other.