[Ramm] [Gendered Innovations] social survey must go beyond gender binaries; female bird songs

[Londa Schiebinger]

1.This one is extremely important. I often argue against reducing things to "man" and "woman" in gender analysis and warn that we ourselves don't want to become part of the problem of perpetuating gender binaries. For data from the US on this, see Aliya Saperstein, Stanford, who works on category development for national surveys. She, too, warns about reinforcing traditional gender binaries. Her studies show: "When respondents of a national survey were asked about their femininity and masculinity, 7 percent considered themselves equally feminine and masculine, and another 4 percent responded in ways that did not 'match' their sex at birth." She argues against continuing to "shoe-horn" people into binary categories of masculinity and femininity. See "Gender Identification" by Aliya Saperstein, pp. 5-7: https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways_SOTU_2018.pdf . Many countries are ahead of the US in offering national recognition to transgender and gender-fluid citizens. Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Nepal, India, and others typically offer gender X (or an alternative) on official documents in addition to M and F.

2. Female songbirds sing! Birdsong is traditionally associated with male birds only, but females also sing--possibly differently and for different reasons. http://femalebirdsong.org/  Thanks, Ineke Sluiter!

All best, Londa

Londa Schiebinger
Director, EU/US Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment Project
John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science, Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/schiebinger.html

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