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Assignment #2

In the piece “Skeletons in the Closet,” Linda Schiebinger discusses the increased attention directed toward the anatomy of women and men in the scientific community of eighteenth and nineteenth Europe.  Although there were objective physical differences between women and men, these differences were then used to establish social and political inequalities for women.  In a period and climate where women began to challenge their subordinate roles in society, the medical community justified the inequalities women faced with their “scientific findings” that women were inferior in the “natural” hierarchy.

The arguments that women were inferior to men focused on the differences in organs between women and men.  Not only were women deemed to be weaker in strength, their smaller skulls were irrationally associated with them lacking the ability to think critically and analytically, as men were able to do.  The uterus was used by scientists and doctors as a sign that a woman’s role was strictly limited to birthing children and later taking care of them.

What it comes down to, which I believe the author does well in explaining, is that anatomy and science were being used to justify the oppression of minorities (women and non-white people).  Nature does have validity in some areas, some facts cannot be argued against.  However, the medical community, consisting of primarily white men, used their “findings” to maintain their higher ranking in the social and political hierarchy, while at the same time, suppressing women’s ability to gain political and social power.   Biological and natural differences stripped many women at the time of activities and interests that would challenge the notion of their inferiority, including obtaining an education and participating in politics.  Although science is known to be objective and fully factual, we must be aware of the bias, and the social factors at the time which directly affected the conclusions of anatomical differences between men and women.