Twin Cities Business Daily

How important do you think gender-collaborative research is needed?

..In social Science? There is growing real awareness about the importance of social men's issues. This project was done between male and female academics. "The European Research Network on Men in Europe comprises women and men researchers who are researching on men in an explicitly gendered way. The bringing together of women and men researchers is extremely important, necessary and timely in the development of research on men in Europe. Research on men that draws only on the work of men is likely to neglect the very important research that has been and is being made by women to research on men. As such, research and networking based on only men researchers is likely to reproduce some of the existing gender inequalities of research and policy development. In contrast, gender-collaborative research is necessary in the pursuit of gender equality, in the combating of gender discrimination, and in the achievement of equality and in the fight against discrimination more generally"... "For a very long time, men, masculinity and men’s powers and practices were generally taken-for-granted. Gender was largely seen as a matter of and for women. Men were generally seen as ungendered, as ‘just like that’, natural or naturalised – not only in everyday life and in politics, but also in academia. This is now less the case than even ten years ago. There has been a gradually growing realisation that men and masculinities are just as gendered as are women and femininities. It is now clear that ‘gender’ and ‘gender relations’ are about both women and men. This gendering of men is both a matter of changing academic and political analyses of men in society, and contemporary changes in the form of men’s own lives and men's experiences and perceptions, sometimes developing counter to their earlier expectations and the experiences of recent generations of other men". Aims and description of whole project at: http://www.eurowrc.org/06.contributions/1.contrib_en/44.contrib.en.htm Thoughts? Hi Ruper, so many questions! ;-) This is their site, which describes much better their policies, resources, methodologies, aim and Universities involved in the project: http://www.cromenet.org/

Public Comments

1. yeah its very importnt i dont know why people dont invest in such spare
2. I'm sorry, Flying Horse - but how much will this research cost? And how long will it take? And is there a guarantee of an outcome that will make significant change in a realistic time frame? How much more time and money will be spent on these such research projects? And is there ever a result that justifies the cost? Couldn't that research money be better spent? Couldn't it assist programs that actually assist men or women in the attainment of skills that will put them on a level playing field toward equality???
3. "It is now clear that ‘gender’ and ‘gender relations’ are about both women and men" LMFAO!! I don't know anything about Social Sciences but I could have told them that! but to answer, it's always good to work together :) *And what Sup said to.
4. Historically, the entire field of psychology was based on findings using only white men of moderate to good health. The "fathers" of psych were of that same population -- Freud, Jung, Adler, etc. Women were studied, yes, but not in terms of how their symptoms compared to men, but in how they compared only to other women, whose diagnosis most frequently were prefaced by "hysterical__________" and that term colored any and all research that could have ever been of value. Because of the feminist movement and also because of the progress made within the field itself, the pendulum type backlash, particularly in the 80's and 90's, was for the field to concentrate almost exclusively on women. Experiments and studies used female only sample populations, a plethora of female theorists were finally taken seriously and gained credibility in the field. There were also theorists like self proclaimed neo-Freudian Karen Horney who postulated the Electra complex in direct answer to Freud's Oedipus complex. Her theory was absolute rubbish and only served as a pitiable example of a rabid feminist (which I define differently than 98% of the people who use this board) who wanted to further women's causes at any cost, even if the vehicle for doing so was not valid. The war cry for this evolution in psychology was essentially "Men had their moment in the sun, it' our turn now!" which, as a woman, yes I understand I guess. Men were the end all and be all in terms of psych and a whole half of the human population had been ignored for decades. However, as a scientist, I was despaired because we were now perpetuating the same exclusion that we claimed to be railing against. If a study sample involved white men between 25 and 40, it wouldn't get funding, the ehtics of the team and specifically the scientist would be called into question, it was ridiculous. I think gender specific research has intrinsic value. When you look at something like human behavior, the scientist must take into account and theorize for every conceivable variable (age, height, gender, race, country of origin etc). It makes sense to exclusively study men, and also exclusively study women--the two can later be compared for differences between the genders and also commonalities among the gender. Every scientist worth their salt knows that group specific study is inherently valuable and the intention is not to further divide the genders, but to better understand each and what they have in common. You must understand each as a seperate group before you can compare and look for common ground. Differences are easier to spot, and once they are found and documented, the 'sameness' begins to take shape.
5. this sounds like hype to me. In the real world - or at least outside of feminist academia - ALL research is 'gender-collaborative' i.e. men and women work on research together because for most researchers gender is not a big issue. So whatever happens with research on men, lets keep the feminist researcher out of it. They introduce bias at every turn. In fact one sentence stands out: "Research on men that draws only on the work of men is likely to neglect the very important research that has been and is being made by women to research on men". Whatever this is implying about work done by male-only researchers, I think we are very right to consign to the garbage bin of history any feminist 'research' on men e.g. the feminist genius professor who 'discovered' that men cause PMT. Good grief...
6. men and women bring not only their specific talents, but their specific biases to science. if men & women were both in science these last 200 yrs, we wouldnt have had science tell us our brains were smaller & less intelligent or that we couldnt perform in math & science, etc. male-only scientific teams had bias. like all things, women need to be represented. when will society learn and accept this? the idea of "cant we be putting our resources towards more important things" always comes up when talking about bias and discrimination. in fact, when ppl stop using this retort, then we will have achieved equality. science is now finding lots of differences betw the sexes and races (Iots of similarities too of course.) for example, women have different symptoms in heart attacks. this is valuable information. also, blacks respond particularly well to some medicines (i think it was for cholesterol -???) -- so much, that one manufacturer puts it on the label. we can expect to see more info in the future about medicines being labeled for particular groups in society. i think all fields benefit from diversity - women, minorities included in the work. how much better our lives will be when women and minorities are represented fairly in society. in science, in politics, in media. when it is achieved, they will look back on us and wonder how we lived like this. we are getting better, but still have so much more progress to make. peace.