When the University of Wisconsin announced last month it had endowed countrys first-ever post-doctoral program in feminist biology which attempts to uncover and reverse gender bias in biology the backlash was swift. Memo to the University of Wisconsin, Christina Hoff Sommers sniffed in an American Enterprise Institute video, we dont need feminist biology any more than we need femistry or galgebra. But what if we dont even know we need it? After all, when a feminist lab redesigned classic studies about campus hook-up culture, the outcomes were quite different and much less bleak for women. The Cut talked to Janet Hyde, director of the University of Wisconsins Center for Research on Gender & Women. How did you convince a major public research university it needed a feminist biology program?It wasnt exactly what youre imagining, based on the question. About two years ago, and really by surprise, we got a large bequest to the Department of Gender Studies from Dr. Gertraude Wittig, who was born in Austria and came to the U.S. and got a Ph.D. in biology in the early 1950s. There were hardly any women getting Ph.D.s in biology or anything in those days. She did manage a career … Continue reading →

The female genitalia of the water strider Gerris gracilicornis have a genital shield that can block forced mating. Han, C. S. & Jablonski, P. G. PLOS One 4, e5793 (2009). Genitalia are a hot topic. Interest in their diversity and rapid evolution have seen research in the field balloon in the past decade. Stories on studies of the penises of ostriches, chickens, sea slugs and a variety of insectshave all madethe science pages. But where are all the female genitalia? A study published in PLOS Biology this week has quantified their dearth. Analysing 25 years of research in the evolution of genitals, the authors found a strong bias towards studying male animals a disparity that has gotten worse, not better, over time. The bias, they say, is down to ingrained female stereotypes that lead researchers to see female genitalia as less important to evolution something that, they argue, is hampering our understanding. Malin Ah-King, an evolutionary biologist and gender researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin, and colleagues analysed 364 papers published between 1989 and 2013 that address the evolution of genitalia, and categorised them by research question and species studied. They found that the largest group, 49%, looked at male … Continue reading →