Local Women Global Science

Karen Booth looks closely at the operation of two clinics in Nairobi, & explores how internationally funded & nationally sanctioned interventions to stop the spread of HIV are focused on the working class & poor - those least able to challenge traditional patterns of behaviour, including male dominance.

There is evidence that women who live in societies that uphold male privilege -- the majority of the world's women -- are at increased risk for HIV infection. In Local Women, Global Science, Karen M. Booth looks closely at the operation of two clinics for sexually transmitted diseases in Nairobi, Kenya, and explores how internationally funded and nationally sanctioned interventions to stop the spread of HIV have focused almost exclusively on the sexual and reproductive behaviors of those who are least able to challenge male power and dominance -- working-class and poor women. Moving past the current politics of development, women's health, and AIDS prevention, Booth's work enhances our understanding of how globalized and local networks, power relationships, ideologies, and social practices contribute to the current AIDS crisis. This bold and important book reveals conceptual flaws in AIDS prevention policy and will inspire new ideas for dealing with this deadly epidemic in Kenya, Africa, and beyond.

"Technological capability has led, through Euro-American global domination, to the muting of other cultural views and values, even threatening their continued existence. There is a growing realization that the diversity of knowledge systems demand respect; some refer to them in a conservation idiom as alternative knowledge banks. The scientific perspective is only one. We now have many examples of the soundness of local science and practices, some previously considered 'primitive' and in need of change. However, this book goes beyond demonstrating the soundness of local science and arguing for the incorporation of others' knowledge in development, to maintain that we need to look quizzically at the foundations of science itself and further challenge its hegemony, not only over local communities in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and elsewhere but also the global community.--Publisher

This report aims to 'crack the code' by deciphering the factors that hinder and facilitate girls' and women's participation, achievement and continuation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and, in particular, what the education sector can do to promote girls' and women's interest in and engagement with STEM education and ultimately STEM careers.

Scientific and engineering research is increasingly global, and international collaboration can be essential to academic success. Yet even as administrators and policymakers extol the benefits of global science, few recognize the diversity of international research collaborations and their participants, or take gendered inequalities into account. Women in Global Science is the first book to consider systematically the challenges and opportunities that the globalization of scientific work brings to U.S. academics, especially for women faculty. Kathrin Zippel looks to the STEM fields as a case study, where gendered cultures and structures in academia have contributed to an underrepresentation of women. While some have approached underrepresentation as a national concern with a national solution, Zippel highlights how gender relations are reconfigured in global academia. For U.S. women in particular, international collaboration offers opportunities to step outside of exclusionary networks at home. International collaboration is not the panacea to gendered inequalities in academia, but, as Zippel argues, international considerations can be key to ending the steady attrition of women in STEM fields and developing a more inclusive academic world.

The scientific work of women is often viewed through a national or regional lens, but given the growing worldwide connectivity of most, if not all, scientific disciplines, there needs to be recognition of how different social, political, and economic mechanisms impact women's participation in the global scientific enterprise. Although these complex sociocultural factors often operate in different ways in various countries and regions, studies within and across nations consistently show inverse correlations between levels in the scientific and technical career hierarchy and the number of women in science: the higher the positions, the fewer the number of women. Understanding these complex patterns requires interdisciplinary and international approaches. In April 2011, a committee overseen by the National Academies' standing Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CWSEM) convened a workshop entitled, "Blueprint for the Future: Framing the Issues of Women in Science in a Global Context" in Washington, D.C. CWSEM's goals are to coordinate, monitor, and advocate action to increase the participation of women in science, engineering, and medicine. The scope of the workshop was limited to women's participation in three scientific disciplines: chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and statistics. The workshop presentations came from a group of scholars and professionals who have been working for several years on documenting, analyzing, and interpreting the status of women in selected technical fields around the world. Examination of the three disciplines-chemistry, computer science, and mathematics and statistics-can be considered a first foray into collecting and analyzing information that can be replicated in other fields. The complexity of studying science internationally cannot be underestimated, and the presentations demonstrate some of the evidentiary and epistemological challenges that scholars and professionals face in collecting and analyzing data from many different countries and regions. Blueprint for the Future: Framing the Issues of Women in Science in a Global Context summarizes the workshop presentations, which provided an opportunity for dialogue about the issues that the authors have been pursuing in their work to date.

The past 3 decades have witnessed unprecedented integration of global information systems. From satellite-television news to the Internet, more people share information than ever before. At the same time, biomedical research teams have increased collaborations across private and public sectors, national borders (especially by involving both the first world and third world), and disciplines. These factors have resulted in an explosion of scientific information more widely accessible than research produced a generation ago. There has been considerable discussion regarding the interrelationship between global and local forces in the context of "health," a term this volume queries, rather than taking it as a clear referent. Such work has considered the benefits and drawbacks of increasing connection and interdependency (which is not always equilateral) among people and organizations that are now connected via shared systems of knowledge, transportation, communication technologies, imagined communities, and markets. To date, gender-based analysis of globalization has focused mainly on the impact of structural-adjustment policies and trade agreements. The idea that the production and distribution of scientific knowledge, in itself, fails to take into account the differential distribution of women in social, cultural, and economic space, has not been taken seriously by most critics. This volume is an attempt to open a debate on this matter. The editors, Cindy Patton and Helen Loshny of Simon Fraser University, along with other scholars, take up the question of the interrelationship between "global science" and "women's health," querying each of these four terms, while also keeping in viewspecific cases and spaces in which their vertiginous spin stabilizes to produce clarity about how the terms intersect.

This book provides a roadmap for those embarking on a career in STEM, whether in the research or industry realms. Focusing on paths taken by women, the contributors lend their stories, tips and tricks, and hardships they faced entering into fields historically dominated by men. The authors provide practical advice, highlighting soft skills that are not often taught as modules in the classroom. Topics include research collaborations, performance enhancement, the gender lens in research design and development, imposter syndrome felt by many women in science, ethics in science, scaling feminine leadership, being an influencer as a science leader, and time and resources optimization for career advancement in science from resource-poor settings. Others interested in science and its impacts on society will also find the book informative and timely. As an important part of the Organization for Women in Science in the Developing World (OWSD), University of Port Harcourt Branch Book project, the work hopes to inspire women and men, girls and boys to enter and apply themselves to secure the future in STEM.