Women were allowed to enrol at the university in Denmark in 1875. However, even long after the sight of the odd woman student had become fairly commonplace, the idea that they might conduct research was still completely unfathomable. The deeply negative attitude toward the few women who attended university was due to a negative view on the female body, the sexual and reproductive body. 

While the universities for centuries were “professional colleges” and concentrated on teaching, it was the scientific societies that conducted actual research. These were out of bounds for women, and most of the Northern European scientific societies would remain that way until the latter half of the 20th century. With women effectively disbarred from scientific societies and academies, womanhood and the practice of science had become incompatible. This would become increasingly significant in the 19th century, with the modern university and the advent of reforms aimed at bringing research under university auspices. Women entered the universities at the same time. What happened?

Modern science banished women to the private sphere and made them part of natural history rather than history. As part of the modernisation of science, gender was biologised and naturalised. The scientific conceptualisation of womanhood could be used as proof that women, by being linked to the private sphere, were not capable of taking part in politics or the labour market or producing intellectual work. The private and female were defined in opposition to the public, the scientific and the male.

Bente Rosenbeck : Har videnskaben køn? Kvinder i forskning. Museum Tusculanum 2014. About the book: http://bog.nu/titler/har-videnskaben-koen-bente-rosenbeck

Bente Rosenbeck is a Professor in History at The Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at Copenhagen University. In 2014 Rosenbeck published the book “Does science have a gender? Women in research” (Translation from the Danish original title: “Har videnskaben køn? Kvinder i forskning”), in which she challenges science as a value neutral discipline. She brings to the forefront that gender research often has a critical stance towards science and a wish to expand the frames for how we do science. In other words, this talk will offer a meta-perspective on how gender is done in research and what consequences this has for the understanding of science as a discipline.