Nature's Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science

I only got to read one chapter of this before I had to return to the library, but I picked a great one. In chapter 2, Londa Schiebinger traces the genesis of the mammalia label to the mid-18th century taxonomist Carl Linneaus. Although mammary glands are one shared characteristic of this group, Schiebinger makes the case that they are not the most prominent unifying characteristic and that Linneaus' choice to use this label as a taxonomic device was based in the cultural context of the time.

Most upper class western European women during this time period utilized wet nurses to feed their infants. But, a social movement was underfoot to reconnect women to the domestic sphere. By connecting a group of animals to humans through the mammal label by virtue of their ability to produce milk for their young, nursing is seen as "natural" and connected women to the animal kingdom.

So, science and scientific evidence have also been mustered to define gender roles and promote gender ideology. Not too suprising, but this chapter made me rethink something as basic as the animal classification system that I learned about in 1st grade. To me, there was no other way to sort mammals into their own unique category and the idea that something like this name could have been politically motivated and culturally structured was novel.