Feminist philosophy of science

Feminist philosophy of science is the critical examination of how gender — as a social structure, not merely a demographic variable — shapes the production, validation, and circulation of scientific knowledge. It does not claim that women do science differently in some essential sense. It claims that the institutions, methods, and background assumptions of science have historically been organized around a narrow set of standpoints, and that this narrowness has produced systematic blind spots in what counts as evidence, what questions get asked, and what phenomena are deemed worthy of study. The field treats science not as a purely cognitive enterprise but as a social system whose objectivity depends on the diversity of perspectives embedded in its feedback loops — a thesis that connects it directly to Helen Longino's contextual empiricism and to the broader analysis of how power operates through knowledge production.