Neurofeminism: feminist critiques of research on sex/gender differences in the neurosciences

TL;DR

This paper reviews neurofeminist critiques of neuroscientific research on sex and gender differences, emphasizing the importance of cautious interpretation to avoid sexist biases and neurosexism.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of neurofeminist literature, highlighting critical perspectives and recent developments to guide neuroscientists in evaluating gender-related research.

Findings

Identifies common levels of analysis in neurofeminist critique

Discusses recent neurofeminist scholarship and its implications

Highlights the importance of responsible interpretation of neuroscientific data

Abstract

Over the last three decades, the human brain, and its role in determining behavior have been receiving a growing amount of attention in academia as well as in society more generally. Neuroscientific explanations of human behavior or other phenomena are often especially appealing to lay people. Therefore, neuroscientific explanations that can affect individuals, groups, or social relations in general should be formulated in a careful and responsible way. One field in which especially feminist scholars request more caution is the neuroscientific examination of sex or gender differences. Feminist scholars have described various ways in which sexist bias might be present in neuroscientific research on sex or gender differences. In this context, they coined the term "neurosexism" to describe the entanglement between neuroscientific work and sexist ideology, and "neurofeminism" as a response to that. Here, we aim to give an overview over the contemporary neurofeminist literature. In the first part, common levels of analysis in the neurofeminist literature are presented and the research level is explored in more detail. In the second part, some common developments in more recent neurofeminist scholarship are discussed. For this, we review recent publications with the aim to provide neuroscientists with a solid understanding of neurofeminist criticism so that they may evaluate neuroscientific claims about on sex or gender differences from this critical perspective.