RUTH BLEIER
Background-
Ruth
Harriet Bleier was a renowned neurophysiologist and celebrated scholar who
dedicated her life to disproving biologically based gender biases in the
scientific community. She was born
in 1923 in the town of New Kensington in Pennsylvania and went on to receive
her B.A from Goucher College in 1945.
She went on to study medicine at The Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania
and received her M.D in 1949. She opened up her own general medical practice in
the inner city of Baltimore and served the community there for the next ten
years. During this time she married a Child Psychiatrist, Leon Eisenberg, and
raised two children while still managing to maintain a successful medical
practice.
Deciding
to pursue further education, Ruth took on a postdoctoral position studying
neuroanatomy at John Hopkins University School of Medicine. After completing her fellowship
in 1961, Ruth decided to give up her practice and become an instructor of
psychiatry and physiology. A few
years later in 1967 she left Baltimore to take on a position in the
Neurophysiology Department at The University of Wisconsin-Madison.
At
around this time, her marriage with Leon ended and Ruth identified herself as a
lesbian and began advocating for lesbian-rights within the women’s movement. Ruth helped set up a feminist
restaurant, participated in lesbian-friendly community activities, supported a
local feminist bookstore named “A Room of One’s Own”, and campaigned for
abortion rights. She found a new
partner to spend her life with, Dr. Elizabeth Karlin, and lived out the rest of
her days fighting for equality. Unfortunately Dr. Bleier died at her home in
January 1988 after a long battle with cancer.
Major
Professional Contributions-
It wasn’t until the early 1970’s that Ruth
began to question the gender-biases assumptions and practices surrounding and
fueling the field of Biology. She dedicated the rest of her professional career
to disproving stereotypical biological gender-biases by challenging traditional
biological determinism theories and questioning the true origins of gender
differences. Dr. Bleier was a
widely recognized expert on the animal hypothalamus, and as the author of three
works on the topic, she was highly respected in her field. Using this stature to her advantage, Ruth
took a feminist approach and went on to scientifically disprove that gender
differences in the areas of math, verbal skills and creativity were
biologically based. She argued
that such differences were not only biologically determined, but socially
constructed as well.
She wrote a book entitled “Science and
Gender, A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women” and an anthology entitled “Feminist
Approaches to Science” and even went on to form the Association of Faculty
Women (AFW), which advocated for salary equity. She was also the primary driving force behind the creation
of a Gender and Women Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
in 1975 and remained the chair of the department from 1982-1986.
Relevance to
Class-
As
we learned in the Hyde reading this week, there are many theories on Gender
Development, some based in biology and some based on social learning. While each theory explains the origin
of gender differences in a different way, they all seem to agree that no one
theory alone is responsible for the differences between men and women. The gender differences we observed in
society today are the result of both biological and social inputs. Ruth agreed with this notion,
acknowledging that Biology does play a role in gender differences, yet also
pointing out the significant influence that society plays in sex-typing. She
specifically fought the popular naturalistic notion that women are biologically
inferior and therefore cannot compete with men in the fields of science and
math. She attributed lower
performance among females to society’s message that girls are not supposed to
be good at math. These messages are internalized and in turn little girls begin
to believe that they cannot compete. Because of professional scholars like Ruth
Bleier challenging traditional sexist messages, perhaps a little girl can
aspire to be a surgeon without having to prove that she is not biologically inferior.
Resources-
http://womenstudies.wisc.edu/CRGW/fellowships/bleier.html
http://130.14.16.110/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_38.html
Christine Ginley
Psychology of Women- Dr. Hill
February 6th, 2013
