Efforts to increase the number of women in science have met unexpected difficulties, despite great efforts and good intentions. Why this failure? A varied array of literatures has offered tentative answers to this question, but conceptual and institutional rifts between approaches have made it difficult to assemble ideas and findings into a consistent explanation. For example, historical studies have examined the lives of women scientists within the contexts of institutions that have held them at arm's length; sociological studies have uncovered women's limited access to the means of scientific production; research in the life sciences has shown how science has studied women; feminist theories of science have examined how gender shapes science and science education; and natural scientists themselves have shown how gender analysis has yielded new research insights. To date these rich and suggestive fields of study have not been drawn together into dialog with one another. The central purpose of this project is to develop such a dialog, within the framework of a book, and to illustrate how foundational questions from the areas of study interact with one another.
