Gendered Intersections: Negotiating Power, Status, and Identity in Interdisciplinary Science.

Abstract

Interdisciplinary solutions are increasingly touted as essential to solve intractable problems in health research, but recent studies have shown that perceptions of scientific status shape how science is negotiated in interdisciplinary groups, threatening the potential of these boundary-breaking mergers. To date, however, existing studies focus exclusively on epistemological differences, failing to consider how other dimensions of difference and inequality shape the process and products of interdisciplinary science. Gender as an analytic category and marker of difference, for example, is all but ignored in this canon, even though a parallel research program demonstrates the multiple barriers women face in the sciences. This project seeks to fill this gap and bridge these two research areas. This qualitative study draws from over 90 hours of ethnographic observation and 23 semi-structured qualitative interviews to inductively explore how nurses, engineers, and doctors, working together in an interdisciplinary group in the academic health sciences, negotiate gender and other differences as they collaborate on a shared problem in women’s health. I show that the nurses felt marginalized in the group from the beginning as they faced multiple structural and cultural obstacles to equality. Intersecting status markers, many of which were gendered, shaped their experiences in the group, and ultimately the process and products of the group’s collaboration. Finally, I highlight the identity processes involved in interdisciplinary collaboration, showing how the nurses adopted various strategies to manage their experiences of inequality in the group, strategies that often and ironically exacerbated their unequal position. This research highlights the importance of considering power and status differences, and especially the effects of gender, in interdisciplinary collaborations in the sciences. Some individuals, especially those who suffer from multiple, intersecting low-status markers, may face particular risks in interdisciplinary research groups. Moreover, this project reveals that even successful groups can unconsciously privilege certain perspectives and scientific approaches, thereby limiting the potential of interdisciplinary collaborations.