This article describes how methodologies of EU-funded research within the life sciences and biomedicine have recently become more gender sensitive. This transformation is the result of the Gender Impact Assessments of the EU Fifth Framework Programme, commissioned in 2000-1. The authors assessed the research programme for life sciences, which includes a large health-related component. The new guidelines for research emphasize the need for clear terminology for concepts of sex and gender and for a distinction to be made between the two, for both life sciences and health research. Attention to possible sex differences, even in preclinical research, as well as to effects of gender, will lead to more adequate research data that serve the health of both men and women. The transformation to research becoming more gender-sensitive is further discussed in the context of feminist theory on the body. Being fully aware of the fact that what is happening in bodies is mediated by particular technologies, the authors make an appeal to invest in concepts that take the living and changing body into account.KEY WORDS gender differences ◆ gender-sensitive policies ◆ health-related research ◆ mainstreaming gender (equality) ◆ quality of research ◆ sex differences European Journal of Women's Studies

In this article Bosch argues in favour of an understanding of the concept of 'scientific persona' in which embodiment means more than the conclusion that everything that men and women do originates in or arises from a body. Wetenschappelijke personae en twintigste-eeuwse historici. Verkenning van een conceptBosch pleit in dit artikel voor een opvatting van het concept 'persona' waarin embodiment of belichaming meer is dan de vaststelling dat alles wat mensen doen een oorsprong heeft in of voortkomt uit een lichaam. In navolging van wetenschapshistorici en hun biografische verrichtingen ziet Bosch het worden scholarly personae: repertoires and performances of academic identity

The concept of scientific persona was developed by historians of science at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin fifteen years ago in order to understand how science works and how it can be conducted in a credible way. The Latin word persona means mask and the discussions of the term were elaborations of Marcel Mauss´s introduction of the concept in an article published in 1938 (Mauss 1938). In Mauss´s conceptualisation, persona was a feature that characterized societies in an evolutionary stage—a stage where members of the society had started to perceive themselves as individuals, but were still expected to fulfill certain, culturally defined roles. In such contexts, persona was not mask to cover the ‘real’ self of the performer, but a mask that enhanced certain features of the person. Transferring Mauss’s approach to the scientific world, Lorraine Daston and Otto Sibum (2003) defined, in an often cited article in Science in Context, scientific persona as an intermediate between individual biography and social (scientific) institution: it is a cultural identity that forms the individual in body and mind, and creates a collective with a shared and recognizable physiognomy (ways to be and to behave). Daston and Sibum characterized scientific personas as templates that emerge and develop in historical contexts and used the concept to investigate the creation of certain types of scientists: when, how and why have distinct “scientific personae” emerged?

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ArgumentA recent comparative study of women in science has revealed that the situation in the Netherlands is worse than in other European countries. This raises the question whether there is a “Dutch case” concerning women’s standing in science. We argue that the cause is not to be found in a special brand of Dutch Protestantism, with its strong emphasis on motherhood and the family, and impact on labor patterns and social organization. Rather, we should take another look at religion, and especially at the specific Dutch segmentation of society along religious and political lines, called verzuiling, literally “pillarization.” From about 1880 until far into the 1950s the personal and social life of the Dutch (from schools to sports and ladies' organizations) was organized into four recognized pillars (a Protestant, Catholic, socialist and a liberal pillar), which at the top were represented in political parties. This article brings to light the often overlooked fact that between 1880 and 1945 state institutions, such as universities, were thoroughly pillarized, which strongly influenced recruitment and selection for those institutions. That is to say, no woman was appointed to the rank of full professor at any state university until after 1945. The Dutch case might also be explained by the many reorganizations and down-sizings of universities of more recent years that occurred simultaneous with the expansion of academic feminism. In addition, a newly configured “pillarization” has driven deep divides between gender studies scholars, equal opportunities officers, and women scientists.But even in the long-industrialized European countries, the story has not been one of automatic growth and progress. Thus … in the Netherlands … there too the situation for women academics has deteriorated over the past two decades. Where in 1970 there were 2.7 per cent women professors, by 1980 this was down to 2.2 per cent and by 1988 to 2.1 per cent. (Rose 1994)