Analysing Identity

6 Complex identities: The case of academic women

Maaret Wager

INTRODUCTION

What is the connection between the woman researcher’s gender identity and her academic work? How does an academic woman perceive herself? How does she construe her femininity? These were the questions I addressed in my research on academic women’s identity (Wager, 1993, 1994; see also Wager, 1998a, 1999a). Biographies of women who have devoted their lives to intellectual work often have about them an air of amazement; these women are regarded as ‘exceptions’ (see Schiebinger, 1987; cf. Wager, 2000a). This indicates that the history of science is regarded as the history of men in science: it contains stories of such men as Aristotle, Einstein, or Freud, who have contributed ...