Making gendered science: a feminist perspective on epistemology of innovation based on science and technology studies

In recent years European policies in research and technological development have been encouraging gender equity in science and innovation, funding and sustaining projects aimed to promote human well-being and gender equity in the design of new products, processes, infrastructures, services and technologies. This chapter explores the concepts of Gendered innovations promoted by European policies in the development of scientific research and technological innovation in the last decade, while positioning at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and feminist epistemology. These perspectives allow to examine how, in EU policies’ discursive practices, gender informs the technoscientific governance of researchers and innovation and, reciprocally, how technoscientific governance informs the concept of gender and gendered practices among scientific and research institutions. The study reconstructs the technological frame (Bijker, 1987, 1995) of Gendered innovations as a set of ideas, theories and practices promoted by the EU policy, analyzing the documents of European Commission on Gendered innovations and gender diversity in research and innovation as a set of material-discursive practices that construct gendered meaning in technoscientific research and gender equity in science. The analysis underlines three epistemic pitfalls of technological frame of Gendered innovations.