Research projects
Social Epistemology and Gender
NASTA - Naisjohtajuuden tutkimus- ja koulutushanke
Gender, multinationals and the media
ILONA – Menestyvä naisten liiketoiminta
Technologies, strategies and women's business activities in the new economy (NATES)
Cultures of technologies: ICT-businesses and eco-communities in comparison (CulTec)
Women Academics and the Gendered Academic Practices
Social Epistemology and Gender
Funding: Academy of Finland 2004-2009
Researchers: Kristina Rolin (Aalto University School of Economics)
The last three decades have witnessed an emergence of social studies of science which aim to show that social factors play a more significant role in scientific inquiry than what philosophers of science have acknowledged. Philosophers' responses to these studies have been divergent. One response has been to design ways of strengthening the methods of science in the hope of eliminating the influence of social factors in scientific inquiry. Another response has been to argue that social factors do not inevitably undermine the epistemic integrity of science; instead, they can contribute to the epistemic success of science. These developments have given rise to a subfield in philosophy of science, social epistemology of scientific inquiry, which aims to develop a conceptual analysis of why social processes are of epistemic importance in science and why some social processes are epistemologically better than others. Social epistemologists acknowledge the social and value-laden nature of scientific inquiry and are concerned with normative and prescriptive questions which have been the traditional preoccupations of philosophers. The goal of the proposed research project is to integrate scholarship on gender in science and women in science into social epistemology of scientific inquiry. Even though there are a number of works which address the question of how social epistemology intersects with feminist epistemology, there is no systematic treatment of the subject matter. The proposed research project aims to produce a book manuscript which offers such a treatment, and journal papers closely related to the book manuscript. The research project grows out of my earlier research, a doctoral dissertation (1996) and publications in international journals with referee practice (Perspectives on Science 1999, Social Epistemology 2002, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 2002, Philosophy of Science forthcoming). The main hypothesis is that social epistemology (under certain constructions) offers an analysis of how gender is relevant not only for understanding scientific practices but also for normative theories of epistemic justification in science. The "gender and science" debate so far has operated with a narrow understanding of the social dimensions of scientific inquiry. The "social" in science is understood to refer to scientists' social values and interests. The debate has focused on the question "What different roles can social values and interests play in scientific reasoning, and what roles are they allowed to play?" In the proposed research project, I examine the relevance of gender for other social dimensions of scientific inquiry that are of epistemic interest: trust among scientists, dynamics of communication within scientific communities, and distribution of research effort.
Contac person: Kristina Rolin
NASTA - Naisjohtajuuden tutkimus- ja koulutushanke
Researchers: Sinikka Vanhala, Sinikka Pesonen and Kirsi LaPointe (Aalto University School of Economics)
More information on the Nasta website
Contact person: Sinikka Vanhala
Gender, multinationals and the media
Researchers: Janne Tienari (Aalto University School of Economics), Susan Meriläinen (University of Lapland)
Finland carries an image as a gender egalitarian society, where established gender relations are based on particular notions of equality. There is recent evidence, however, that multinational corporations are becoming the pretext for particular procedures, norms and values that have significant gendered consequences in the Finnish context. The forms and consequences of this change are the empirical focus in our studies, for example, in relation to manoeuvres such as cross-border mergers. Constructs of gender vis-à-vis other discourses and subject positions such as professional expertise and national identity are subject to critical scrutiny in our analyses, which often take the form of cross-national comparisons.
The media play an increasingly powerful role in contemporary ‘global’ society. The media both reflect and construct social reality, also in relation to gender. However, (re)constructions of gender and management in the media are always open to contest. From a feminist perspective, we study who is given voice in media texts and who is silenced, which themes are brought into the limelight and which are marginalized or excluded, who is portrayed in positive and who in negative terms, and through which discourse practices all this is carried out. Our empirical focus is on media texts covering contemporary business issues and events, taking a cross-national comparative approach.
Contact person: Janne Tienari
Researchers: Elina Henttonen, Kirsi LaPointe, Sinikka Pesonen and Sinikka Vanhala (Aalto University School of Economics)
The project focuses on gender and the social construction of professions, professional projects and professionalization. We have studied nursing as a classic example of a gendered profession, strongly associated with culturally feminine meanings of nurturing, caring and comforting. However, professionalization is a socially and institutionally embedded process shaped by historic and social contexts and thus the meanings attached to professions are not fixed. In the health care sector, welfare policy plays an important role in shaping the professional practice and in the recent years the restructuring of the welfare state has profoundly influenced caring work. The introduction of the new public management ideology has resulted in an increasing emphasis on managerialism and market-oriented mechanisms for care delivery. Therefore, in this project we have studied the discursive construction of the nursing profession in an industrial action context. We have examined media debate on a recent labour dispute in the Finnish health care sector focusing on how the cultural meanings related to the nursing profession are constructed in the context of the welfare state under major restructuring.
Contact person: Elina Henttonen
ILONA – Menestyvä naisten liiketoiminta
Tutkijat: Päivi Eriksson (Kuopion yliopisto), Elina Henttonen (Aalto University School of Economics), Saija Katila (Kuopion yliopisto) and Susan Meriläinen (Lapin yliopisto).
Aika: 2007-2010
Hankkeessa tutkitaan naisyrittäjien ja -johtajien toimintaa pienissä ja keskisuurissa yrityksissä eri toimialoilla. Tutkittavat yritykset toimivat pääkaupunkiseudulla, Itä-Suomessa ja Pohjois-Suomessa. Analyysin kohteena ovat yrittämiseen, johtamiseen, verkostoitumiseen ja kasvuun sekä innovatiivisuuteen ja luovuuteen liittyvät kysymykset. Hankkeessa on myös tavoitteena edistää naisten vetämien pk-yritysten menestymistä yritysyhteistyön avulla.
Yhteyshenkilö Aalto-yliopistossa: Elina Henttonen
Technologies, strategies and women's business activities in the new economy (NATES)
Funding: Ministry of Trade and Industry 2002-2005
Researchers: Päivi Eriksson (University of Kuopio), Elina Henttonen (Aalto University School of Economics) and Susan Meriläinen (University of Lapland)
The project focused on companies, which are either owned or managed by women, and included two parts. The first part focused on analysing technology companies owned or managed by women and produced new knowledge about women's business practices in technology intensive businesses. The other part of the project addressed the issues of institutional support designed specifically to female owners and managers. We focused our analysis particularly on training and advisory services and asked how the specific features and problems of women owners and managers have been taken into account in support activities, and how this could be done better in the future to support women business actors in technology intensive businesses.
Contact person at Aalto University: Elina Henttonen
Cultures of technologies: ICT-businesses and eco-communities in comparison
Funding: Helsinki Institute of Science and Technology Studies (HIST) 2005-2006
Researchers: Päivi Eriksson (University of Kuopio), Elina Henttonen (Aalto University School of Economics), Susan Meriläinen (University of Lapland) and Sinikka Pesonen (University of Tampere)
This project focused on comparing two different cultures of technologies in the context of the Finnish society and economy. The other technology culture was built around small ICT-businesses, and the other around eco-communities. Our study explored how ICT-businesses, eco-communities and their technologies are interpreted, or ‘written and read’ by the actors themselves in relation to their everyday practices. The study also contrasted stories of ICT-companies and eco-communities provided by the media with those by the actors themselves, asking how do they overlap, feed into, marginalize, or exclude each other, and how they are gendered.
Contact person at Aalto University: Elina Henttonen
Women Academics and the Gendered Academic Practices
Researchers: Saija Katila (University of Kuopio) and Susan Meriläinen (University of Lapland)
The study focuses on exploring how we 'do gender' in a particular organizational setting and when assuming a particular gender role. Especially how female researchers are constructing their professional identities in a male dominated scientific world and the extent to which patriarchal articulations of professional identities influence women academics' self-concept and consciousness of their own abilities. The argumentation rests on the belief that the social construction of gender identities is not taking place in the interaction of persons but also in the discourses within which those interactions occur. Identity and the meaning it implies is located here especially in language use. Thus, identity is not seen as fixed but rather as actively negotiated and transformed in discourse. Based on observation, conversations as well as personal experience and reflections, this study documents the circumstances that female academics working in a male dominated scientific world face.
