Transcending the Male-Female Binary in Biomedical Research: Constellations, Heterogeneity, and Mechanism When Considering Sex and Gender

Accounting for the influences of sex- and gender-related factors on health is one of the most interesting and important challenges in contemporary health research. In biomedical research, models, experimental designs, and statistical analyses create particular challenges in attempting to incorporate the complex, dynamic, and context-dependent constructs of sex and gender. Here, we offer conceptual elaborations of the constructs of sex and gender and discuss their application in biomedical research, including a more mechanism-oriented and context-driven approach to experimental design integrating sex and gender. We highlight how practices of data visualization, statistical analysis, and rhetoric can be valuable tools in expanding the operationalization of sex and gender biomedical science and reducing reliance on a male–female binary approach.

Lost in translation? Beyond sex as a biological variable in animal research

In this article, I develop a feminist posthumanist account of biomedical policymaking as a material-discursive intervention that shapes the emergence of phenomena in the scientific laboratory. The setting is United States (U.S.) biomedicine, where a recent policy of the National Institutes of Health has mandated the consideration of sex in basic and preclinical research. Called Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV), the mandate configures cell lines and animal models as the next frontier in the project of advancing gender equity in biomedical research. Given sex and gender are increasingly recognised as having complex, entangled, and dynamic effects on human health and illness, how do laboratory animals respond to their attempted enrolment in this regulatory intervention? Through a qualitative analysis of this policy domain, I show how laboratory animals reveal the context-specific character of sex, its multiplicity and elusiveness as a so-called biological variable, and the considerable work needed to shore up human ideologies of sex as a pervasive cross-species form of binary difference. I suggest that while regulatory interventions constrain patterns of mattering, they also serve as agential openings in which laboratory animals can 'kick back' and reconfigure the pursuit of knowledge, particularly as it relates to difference and health.

Co-production, multiplied: Enactments of sex as a biological variable in US biomedicine

In 2016 the US National Institutes of Health introduced a policy mandating consideration of Sex as a Biological Variable (SABV) in preclinical research. In this article, I ask what, precisely, is meant by the designation of sex as a 'biological variable', and how has its inclusion come to take the form of a policy mandate? Given the well documented complexity of 'sex' and the degree to which it is politically and scientifically contested, its enactment via policy as a biological variable is not a given. I explore how sex is multiply enacted in efforts to legitimate and realize the SABV policy and consider how the analytical lens of co-production sheds light on how and why this occurs. I show that the policy works to reassert scientific and political order by addressing two institutional concerns: the so-called reproducibility crisis in preclinical research, and pervasive gender inequality across the institution of biomedicine. From here, the entity that underpins this effort - sex as a biological variable - becomes more than one thing, with enactments ranging from an assigned category, to an outcome, to a causal biological force in its own right. Sex emerges as simultaneously entangled with yet distinct from gender, and binary (female/male) yet complex in its variation. I suggest that it is in the very attempt to delineate natural from social order, and in the process create the conditions to privilege a particular kind of science and account of embodied difference, that ontological multiplicity becomes readily visible. That this multiplicity goes unrecognized points to the unifying role of an overarching ideological commitment to sex as a presumed binary and biological scientific object, the institutional dominance of which is never guaranteed.

Gender as a historical kind: a tale of two genders?

Is there anything that members of each binary category of gender have in common? Even many non-essentialists find the lack of unity within a gender worrying as it undermines the basis for a common political agenda for women. One promising proposal for achieving unity is by means of a shared historical lineage of cultural reproduction with past binary models of gender (e.g. Bach in Ethics 122:231-272, 2012). I demonstrate how such an account is likely to take on board different binary and also non-binary systems of gender. This implies that all individuals construed as members of the category, "women" are in fact not members of the same historical kind after all! I then consider different possible means of modifying the account but conclude negatively: the problem runs deeper than has been appreciated thus far.

Feminist theory in Feminism & Psychology [Part I]: Dealing with differences and negotiating the biological

Theory is an important preoccupation of articles published in Feminism & Psychology. This Virtual Special Issue includes 10 of those published since the journal’s inception that have a primary focus on theoretical issues related to two related topics – differences and the biological. The concern with differences includes the socially constructed categories sex and gender, as well as sexuality and social class. Those articles addressing the biological represent critical scholarship that is working to negotiate a place for the biology within feminist psychology and entails moving away from the view that the biological is natural and innate. This introductory article addresses how theory fits within feminist psychology and offers a brief history of debates concerning differences and the biological before offering summaries and observations related to each selected article. The featured articles can be located on the Feminism & Psychology website and are listed in Appendix 1 at the end of this article.

Functionalism, Darwinism, and advances in the psychology of women and gender: From the 19th century to the 21st

Response to commentaries on “Functionalism, Darwinism, and the Psychology of Women: A Study in Social Myth” is organized around three themes and a question. The first theme is the importance of knowing the history of the study of women, gender, and sexuality. Second is the importance of what might be called “positive gatekeepers,” those in our field who have some degree of power or who may be better positioned to support our endeavors or be in a position to open doors to professional advancement. Third is a core feature of feminist psychology: The importance of acknowledging the ways in which social values are inherent in the research process. Taken together, these themes raise for me an important question to reflect upon: Where do we, as feminist psychologists, wish to have influence?