The ontological controversy over sex differences – a science study of evolutionary biology 1982-2018
In public debates biology is often used to assert essential sex differences. Yet, evolutionary biologists themselves disagree over sex differences and their causes. This project aims at understanding how and why this controversy over sex differences emerged.
The last decades of biological research have revealed an extensive variability in sex and “sex roles” among animals. In the wake of these findings, perceptions of females and males have shifted. However, interpretations of this variability diverge between those biologists that consider the sexes as fundamentally different, emphasizing different sizes of egg and sperm as the basis for male and female patterns, and other biologists that highlight the variability of the sexes due to social and environmental influences, hence the dynamics of sex differences. How and why do the researchers’ ontological understandings of sex differences vary?
In this three-year project, I will combine narrative analysis and methods from controversy studies to analyse scientific publications, scientific debates and interviews. This analysis will explore explicit and implicit presuppositions about sex differences and examine the controversy in a wider social and scientific context.
This project will illuminate the interaction between society and the scientific process of evolutionary research at a hitherto unexamined central controversy, thereby contributing significantly to the international forefront of feminist science studies.
Final report
The aim of the project was to investigate how and why the ontological controversy over sex differences arose in the international research community of evolutionary biologists. The project was carried out through interviews with 15 researchers involved in the controversy, as well as analyses of publications in the controversy. Due to the pandemic, I had to cancel my planned interview travels and conduct interviews on Zoom instead, which worked out well. I found that the controversy is more prolonged in time than I first assumed (1982-2018), Ruth Hubbard made feminist criticism as early as 1979, and I also found later contributions in the controversy, therefore I have also interviewed people who published in the controversy during 2020-2021. There have been several arenas for the controversy: symposia – the Bateman Symposium 2004 (USA), the conference What’s left of Sexual selection? 2011 (Paris); and publications in the journals: Integrative and comparative biology 2005, Trends in Ecology and Evolution 2012-13, Science Advances 2016, Animal Behavior 2020. The project is an important contribution to the field of feminist science studies by providing 1) a nuanced understanding of a central controversy about sex differences, 2) a deeper understanding of how researchers’ situated knowledges have shaped their understanding of sex differences, and 3) demonstrate the influence of feminist researchers on scientific research on sex.
The project’s three most important results:
Several different sources of disagreement in the controversy
The debate is polarized in the publications, while the narrative in the interview material provides a more nuanced picture. The dividing lines in the controversy are not always clear-cut, the pattern is more multifaceted than merely two opposite sides. There are several different sources of disagreement in the controversy: the role the size difference between eggs and sperm (anisogamy) has for explaining sex differences in behavior; different uses of the concept of “sex roles”; criticism of and support for Bateman’s experiment and “Bateman’s principles”; the importance of stochasticity/chance; the validity of recently proposed “gender-neutral” models; and last but not least, the validity of the prevailing paradigm in sexual selection research. One finding is that researchers can be found on different sides of the controversy in different issues. For example, evolutionary quantitative geneticists are critical of anisogamy as an explanation for sex differences in behavior (something Angus Bateman stated in the conclusions of his famous paper), while they consider “Bateman's gradient” to be fundamental to the understanding of sexual selection. Philosopher of science Helen Longino’s concept of “Pluralistic epistemological structures” is applicable to explain the differences in position between evolutionary quantitative geneticists and behavioral ecologists, as they differ in terms of research methods, assumptions, and concepts.
The importance of researchers’ situated knowledges for their understanding of sex differences
The analysis of the publications and the interviews shows what has shaped researchers’ situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) and specific understanding of sex differences. The results show that the understanding of sex differences differs between researchers, and that many different factors have been important in shaping their situated knowledge: the prevailing paradigm; a mathematical approach; feminist critique of gender stereotypical assumptions; experience of working with specific animal species; and the theoretical framework of evolutionary quantitative genetics.
The role of feminist researchers in the natural sciences
It is clear that feminist researchers initiated and have been driving the critique of the prevailing paradigm, the critique of stereotypical notions of females as coy and passive, and of anisogamy as an explanation for sex differences in behavior. This provides a clear example of how feminist researchers have influenced natural science research on sex. The emerging field of feminist science studies has also been an important interlocutor/catalyst in the debates about biology and “sex roles”. Some feminist biologists involved in the controversy have had shared positions between biological institutions and gender studies departments (Women’s studies in the USA), or collaborated with gender researchers, thereby strengthening the exchange between the emerging field of gender studies and researchers in biology.
New research questions generated by the project
The different national understandings of Darwin’s theory of natural selection have been studied, but not the national understandings of his theory of sexual selection to the same extent. For example, researchers in France were very late in adopting the theory of sexual selection and only did so in the 1980s.
Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is ambiguous and has given rise to many different research directions and sometimes contradictory interpretations (which was already evident in the 19th century); it would be interesting to explore how this has developed into the present day.
How the research and results have been disseminated:
Presentations at national and international symposia and conferenses
Nordic STS, Stockholm 2025.
Outreach Plenary, the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Winter meeting, Edinburgh, UK 2024.
Keynote, WOMHER conference, Uppsala 2024.
Keynote, Annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association, Montpellier, France 2024.
Technology & Science History days, Stockholm, 2024.
EASST-4S, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Nederlands 2024.
The Gender Academy conference, Stockholm University, 2023.
Keynote, ERC Annual Workshop “Research on Diversity & Diversity in Frontier Research”, Brussels, Belgium, 2023.
Keynote, IXe Congrès de la Société de philosophie des sciences (SPS) “Gender & Science” – Paris, France 2023.
Conference on “Gender and diversity aspects in research at Goethe University”, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, 2023.
Sociology days, Uppsala, 2022.
NORA conference, Oslo, Norway, 2022.
Critical Interventions in the Life Sciences: Responsibilities, Reflections, and the Political under conditions of ›Post-Truth‹, Freiburg, Germany 2021.
The Gender Academy conference, Stockholm University, 2021.
Beauty, Sexuality, Selection, Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA, USA 2021.
Linnaeus, Sex and Race, Linnean Society of London, UK 2021.
Havsfrumötet, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, 2020.
Workshop Mimicry in Metabolism(s), University of Oslo, Norway 2020.
I and Ingrid Ahnesjö at Uppsala University organized a symposium in 2021: “Anniversary of the Descent of Man – 150 years of feminist engagement with sexual selection”, and an interdisciplinary workshop at Stockholm Úniversity in 2023.
Research information (invited lectures) at national and international universities
Faculty of Education and Zentrum Gender & Diversity, University of Hamburg, Germany 2025.
Department of Philosophy, Lausanne, Switzerland 2025.
Oxford Brookes University, UK 2024.
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, 2023.
Workshop, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2023.
Department of Biological Sciences, Mount Holyoke College, USA, 2022.
The GenderSci Lab, Harvard University, USA, 2022.
Department of Biological Sciences & Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, Boston University, USA, 2022.
Seminar series on equal opportunities and unconscious bias, Natural Science Faculty, Uppsala University, the lecture was also included in the course “The worldviews of natural sciences”, 2022.
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany, 2022.
Department of Biosciences, University of Skövde, 2022.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Umeå University, 2021.
International Course on the Biological Basis of Behavior, Instituto de Ecología of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico 2021.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, USA 2021.
Workshop, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, 2021.
Department of Historical and Contemporary studies, Södertörn University 2020.
Science Studies Colloquium Series, University of Oslo, Norway 2020.
The PhD-course Feminist Epistemology and Methodology, the Gender Academy at Stockholm University 2020.
Malmö University, 2020.
Research information efforts outside the scientific community
I participated in the radio programme BBC Radio 4, recorded a section for the Prinzessinnengarten Audiotour Berlin, wrote an article in Svenska Dagbladet, and one article for Journal Vox Muséum (Toulouse Natural History Muséum periodical). I have also held popular science lectures at Biotopia (The biological museum in Uppsala) 2023, the Tranströmer Library and Globala Gymnasiet in Stockholm 2024, as well as participated in a popular science discussion at the Art and Science Centre Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, USA 2023. I have been interviewed in Swedish Television Science News, several newspapers (The Atlantic, New York Times, De Correspondent) as well as by visual science storyteller Perrin Ireland (USA). I have also collaborated with the artists Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe.
Publications
The project's most important publications consist of a monograph and an article, the former of which has the working title “A controversy over sex differences – what do evolutionary biologists disagree over?” and the article is entitled “Situated knowledges in an evolutionary biology controversy over sex differences” (submitted). The article will be freely available through open access and hopefully also the monograph.
The project’s three most important results:
Several different sources of disagreement in the controversy
The debate is polarized in the publications, while the narrative in the interview material provides a more nuanced picture. The dividing lines in the controversy are not always clear-cut, the pattern is more multifaceted than merely two opposite sides. There are several different sources of disagreement in the controversy: the role the size difference between eggs and sperm (anisogamy) has for explaining sex differences in behavior; different uses of the concept of “sex roles”; criticism of and support for Bateman’s experiment and “Bateman’s principles”; the importance of stochasticity/chance; the validity of recently proposed “gender-neutral” models; and last but not least, the validity of the prevailing paradigm in sexual selection research. One finding is that researchers can be found on different sides of the controversy in different issues. For example, evolutionary quantitative geneticists are critical of anisogamy as an explanation for sex differences in behavior (something Angus Bateman stated in the conclusions of his famous paper), while they consider “Bateman's gradient” to be fundamental to the understanding of sexual selection. Philosopher of science Helen Longino’s concept of “Pluralistic epistemological structures” is applicable to explain the differences in position between evolutionary quantitative geneticists and behavioral ecologists, as they differ in terms of research methods, assumptions, and concepts.
The importance of researchers’ situated knowledges for their understanding of sex differences
The analysis of the publications and the interviews shows what has shaped researchers’ situated knowledges (Haraway 1988) and specific understanding of sex differences. The results show that the understanding of sex differences differs between researchers, and that many different factors have been important in shaping their situated knowledge: the prevailing paradigm; a mathematical approach; feminist critique of gender stereotypical assumptions; experience of working with specific animal species; and the theoretical framework of evolutionary quantitative genetics.
The role of feminist researchers in the natural sciences
It is clear that feminist researchers initiated and have been driving the critique of the prevailing paradigm, the critique of stereotypical notions of females as coy and passive, and of anisogamy as an explanation for sex differences in behavior. This provides a clear example of how feminist researchers have influenced natural science research on sex. The emerging field of feminist science studies has also been an important interlocutor/catalyst in the debates about biology and “sex roles”. Some feminist biologists involved in the controversy have had shared positions between biological institutions and gender studies departments (Women’s studies in the USA), or collaborated with gender researchers, thereby strengthening the exchange between the emerging field of gender studies and researchers in biology.
New research questions generated by the project
The different national understandings of Darwin’s theory of natural selection have been studied, but not the national understandings of his theory of sexual selection to the same extent. For example, researchers in France were very late in adopting the theory of sexual selection and only did so in the 1980s.
Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is ambiguous and has given rise to many different research directions and sometimes contradictory interpretations (which was already evident in the 19th century); it would be interesting to explore how this has developed into the present day.
How the research and results have been disseminated:
Presentations at national and international symposia and conferenses
Nordic STS, Stockholm 2025.
Outreach Plenary, the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Winter meeting, Edinburgh, UK 2024.
Keynote, WOMHER conference, Uppsala 2024.
Keynote, Annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association, Montpellier, France 2024.
Technology & Science History days, Stockholm, 2024.
EASST-4S, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Nederlands 2024.
The Gender Academy conference, Stockholm University, 2023.
Keynote, ERC Annual Workshop “Research on Diversity & Diversity in Frontier Research”, Brussels, Belgium, 2023.
Keynote, IXe Congrès de la Société de philosophie des sciences (SPS) “Gender & Science” – Paris, France 2023.
Conference on “Gender and diversity aspects in research at Goethe University”, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, 2023.
Sociology days, Uppsala, 2022.
NORA conference, Oslo, Norway, 2022.
Critical Interventions in the Life Sciences: Responsibilities, Reflections, and the Political under conditions of ›Post-Truth‹, Freiburg, Germany 2021.
The Gender Academy conference, Stockholm University, 2021.
Beauty, Sexuality, Selection, Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA, USA 2021.
Linnaeus, Sex and Race, Linnean Society of London, UK 2021.
Havsfrumötet, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, 2020.
Workshop Mimicry in Metabolism(s), University of Oslo, Norway 2020.
I and Ingrid Ahnesjö at Uppsala University organized a symposium in 2021: “Anniversary of the Descent of Man – 150 years of feminist engagement with sexual selection”, and an interdisciplinary workshop at Stockholm Úniversity in 2023.
Research information (invited lectures) at national and international universities
Faculty of Education and Zentrum Gender & Diversity, University of Hamburg, Germany 2025.
Department of Philosophy, Lausanne, Switzerland 2025.
Oxford Brookes University, UK 2024.
Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, 2023.
Workshop, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2023.
Department of Biological Sciences, Mount Holyoke College, USA, 2022.
The GenderSci Lab, Harvard University, USA, 2022.
Department of Biological Sciences & Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, Boston University, USA, 2022.
Seminar series on equal opportunities and unconscious bias, Natural Science Faculty, Uppsala University, the lecture was also included in the course “The worldviews of natural sciences”, 2022.
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany, 2022.
Department of Biosciences, University of Skövde, 2022.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Umeå University, 2021.
International Course on the Biological Basis of Behavior, Instituto de Ecología of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico 2021.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, USA 2021.
Workshop, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, 2021.
Department of Historical and Contemporary studies, Södertörn University 2020.
Science Studies Colloquium Series, University of Oslo, Norway 2020.
The PhD-course Feminist Epistemology and Methodology, the Gender Academy at Stockholm University 2020.
Malmö University, 2020.
Research information efforts outside the scientific community
I participated in the radio programme BBC Radio 4, recorded a section for the Prinzessinnengarten Audiotour Berlin, wrote an article in Svenska Dagbladet, and one article for Journal Vox Muséum (Toulouse Natural History Muséum periodical). I have also held popular science lectures at Biotopia (The biological museum in Uppsala) 2023, the Tranströmer Library and Globala Gymnasiet in Stockholm 2024, as well as participated in a popular science discussion at the Art and Science Centre Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, USA 2023. I have been interviewed in Swedish Television Science News, several newspapers (The Atlantic, New York Times, De Correspondent) as well as by visual science storyteller Perrin Ireland (USA). I have also collaborated with the artists Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe.
Publications
The project's most important publications consist of a monograph and an article, the former of which has the working title “A controversy over sex differences – what do evolutionary biologists disagree over?” and the article is entitled “Situated knowledges in an evolutionary biology controversy over sex differences” (submitted). The article will be freely available through open access and hopefully also the monograph.