“Absolute Objectivity Is Not Possible”

Dr. Kaiser Trujillo, you are a brain and gender scientist, and within this field of research, your work focuses on what is known as neurofeminism. What exactly is this?
Anelis Kaiser Trujillo: Researchers often declare that there is so-called objectivity in the natural sciences – that our observations of the processes of nature are entirely neutral. Taking aside the fact that this allegedly neutral view of things has been formed mostly through the lenses of men, feminists like myself will respond: absolute objectivity in scientific work is not possible. As a researcher, I have a gender; I act economically, or from a certain position, and I have interests that have an impact on the questions I will ask about a specific topic. Neurofeminism is interested in the perspective of women in the neurosciences. The field of feminist neurosciences concerns itself mainly with questions about the brain, for example, the question whether female and male brains display differences, as well as how these differences are to be evaluated from a neurobiological standpoint and how they are interpreted within our society.

Why is this feminist perspective on research important?
Questions surrounding gender have biological and social, but also physiological, dimensions, and for these reasons, they cannot be disregarded. Within brain research, supposedly scientific discoveries on the differences between the female and the male brain have been produced and communicated for far too long. A majority of these were incidental findings – side products of other research questions – which is the reason why methods and results were not reflected upon to a large degree. If, in addition, research teams are not established in an interdisciplinary fashion, and if for that reason a question is approached from one and the same direction only, stereotypes will be cemented and perpetuated in our society.

What is the stereotype, or allegedly scientific finding, concerning female and male brains that you encounter most frequently?
One common assumption is that the brains of women and men are fundamentally different. This is not at all the case. In fact, differences, if they can be found at all, occur periodically, locally, and in isolation. It is also widely assumed that differences in behavior between women and men can be derived from the brain and are therefore, to some degree, natural. This, too, could not be determined to date. A brain is never to be looked at from a purely biological perspective, and its biology should never be viewed in isolation from social context; instead, it is strongly influenced by its environment from birth. Meaning: what was there from the beginning, and what we, over the course of our lives, have been exposed to with respect to feminine and masculine behavior, cannot be separated. After all, it is often stated that it is evident from the brain that women and men are different with respect to their abilities and interests. One stereotype states, for example, that women are bad at science. The correct fact: they are only afraid of validating the cliché. This fear in effect blocks them, with the result that they often cannot approach scientific topics in an objective manner.

Typical for a man, typical for a woman – why are we so fascinated by these (alleged) differences?
The experiences on a specific topic that one has, as a woman, a man, or someone of a different gender, can be very different indeed, and at the end of the day, everyone’s perspective is valid. I am personally interested in the subject of discrimination which, in our societal context, may arise in the realm of work based on erroneous assumptions and alleged scientific findings. If, on the basis of improper research methods, it is assumed that a woman is less capable of certain things than a man, it is possible that she will find herself at a disadvantage. On the other hand, it is not fair to a man to assume that he, based on the structures in his brain, will contribute less to child rearing or household chores.

In order to reduce gender clichés in the area of brain research, you founded the “NeuroGenderings Network”, an interdisciplinary collective in the field of neurofeminism. What is your goal?
At the time, we got together because to us, the pure search for gender-specific differences in brain research was too “unscientific”. NeuroGenderings uses a critical approach to questions about gender and the brain which go well beyond the study of gender differences. Gender is always interlinked with biology, with psychology and with social structures. We bring together female experts from the fields of neurology, the social sciences, sociology and science studies, and we address the question, for example, of how studies must be designed to avoid reproducing genderist clichés. And in my view, the same applies here: research teams must be composed of interdisciplinary members in order to be able to answer questions of gender on a highly complex level. In the case of questions about gender-specific differences in the brain, the neurosciences and gender studies must always work together. These days, monodisciplinary approaches are no longer scientific enough – this does not only apply to the field of neurofeminism.

Anelis Kaiser Trujillo is a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Freiburg. Her scientific work focuses on gender-specific brain research. For this work, she was awarded the Emma Goldman Award in 2021.