On the Londa Schiebinger Article

In “Theories of Race and Gender,” Schiebinger comments on the Western world’s hierarchy of races in the “Great Chain of Being.” White men, not surprisingly, roost at the top of the hierarchy, looking down on the Africans, Native Americans, Asians, Indians, et al. far below. While I have encountered the Great Chain in several cultural anthropology classes, it was never brought to my attention that the hierarchy fails to address exactly (or about so) half of humanity: it excludes women.
I also never realized that early 20th century eugenic charts made to compare races were composed strictly of men. Whether representing (or more accurately, misrepresenting) Europeans, Asians, or Africans, each chart detailed the crania and postcrania of men, never women. Thinking back to my studies of the beginnings of modern social anthropology, I cannot recall any drawing, flow chart, or text that examined women exclusively, or even in comparison to men. Further, the ethnographies of early social anthropologists, such as Malinowski and Boas, regarded women largely in relation to their roles in male-dominated society. Schiebinger has exposed a great omission in a field that prides itself in thoroughness. What is most interesting about this exclusion is that today’s social anthropologists readily acknowledge the racist beginnings of their field, then called ethnology. However, the exclusion of women from early anthropological studies and texts remains unrecognized.