In another branch of the critique, proponents argue that women engage in more contextual, integrated research and they challenge women to use this research to transform science (5).

By making us aware of the many problems that plague scientific research, and of the many ways in which medical and scientific pronouncements restrict women's roles, feminist critics of science have intended us to discredit the ideas that bound us. They have improved our understanding of barriers to women's entry into science. They have paved the way for better scientific studies of sex and gender, and they have exhorted women to engage in improved studies that challenge claims for women's biological limitations.

Inadvertently, however, this critique seems also to have contributed to the two-cultures divide that helps to keep women out of science. For many generations, young women believed themselves biologically, temperamentally and socially suited to the arts rather than to the sciences. Science, in short, was seen as anti-feminine. Now, instead of charging that science is anti-feminine, a new generation of young women has come to argue that science is anti-feminist. They use this charge to justify their isolation and disaffection from science and to create two cultures in which science and women must live apart.

For several years, I taught science and gender at North American universities. The courses aimed to introduce students to research on sex differences and sensitize them to the biases and flaws in that research. Enrolments hovered around 75, and the vast majority of students were women. However, few of those women had any background in the sciences. Many of them shared the history of a poor classroom experience which prompted them to either fear and hate science classes or avoid them entirely.

As I taught, however, another source of tension emerged. With increasing frequency, students not only expressed an aversion to science but seemed also to dismiss altogether its legitimacy. Placing a new twist on the old argument that women couldn't do science, these students seemed to imply that women need not do science. Again and again, I heard them voice their frustration not with the typical "I hate science," or "I can't do science," but with the question, "Why do we need to know anything about science? Science is part of the male world." Adopting what they labelled a "feminist" stance, these young women wanted to dismiss science as patriarchal and "male stream"; women, they argued, spoke with a different voice.

More general reactions of teachers and peers supported the students' comments. An invitation to lecture on biology and gender came prefaced with the suggestion that the students be told how "biology was an oppressive, male tool." A group of women science students complained that they had been told that they were unwelcome at the University Women's Centre because they were "men in women's clothing." A young medical student lamented that when, as an undergraduate, she enrolled in a women's studies arts course she felt obliged to apologise for her career choice and that because she had chosen a scientific career, students and teachers challenged her commitment to feminism.

Preliminary statistical data suggest that these isolated anecdotes are representative of a wider, more systematic sentiment. The data come from a questionnaire distributed to undergraduate students in two classes on science and gender. Some questions required yes/no. answers, others invited open-ended responses. If the students had not taken any science at the post-secondary level, they were asked to explain why not. They were asked if they had ever considered a scientific career, and why or why not. They were asked whether they thought that the content of science was anti-woman and whether the practice of science was anti-feminist.

Participation in the study was voluntary; 106 students responded. For purposes of control, the questionnaire was also distributed to students in an introductory women's studies course, of which 103 responded. Only 5.8% of the total sample, or 12 of 209 respondents, were; male. However, the proportion of males in the science and gender classes was larger; men represented 10% (or 5/50) and 7% (4/56) of these samples respectively. The respondents' ages ranged from 17 to 51 years; they represented all levels of university study though a majority were in their first or second years.

Most students had taken some science, especially biology, at the high school level, but only 35% had taken a course in biology or the hard sciences at the university level. The students provided standard justifications for avoiding science classes. Many cited bad experiences in high school. "The teacher, subject matter, approach, all were stifling" a twenty-year old woman wrote. More specific criticisms focused on the ways in which science had been taught. Complaints about "rote memorization" appeared frequency; high school classes, students reflected, were "boring and distant" and they "never seem to apply directly with personal/local experiences of the body and environment."