Sex and gender perspectives as indicators of research quality in the humanities, social sciences and educational sciences

With recent changes in science policy, control of gender biases in science has been extended from monitoring the approval rate of applicants of different sexes, to requiring that sex and gender perspectives are integrated in research content.

The legitimacy of this extention hinges on the argument that sex and gender perspectives is not exclusively about ethical and political values, but are concurrently aspects of the research quality undergoing assessment.

The new policy testifies to the successful institutionalisation of a critique against systematic biases in peer review by feminist science studies scholars. To some, the objectivity of science is strengthened when biases are corrected through affirmative action. To others, the value-neutrality of science is threatened by an undue politisation of research.

The interpretation and application of the new quality criteria will foreground these different ideas about how to accommodate ethics in research.

The aim of this research project is to investigate how the integration of sex and gender perspectives as an indicator of quality is negotiated in the humanities, social sciences and educational sciences, where the relation between ethical and political values, on the one hand, and scientific values, on the other, is particularly teneous.

The study will cover science policy and public debates, as well as successful research proposals and review assessments of Swedish research councils FORTE and Vetenskapsrådet between 2018-2021