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Open call for papers: History of Communism in Europe no. 16/2025
(Re)Gendering Science: Policies, Practices and Discourses in Socialist Contexts and Beyond

This call for papers invites contributors for a special issue of the scientific journal History of Communism in Europe, focusing on the relationship between women and science in socialist contexts. We aim to explore how women engaged with science both within national contexts (in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, or the Global South), and in transnational contexts (whether within the framework of socialist movements and organizations or through academic networks and scientific collaborations that included women from socialist countries and/or took place in these regions).

This special issue is based on two premises.

First, both socialism as an ideology and communist regimes encouraged women’s participation in science. To this day, countries of Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia, and Latin America have a higher proportion of female scientists (around 40% or more) compared to regions like Western Europe and North America (just over 30%), East Asia (a little over 20%), or South and West Asia (under 20%). However, it is precisely these regions, with greater women’s participation in science, that are less represented in the history and historiography of science, and whose scientific contributions tend to be underrated or ignored altogether. Ironically, even in dictionaries and encyclopedias specifically dedicated to women in science, these regions are consistently underrepresented, with most entries coming from Western Europe and North America, a few from South and East Asia, and only a handful from Eastern Europe or the Global South. This special issue aims to shift the focus from “Western science” – too often equated with “real” or “modern” science – toward a more inclusive perspective, analyzing the politics, practices, and discourses of science and women’s involvement within it in state-socialist countries and, more broadly, in socialist environments.

Second, while communist regimes encouraged women’s involvement in science, they also produced specific forms of gender inequality. Although women gained increased opportunities for education and scientific careers, their roles remained largely peripheral within the scientific community. Men continued to occupy the most prominent and powerful positions, maintained visibility in the public communication of scientific developments, and often claimed credit for scientific achievements. The few exceptions to this trend often had political or propagandistic motivations aligned with the logic of the Cold War, and typically occurred in scientific fields considered “feminine”, such as child and elderly care. Additionally, women’s identities were downplayed by authoritarian regimes, subsumed under the broader, politically significant identity of “working people”. In this context, the special issue aims to gather both individual and collective case studies that recover the lost voices of women in science. It also seeks to examine the complex interplay of factors that either encouraged or hindered women’s access to scientific fields and how women negotiated their scientific status, developing strategies for professional achievement. We are also interested in how gender identities were constructed in socialist and state-socialist contexts, and how these identities influenced men and women’s interaction with and within science, as well as the processes of knowledge creation.

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Open call for papers: History of Communism in Europe no. 16/2025

DEADLINE EXTENSION: December 15th, 2024
(Re)Gendering Science: Policies, Practices and Discourses
in Socialist Contexts and Beyond

This call for papers invites contributors for a special issue of the scientific journal History of Communism in Europe…

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