New Teaching Tool from GSL about Sex Contextualism

Proposed by Sarah S. Richardson in her 2022 paper, sex contextualism is a framework for operationalizing and analyzing sex in a way that attends to its context-specific forms across biomedical research. To put the paper’s core ideas into a teachable, accessible format, members of the GenderSci Lab created the following slidedeck to accompany the paper.

The presentation walks through the central ideas of Richardson’s paper, with the aim of equipping students with critical tools for understanding sex contextualism as a conceptual and practical framework and why it matters. The slidedeck:

  • addresses the motivation for, and pitfalls of, attending to sex-related variation;

  • explains sex contextualism in contrast to sex essentialism;

  • touches on the practical implications of this for laboratory scientists

It can be adapted for classroom and other teaching settings, including intro biology, feminist science studies, and philosophy of biology classes.

If you use this teaching resource, we would love to hear how it went. Feedback is welcome and you can reach us at genderscilab@gmail.com 

Sex contextualism slidedeck

How to cite the teaching module

GenderSci Lab. “Sex Contextualism: Teaching Slidedeck by Harvard University’s GenderSci Lab.” (April 2022) Retrieved from genderscilab.org/blog/sex-contextualism-teaching-tool

Statement of Intellectual Labor

Sarah Richardson wrote this teaching module using materials from her own presentations and a presentation that Marina DiMarco, Mia Miyagi, and Kelsey Ichikawa created. Kelsey Ichikawa formatted and captioned the module and wrote this blog introduction.

Biological Sex ClaimsSarah Richardsonsex contextualism, teaching