Weaving strength and care

Situated reflections on women's work and the epistemology of care in biological anthropology

Bibliographic Data

ID23312416
AuthorsLumila Paula Menéndez (0000-0002-7867-2910, University of Bonn, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-27
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2643-7961 • E-ISSN: 2643-7961
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/fea2.70057
OpenAlexW7171417237
LanguageEN
References cited22

This essay examines how gendered expectations, structural precarity, and institutional hierarchies shape research practices, knowledge production, and career trajectories in biological anthropology. Taking the figure of the “strong woman” as an entry point, it questions celebratory narratives of resilience that frame endurance as an individual virtue while obscuring the structural conditions that make such endurance necessary. Drawing on my situated experience working across South America, Central America, and Europe, and engaging with Latin American feminist scholarship, this essay argues that women's scientific work is sustained through forms of care that are central to, yet rarely recognized within, disciplinary definitions of rigor, authority, and scientific recognition. Care is approached not as a personal disposition, but as a form of labor embedded in fieldwork, laboratory practices, the stewardship of collections and data, and the maintenance of collaborative infrastructures over time. By foregrounding this often‐invisible work, the essay shows that women's contributions to biological anthropology cannot be understood apart from the material, ethical, and institutional arrangements through which knowledge is produced and maintained. In doing so, it reframes care as an epistemological practice that is fundamental to scientific accountability, disciplinary sustainability, and more equitable futures for biological anthropology.

Agency (philosophy) · Discipline · Foregrounding · Futures contract · Narrative · Situated · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Stewardship (theology) · Work (physics) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Race, Genetics, and Society

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Open DOIOpen Access