Emily Martin

Emily Martin (born 1944) is an American anthropologist. She is a professor emerita of socio-cultural anthropology at New York University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1966 and her PhD from Cornell University in 1971. Before 1984, she published works under the name of Emily Martin Ahern.

Career

Teaching and academic work After earning a PhD in anthropology, Martin was on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine and Yale University. In 1974, she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University In the same year she was also awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science.

Sinology Martin's work on sinology focused on topics both in Mainland China and Taiwan, including religion, architecture, politics, traditional Chinese medicine, women, rural culture, and genealogies. Martin argues that current scientific literature is gender-biased and that such bias has become entrenched in our language. According to Martin, scientific explanations are presented in a sexist way.

Martin began researching the analogies used in science education starting in 1982. Pregnant with her second child, Martin noticed patterns in her expecting parents' class with how women's bodies were described and referred to.

Reviewing the book in American Anthropologist, Linda C. Garrow wrote: "Martin draws strong conclusions about the amount of resistance expressed by women that are not supported by the data [...] However, the insights, hypotheses, and challenges [...] will undoubtedly stimulate much research and make the book essential reading across a number of areas in medical anthropology." In Isis, Anja Hiddinga called it "daring, well argued, and thoroughly supported by a wide range of references."

"The Egg and the Sperm" In the 1991 article, "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles", Martin analyzes the metaphors that are used to teach biological concepts, claiming that these metaphors reflect the socially constructed definitions of male and female. She focuses on analogies made about fertilization and the egg and sperm's roles, and points how the language used insinuates that female biological processes are inferior to male biological processes.

Martin notes that the perception of menstruation is usually negative and misogynistic and that women tend to think of menstruation as a failure. Martin ascribes this perception to linguistic and cultural gender bias; words used to describe menstruation imply failure, dirtiness, structural breakdown, and destruction. Martin contends that menstruation is a normal physiological function and process which should be viewed as a success in avoiding pregnancy and ridding itself of potentially harmful material from the uterus. She says that gender bias is also responsible for Western culture's tendency to praise men for the ability to produce a large amount of sperm.