Madeleine Pape, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Madeleine Pape, Senior Researcher, University of Lausanne.
 

Biography

Madeleine Pape is a sociologist of gender, who examines the epistemic politics of “sex” and “gender” across diverse institutional contexts. She is particularly interested in how notions of “biological sex” and “sex difference” become embedded in gender equity projects in sport and biomedicine, and with what consequences. By examining how policymakers, scientists, and (certain) feminists seek to enact “sex,” she showes how “it” emerges as elusive and ambiguous and always entangled with gender, race, nation, and other socially meaningful forms of difference. She recently published a "perspective" in Cell, showing that understanding sex-related variation in health requires moving beyond sex as a mere classification system to focusing on measurable sex-related variables, which can vary in context-specific ways.