Janet Kourany, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, will present the lecture “What Do Women Contribute to Science?” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, in Ledbetter Hall Room C in UALR’s Donaghey Student Center.

The event is free and open to the public.

Kourany contends that comments made by Lawrence Summers, former Harvard University president, at a 2005 science and engineering conference suggesting that women are neither motivated enough nor smart enough to succeed in science has raised the issue of a “gender gap” in science. Summers currently directs President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council.

Most of this attention focuses on the factors keeping the male/female success gap in place rather than on the importance of closing the gap. Kourany will show the significant difference made to both scientific knowledge and the society shaped by it when the gap has been narrowed. She aims to challenge the existing philosophy in both science and philosophy of science, which assumes differences, such as gender, have no significance on the production of scientific knowledge.

The lecture is sponsored by the department of Philosophy and Liberal Studies, the Gender Studies and Donaghey Scholars Programs, and the Socratic Society.

Kourany is the author of numerous articles on the philosophy of science and feminist philosophy, and her book, “Philosophy of Science after Feminism,” will be published in 2010 by Oxford University Press.

For more information on Kourany’s lecture, contact Angela Hunter, assistant professor of philosophy, at (501) 569-569-3312.