Women and the Challenge of STEM Professions

Arredondo, Patricia; Miville, Marie L.; Capodilupo, Christina M.; Vera, Tatiana

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-62201-5

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Different majors and programs of study differ greatly in their social composition and their receptivity to nondominant students. For example, the STEM fields (particularly engineering and the physical sciences) have often been cited as relatively chilly and even hostile to women, with the result that women have significantly lower rates of graduation and career success than men (Arredondo et al, 2022; Malicky, 2003). If nondominant students misperceive the social climate of different majors, they may pick ones that have a chilly or hostile climate, increasing the probability that they will leave the major and even the college (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005, pp.…”

Section: Choice and Information Inequity Produce Educational Inequali...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Dougherty

2024

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background: Choice is a key part of the culture of the United States. Americans believe deeply in the personal and social usefulness of being able to make many choices. Hence, all sorts of efforts have been made to increase students’ options, whether by creating many different kinds of schools and colleges, offering a great array of majors and degree programs, or allowing multiple modes of attending higher education. However, this proliferation of choices reproduces social inequality in two crucial ways. First, the provision of many options produces social inequality: people often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if they are faced with many options and do not have adequate information. Second, the provision of many choices legitimates social inequality: the more one thinks in terms of choices in the context of a highly individualistic culture such as that of the United States, the easier it is for dominant groups to blame nondominants as creating their own troubles through feckless choices. Purpose: This paper focuses on one particularly important realm of choice—higher education—because it has come to play a central role in the transmission and legitimation of social inequality. Four higher education choices are of particular interest: whether to enter higher education, which college to attend, what major to choose, and what modality to attend college (for example, part time versus full time or in person versus online). Analyzing this choice-making process, the paper focuses on the impact of inequitable access to high-quality information. Beyond analyzing how choice proliferation and information inequity join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, the paper lays out detailed recommendations for what can be done to reduce this inegalitarian impact. Research Design: The paper draws on a wide variety of social science literatures including sociology of education, critical race theory, behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology. More particularly, the paper synthesizes sociology of education research inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and work drawing on critical race theory. Although there are major tensions between these two bodies of work, they can be fruitfully combined to both illuminate and overcome the ways information inequity produces and legitimates educational inequality. Recommendations: To reduce the role of information inequity in producing and legitimating educational inequality, the paper recommends four strands of change. One strand involves providing high-quality information more equitably through restructured and much more pervasive school counseling and other forms of information provision during middle school, high school, and higher education. A crucial component of this more equitable information provision is drawing on the community cultural wealth of nondominant communities. Second, it is important to design an “architecture of choice” that simplifies choice making and nudges students toward better choices by such means as simplifying the financial aid process, improving credit articulation for community college transfer students, and building guided pathways through college. A third strand involves reducing the harms of suboptimal choices by creating the means to monitor student progress and intervene when students might or actually do go off course. Finally, because suboptimal choices will still occur, it is important to enlighten student choosers and their observers about how choice making under conditions of information inequity produces and legitimates social inequality and to empower them to combat that stratified and stratifying process.

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Section: Choice and Information Inequity Produce Educational Inequali...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Dougherty

2024

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Difficulties with accessing mentoring networks and role models [36,51], experiencing the impact of implicit biases, harassment, and discrimination [52], experiencing gender stereotyping [53], underrepresentation [54], navigating masculinist organisational cultures [37], gendered divisions of faculty labour [55], and difficulties with balancing caring and academic responsibilities [56] have all been suggested as barriers to women's academic experience and conceptualisation of identity. Further, these barriers can accumulate in their effects over time, reflecting an experience known as the glass ceiling, whereby women academics are hindered by the deeply routine, embedded organisational practices and policies of academia [57]. These practices are influenced by patriarchal, gendered discourses that view male academics as the majority in academia, and how to work and identify within these fields is bound within men and masculinity [58].…”

Section: Tensions In Women's Academic Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The barriers for women in academia perpetuate a chilly, unwelcoming climate, which can be characterised by a lack of encouragement and recognition for women, a subtle process of devaluation, and resultant lower levels of confidence [59]. This climate presents difficulties in identifying as an academic for women, who struggle to feel as if they belong, which can be emphasised by the routine, everyday practices that act as significant normalising and invisible barriers for them [57]. These tensions appear to be further enhanced by the complexities of navigating the ongoing structural changes within the Australian public higher education setting [60].…”

Section: Tensions In Women's Academic Experiencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspective Chapter: Academia as a Culture – The ‘Academy’ for Women Academics

Phillips¹

2023

Education and Human Development

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This review explores what is known about women’s experiences and identities within Australian public higher education to assist readers in contextualising the issue. In doing this, the chapter summarises what is known thus far about the key tensions that are experienced by women in academia, underpinned by the influence of the gender binary, heteronormativity, and intersectionality. Then, what is known about the academic identity thus far within the extant literature base is presented, as well as how the identity formation process can be complex and difficult to engage in for women academics. To conclude the chapter, the tensions are extended on to explore how academic ways of being were introduced and influenced by coloniality, as well as acknowledging how the neoliberal episteme has become embedded within the academic system to influence women and their academic experience over time. The aim of this chapter is to liberate thinking surrounding the experiences of women academics through the reviewing and discussion of the literature base and encourage further conversations and connections between academics worldwide surrounding this topic.

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“…STEM disciplinary culture tends to be “chilly” in that it fosters competitiveness and individualistic goals and values, often resulting in a lack of representation, lower retention rates, and blatant discrimination (McGee, 2016; Ong et al, 2018). Women experience benevolent (e.g., overly affectionate savior-complex behavior) and hostile (e.g., blatant degrading and offensive behavior) forms of sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1997; Ong et al, 2018; Swim et al, 2005; Wang et al, 2017), yet due to their intersectional identities (e.g., gender, race, first-generation status, low-income, married, caregivers, and so forth) the culture of intimidation within STEM is amplified for WOC (Arredondo et al, 2022). Gender and racial stereotypes fuel microaggressions that presume that WOC are incompetent in terms of their intelligence and academic merit, leading to adverse social interactions in STEM (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al, 2012; Ong et al, 2018).…”

Section: Stem Disciplinary Culture and The Experiences Of Wocmentioning

confidence: 99%

“It Was Hard, and It Still Is . . .”: Women of Color Navigating HSI STEM Transfer Pathways

et al. 2022

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Women of color (WOC) continue to be underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), where they often experience racism and sexism within disciplinary contexts that have historically privileged men and Whiteness. Participant narratives gained through focus-group and follow-up interviews illuminate the racialized and gendered STEM transfer experiences of 21 WOC who attended 2- and 4-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). Using a multidimensional intersectional approach, we explore the interplay between the complex identity experiences of WOC and the dynamic intersections of their transfer pathways across 2- and 4-year HSIs and within STEM disciplinary contexts. Findings underscore the inequities that continue to pervade STEM and highlight opportunities for transforming disciplinary and institutional cultures, particularly within HSI STEM transfer pathways, where there is great potential for these diverse institutions to support, validate, and benefit from the unique contributions of WOC.

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Women and the Challenge of STEM Professions

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality

Perspective Chapter: Academia as a Culture – The ‘Academy’ for Women Academics

“It Was Hard, and It Still Is . . .”: Women of Color Navigating HSI STEM Transfer Pathways

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