“Flying under the radar”: Postfeminism and teaching in academic science
Autor/in:
Doerr, Katherine
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: Neoliberal academia is marked by vertical and horizontal gender segregation, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is a particularly concerning case. Women with PhDs are underrepresented, and when they do participate, they are more likely than men to be in teaching-intensive roles. Beyond equality concerns, this is problematic because when women are interpreters rather than producers of disciplinary knowledge, the STEM enterprise remains gender-biased. Using data from a 2-year ethnography with physical science faculty in teaching-intensive roles, this paper argues that gender inequity is reproduced through postfeminist discourses of work-life balance. Participants who are mothers say they are flying under the radar at work. They self-surveille as they engage in both paid labor as university educators and unpaid carework at home. Importantly, when participants challenge hegemonic gender norms, they attract the radar's attention and are sanctioned. This study contributes to a growing understanding of how and why women are marginalized in STEM careers. Women with science PhDs fulfill their university's teaching mission with minimal support for the implied compensation of work-life balance, leaving the institutional structures which privilege men's participation in STEM research intact.
In/visible: The intersectional experiences of women of color in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine in Australia
Autor/in:
Nash, Meredith; Moore, Robyn
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: It is now well-established that science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) institutions globally should invest in building diverse and inclusive workforces. However, women of color remain underrepresented in STEMM in Australia and their organizational experiences are under-researched. To address this gap, we used a qualitative approach to explore the complex intersections of race/ethnicity and gender that may contribute to women's underrepresentation in Australian STEMM. Primary data encompassed interviews with 30 self-identified women of color working in academia, industry, and government STEMM organizations. We drew on intersectionality theory to explore participants' experiences of their working environments and grounded theory in our analysis. This article focuses on an understudied area related to the maintenance of white male power in STEMM and everyday experiences of “in/visibility”—the paradoxical space of invisibility and hypervisibility that women of color occupy within STEMM fields. For example, various features of women of color's identities, such as physical appearance, cultural background, accent, and name, led to participants feeling “different” and hypervisible in STEMM workplaces in Australia, in which the stereotype of a white male scientist predominates. Women also felt hypervisible as race/gender tokens when they were expected to do the diversity work of the institution. In contrast, participants felt invisible when they were professionally and socially excluded from networking events, such as after-work drinks. Women of color's experiences of having to work much harder than white colleagues to gain recognition of their organizational value also contributed to feelings of invisibility. The study findings provide deep insight into Australian STEMM cultures by foregrounding how in/visibility shows up in the experiences of women of color. This study builds on our understanding of women's STEMM careers as inextricably linked to intersectional features of social identity and white masculine power dynamics in organizations and society more broadly. We conclude by advocating for a more nuanced understanding of “women in STEMM” in Australia (e.g., via more sophisticated data collection and analysis) to ensure that national policies and initiatives benefit all women.
Gender Differences in STEM Persistence after Graduation
Autor/in:
Delaney, Judith; Devereux, Paul J.
Quelle: economica, 89 (2022) 356, S 862–883
Inhalt: Much attention is focused on finding ways to encourage females to study STEM in school and college but what actually happens once women complete a STEM degree? We use the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey to trace out gender differences in STEM persistence over the career. We find a continuous process whereby women are more likely to exit STEM than men. Among holders of STEM undergraduate degrees, women are more likely to obtain a non- STEM master's degree. Then, after entering the labour market, there is a gradual outflow of females during the first 15 years post-graduation so that females are about 20 percentage points less likely to work in STEM compared to their male counterparts. Conditional on leaving STEM, we find that females are more likely to enter the education and health sectors while males are more likely to enter the more lucrative business sector and that this can partly explain the gender pay gap for STEM graduates. Overall, our results suggest that policies that aim to increase the proportion of females studying STEM in school and college may have less effect than expected due to the lower attachment of females to STEM after graduation. Such policies may need to be augmented with efforts to tackle the greater propensity of females to exit STEM throughout the career.
Quelle: Science (New York, N.Y.), 372 (2021) 6548, S 1345–1348
Inhalt: Women engage in less commercial patenting and invention than do men, which may affect what is invented. Using text analysis of all U.S. biomedical patents filed from 1976 through 2010, we found that patents with all-female inventor teams are 35% more likely than all-male teams to focus on women's health. This effect holds over decades and across research areas. We also found that female researchers are more likely to discover female-focused ideas. These findings suggest that the inventor gender gap is partially responsible for thousands of missing female-focused inventions since 1976. More generally, our findings suggest that who benefits from innovation depends on who gets to invent.
Die Professoren Rembrand Koning von der Harvard Business School, Sampsa Samila von der IESE Business School und John-Paul Ferguson von der McGill University analysierten mehr als 430.000 biomedizinische US-Patente, angemeldet zwischen 1976 und 2010. Patente mit ausschließlich weiblichen Erfinderteams drehen sich mit 35% höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit um die Gesundheit von Frauen als die Ergebnisse rein männlicher Teams. Im Jahr 1976 stammten nur 6 Prozent der biomedizinischen Patente von Teams, die von Frauen geleitet wurden, 2010 waren es bereits 16%. Dieser Anstieg um 10 Prozentpunkte führte zu deutlich mehr Innovationen im Bereich der Gesundheit von Frauen.
Frauen stellen derzeit etwa 35% der Wissenschaftler in den MINT-Fächern. Laut der Studie gibt es Gründe dafür, dass sie bei Patentanmeldungen nicht zahlreicher zu finden sind. Noch immer gebe es geschlechtsspezifische Diskriminierung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und in den Entscheidungsprozessen, welche F&E-Vorhaben Manager als aussichtsreich erachten.
„Ungleichheit auf dem Arbeitsmarkt kann zu Ungleichheit im Produktbereich führen“, erklärt IESE-Prof. Samila. „Diskriminierung auf dem Arbeitsmarkt ist nicht nur ein Problem für den Einzelnen, sondern für die gesamte Gesellschaft, da die Beiträge derjenigen fehlen, die diskriminiert wurden“. Der Abbau von Barrieren für benachteiligte Gruppen fördere daher Innovation und Wirtschaftswachstum. „Es mag noch viele ungenutzte Marktchancen für Erfindungen für Frauen geben, Möglichkeiten, die wiederum die Gesundheit von Frauen verbessern könnten“.
Patente von Frauen drehten sich mit höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit um die Gesundheit von Frauen als diejenigen, die von Männern ersonnen wurden. Fortschritte durch weibliche Erfinder gibt es zuhauf. So hat die Unternehmerin Surbhi Sarna aus ihrer eigenen Angst vor Eierstockkrebs heraus ein besseres Werkzeug zur Krebserkennung erfunden. Dr. Patricia Bath fand eine präzisere Behandlung für den Grauen Star, von dem Frauen häufiger betroffen sind als Männer. Die neue Studie untermauert diese Ergebnisse mit einer systematischen Datenanalyse.
Während schon mehrheitlich weibliche Erfinderteams sich eher dem weiblichen Geschlecht widmen, ist das Muster bei reinen Frauenteams am stärksten ausgeprägt. Der Zusammenhang zwischen weiblichen Erfindern und Erfindungen ist sowohl das Ergebnis auf Frauen fokussierter Forschungsbereiche wie der Gynäkologie als auch der Kunst weiblicher Erfinder in allen Wissenschaftsbereichen, Gelegenheiten für Erfindungen, die Frauen helfen, zu erkennen. (deutsches Abstract: idw)
Gender equality as a resource and a dilemma: interpretative repertoires in engineering education in Sweden
Autor/in:
Silfver, Eva; Gonsalves, Allison J.; Danielsson, Anna T.; Berge, Maria
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2021) , S 1–17
Inhalt: This article explores how female university students’ abilities to present themselves as ‘authentic’ engineers are imbricated with discursive constructions of gender and gender equality. The empirical data comes from interviews and video diaries collected with three female engineering students. The analysis demonstrates the power of the Swedish gender equality discourse to inform the students’ talk as they negotiate their gendered identities to become intelligible as engineering students and engineers. We suggest that gender equality is used as a resource in the repertoires, but we also demonstrate that this discourse becomes a dilemma in that it limits possibilities for gender performances to go beyond old patterns. Despite this, the article still shows three unique ways of negotiating gender and other social categories in different situations connected to university learning and participation in internships.
Schlagwörter:discourse; Diskurs; engineering; Gleichstellungspolitik; Identität; Identitätsbildung; Ingenieurwissenschaft; Schweden; Studentin; Sweden
CEWS Kategorie:Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Studium und Studierende
Quelle: Journal of Further and Higher Education, (2021) , S 1–14
Inhalt: The transition of early career researchers into academic posts is understood to be a crucial career step and marks a point at which representation of women declines significantly. The research adopts a participatory qualitative research methodology through career narrative interviews and group discussions with women engineers recently appointed into academic posts. It was found that academic careers are ‘hoped for’, but not described as a straightforward option in terms of either securing tenure or future career development. The collective career paths outlined were rarely linear and featured key moments of crisis and self-doubt, culminating in ‘tentative’ career identity formation in the face of gendered career structures. There is evidence of a pre-emptive and continuing uncertainty about the feasibility of an academic career that begins years before embarking on a PhD. The distinctive contribution of the study is the consideration of gendered early processes of forming an academic identity and ongoing collective experiences of becoming an academic.
Schlagwörter:akademische Karriere; early career researchers; Gender; Ingenieurwissenschaft; soziale Konstruktion; transition; Übergangsphase; wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs
CEWS Kategorie:Berufsbiographie und Karriere, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Systemic inequalities for LGBTQ professionals in STEM
Autor/in:
Cech, Erin A.; Waidzunas, Tom
Quelle: Science Advances, 7 (2021) 3
Inhalt: Researchers have documented race and gender inequality in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for decades. Do lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) professionals face parallel experiences of disadvantage in STEM? Using representative survey data from 21 STEM professional societies (Nsample = 25,324; NLGBTQ = 1006), this paper presents multidimensional and methodologically robust documentation of 5 dimensions of LGBTQ inequality in STEM. Controlling for variation by demographic, discipline, and job factors, LGBTQ STEM professionals were more likely to experience career limitations, harassment, and professional devaluation than their non-LGBTQ peers. They also reported more frequent health difficulties and were more likely to intend to leave STEM. These trends were similar across STEM disciplines and employment sectors. We found no differences by LGBTQ status in education level, work effort, or job commitment. These findings reveal LGBTQ status as a clear axis of inequality in STEM and motivate further research into the mechanisms producing such outcomes.
Schlagwörter:Diversity; inequality; LGBTQ; STEM
CEWS Kategorie:Diversity, Naturwissenschaft und Technik
The Gender Wage Gap among Ph.D. Holders: Evidence from Italy
Autor/in:
Alfano, Vincenzo; Cicatiello, Lorenzo; Gaeta, Giuseppe Lucio; Pinto, Mauro
Quelle: The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 21 (2021) 3, S 1107–1148
Inhalt: This paper contributes to the literature on the gender wage gap by empirically analyzing those workers who hold the highest possible educational qualification, i.e., a Ph.D. The analysis relies on recent Italian cross-sectional data collected through a survey on the employment conditions of Ph.D. holders. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis and quantile decomposition analysis are carried out, and the selection of Ph.D. holders into employment and STEM/non-STEM fields of specialization is taken into account. Findings suggest that a gender gap in hourly wages exists among Ph.D. holders, with sizeable differences by sector of employment and field of specialization.
Schlagwörter:gender pay gap; Italien; Italy; Phd; Post-doc; science as a profession; STEM; wissenschaftliche Karriere
CEWS Kategorie:Arbeitswelt und Arbeitsmarkt, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung, Wissenschaft als Beruf
Inhalt: A recent TPT call for papers asks for “more research … about how to tear down and/or overcome the barriers to success that the world, and science, and academia, and the culture of physics put in the way of those who are not white and male.” Women make up only 20% of bachelor’s degree recipients in physics. Hispanic people comprise less than 8%, with Black people accounting for less than half that number. While the representation of Hispanic people appears to be increasing over the last 10 years, the same is not true for Black people, nor is it true for women.
Authorship in top-ranked mathematical and physical journals: Role of gender on self-perceptions and bibliographic evidence
Autor/in:
Mihaljević, Helena; Santamaría, Lucía
Quelle: Quantitative Science Studies, 1 (2020) 4, S 1468–1492
Inhalt: Despite increasing rates of women researching in math-intensive fields, publications by female authors remain underrepresented. By analyzing millions of records from the dedicated bibliographic databases zbMATH, arXiv, and ADS, we unveil the chronological evolution of authorships by women in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. We observe a pronounced shortage of female authors in top-ranked journals, with quasistagnant figures in various distinguished periodicals in the first two disciplines and a significantly more equitable situation in the latter. Additionally, we provide an interactive open-access web interface to further examine the data. To address whether female scholars submit fewer articles for publication to relevant journals or whether they are consciously or unconsciously disadvantaged by the peer review system, we also study authors’ perceptions of their submission practices and analyze around 10,000 responses, collected as part of a recent global survey of scientists. Our analysis indicates that men and women perceive their submission practices to be similar, with no evidence that a significantly lower number of submissions by women is responsible for their underrepresentation in top-ranked journals. According to the self-reported responses, a larger number of articles submitted to prestigious venues correlates rather with aspects associated with pronounced research activity, a well-established network, and academic seniority.