Today I will be talking to you a little bit
about my zine series – scigrrrl, which covers any thing under the umbrella of
feminist science studies.
So
what is this feminist science studies thing?
As a double major, I often get asked how my
interests in feminist theory and science overlap. To me it seems rather
obvious, but others do not seem to quite see the connection between the two. As
noted by Deebolena Roy: “For many individuals, the mere idea of mixing feminism
and science together sets well – established modes of reasoning (perhaps even
gravity) into topsy-turvy motion” (Roy
2001: 233). However, when we closely examine the goals of feminism, we see how
the two studies fit hand in hand with one another.
Feminist scholars, across disciplines, have made an
effort to study and understand systems that perpetuate subordination and
marginalization. In doing so, feminists hope to diminish differences between
genders, as well as other marginalized groups, and to establish equality across
all groups. As noted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities:
“In applying feminist analyses to scientific ideas and practices, feminism sees
science, like all spheres of intellectual activity, as conditioned by
historical circumstances, societal beliefs, and accepted norms” (AAC&U,
1999: 3). In other words, feminism examines how cultural norms and stereotypes
translates and contributes to our own scientific thinking and practices.
There
are two major branches of feminist science studies that I examined over the
course of this year – equity and content.
The
content branch offers critiques of science and challenges the popular belief
that science is objective. By doing so it aims to insert alternative
perspectives into the field to help formulate a fuller and more accurate
knowledge.
The equity branch aims to better understand the
history of women in science and the systems that have historically and
currently worked to exclude women from the science. By illuminating inequity,
scholars aim to advocate for change to make the sciences more equitable
So far I have made a introducing the equity branch,
celebrating women in science, and am currently working on a zine introducing
the equity branch. Since I only have a short period of time, I am going to
focus on a small portion of my work – investigating why the pipeline that leads
women into the science is so leaky. I began my search for current disparities
by examining the schemas (including my own) of what a scientist looks like.
So I'll ask you to do this along with me – close your
eyes and picture a scientist
(*slide of cartoon images and famous men in science here*)
(*slide of cartoon images and famous men in science here*)
Raise
your hand if one of these images looks like the scientist you imagined.
Now how many imagined someone who looks like
me…that what I thought.
You’re
not alone – in fact, when elementary aged students are asked to draw a
scientist (820 girls and 699 boys) to draw a scientist – less than 9% of the
students drew a female scientist (Giese 2009).
In
addition, those who draw a female scientist, tended to draw them looking
“severe” or “unhappy” (LiveScience 2007). We In sum, the perception we all tend
to have is that there are more men in the sciences, thus science is a masculine
domain, and when there are women in science, they are unhappy.
But how does this schema develop?
My imagined scientist comes directly from the media.
Growing-up, one of my favorite shows was Bill Nye the Science Guy. My childhood obsession with his show helped to
solidify my imagined scientist. In addition to Bill Nye the Science Guy,
shows, like The Big Bang Theory, which feature more male scientists than
female scientists, help to accentuate ideas that science is male-typical.
Furthermore, while, such shows include female scientists, they tend to be
portrayed as being stern, socially awkward, lonely, and less capable than their
male counterparts. These common tropes help to not only establish our schema of
a scientist, but also help to shape our expectation that women in science are
generally unhappy (and what girl aspires of pursuing a career that she will be
unhappy with?).
In addition to pop cultural representations,
bibliographic texts on famous scientists throughout history tend to diminish
the presence of women and feed the idea of the imagined scientist as being
male. For example, in Asimov’s 1982 edition of the Biographical Encyclopedia of
Science and Technology, only 12 of the 1510 bibliographies were of women (only
a 0.03% increase since the 1972 edition) (Giese 2009). Diminished visibility of
women in the sciences, both past and present, further perpetuates the idea that
only men have made significant contributions to the sciences, and thus are
better scientists than women.
Our expectations of men and women in science are
also affected by popular psychological studies. Under the (inaccurate)
assumption that men and women have ‘equal’ opportunities in the United States,
many people, like Lawrence Summers, believe potential “innate” differences
explain why there are fewer women than men in the sciences. Scientists have
used science to justify these beliefs. Many studies that have been conducted
conclude that men have enhanced visuospatial and quantitative abilities
compared to women linked to biological factors, such as early androgen exposure
and neuroanatomy. These popular and faulty studies shape perceptions and
expectations of women: as a result of such studies, we believe as a society
that women perform poorer at math and science than men do.
While
all of these factors that help shape our schemas and expectations seem to be
inconsequential, evidence shows they may actually affect our performance,
intellectual development, and self-concept. Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)
conducted a study in which teachers were told that certain students were
“bloomers” (expected to achieve greater academic success during the school
year). The students randomly assigned to the “bloomers” group had increased
performances compared to those who were not by the end of the school year.
Cultural media that diminishes women’s visibility in the sciences and
“scientific” studies that demonstrate “innate” differences act to establish
expectations that men are “bloomers” and women are not when it comes to
mathematics and science. In fact, parents, who serve similar roles as teachers,
tend to believe that their sons will have higher mathematical achievement than
their daughters, regardless of the child’s actual abilities (Halpern et al.
2007). Furthermore, teachers tend to spend more time interacting with boys than
girls in science and math classes (LiveScience 2007). These discrepancies
actively discourage girls, who may have previously been interested in the
sciences, from developing their mathematic and science skills further and
foster the exclusion of women from the science.
In
this context, the decline of a girl’s interest in science throughout her
development makes sense. In elementary school, girls are just as interested in math
and science as boys are, however after learning the schemas that we are
familiar with of scientists and women in science, they begin to lose interest.
By 8th grade, in fact, boys are 2x as likely to be interested in
math and science than girls. Overall, it becomes evident how our schemas and
expectations work as systematic axes of oppression to facilitate the constant
the leak from the pipeline.
The
pipeline is at its leakiest however during our four short years of undergrad.
While there are about the same number of students who pursue science related
degrees during their undergraduate careers, female students are less likely to
go on to pursue a career in science and other STEM fields. Systems of overt and
covert discrimination cause women to leak out of the pipe for a multitude of
reasons during undergrad.
Many
female students who decide to pursue a science major, particularly physics or
math, may find themselves in positions where they are the only female student
in their class, which can be discouraging (AAC&U 1999). A female physics
major noted: “The boys in my group don’t take anything I say seriously”
(Pollack 2013). Other personal accounts from women who were one of the only
female majors in undergrad within my online women in science community seem to
show similar trends: these women all tend to report feeling excluded from male
study groups on the basis of their sex, feeling as though their male peers
devalue their potential intellectual contributions, and often contemplate
switching majors as a result.
Overt forms of sexism unfortunately are rather
prominent in the sciences. One of the girls that Eileen Pollack interviewed for
her New York Times article noted: “In one physics class, the teacher
announced that the boys would be graded on the “boy curve,” while the one girl
would be graded on the “girl curve”; when asked why, the teacher explained that
he couldn’t reasonably expect a girl to compete in physics on equal terms with
boys” (Pollack 2013). Debbie Sterling, an engineer, claimed she felt targeted
as a woman by TAs and professors in the classroom setting at Stanford: one time
a TA even mocked her problem set in front of her entire peer group, marking her
as inferior to the male students in the room (Sterling 2013). Jocelyn Bell
Burnell also noted how her male peers would holler and make cat calls at her
whenever she entered a class room, valuing her feminine qualities and devaluing
her intellect (Bell Burnell 2013). Experiences with overt forms of
discrimination and sexual harassment certainly make the sciences a less
appealing field for women.
Covert
forms of discrimination, which are hard to uncover, may also prevent women from
pursuing science after graduation. A recent NPR broadcast highlighted
differences in informal mentoring during college years (Vendantam 2014). The
study mentioned in the broadcast sent over 6,500 emails to faculty at 250 top
institutions across the country pretending to be students – every email was
exactly identical with the exception of the name (the name was either male or
female, white or nonwhite). Across disciplines, they found that professors
responded to emails with white male names more than they responded to emails
with either white female names or with nonwhite names. This finding is
particularly troubling as informal mentoring is incredibly important for later
success – through informal mentoring students often gain insights into the
field as well as access to summer internships and other opportunities that may
give them an advantage over their peers.
Lack
of informal mentoring and encouragement also leads women to not pursue careers
in the sciences despite high levels of academic achievement. Eileen Pollack
reflected on her time as an undergraduate physics major, noting that even
though she was a summa cum laude, “I didn’t go on in physics because not a
single professor — not even the adviser who supervised my senior thesis —
encouraged me to go to graduate school” (2013). As such, despite
demonstrated capabilities, women are still discouraged from entering the
sciences.
Reflecting
on my own undergraduate experiences, I came to realize that I too have fallen
victim to forms of covert sexism. In the laboratory setting I have been
mistakenly called a name other than my own repeatedly (even after I corrected
the professor more than once) and have been discredited for work that I largely
contributed to. I have also been denied informal mentoring. While I am sure
that all of these incidents were not intentional, it provides evidence of
how people who may not be sexist work to perpetuate systems of sexism
that have historically excluded women from the field.
Sex
based discrimination also exists in the job evaluation and hiring process after
graduation as well. Moss-Racusin et al. (2012) asked 127 college professors to
evaluate a resume for a position as a research assistant. The resumes given to
the professors were all identical with the exception of the name listed at the
top of the page, which was either Jennifer or John. Overall, professors
evaluated the John as being more competent than Jennifer and tended to offer
her a lower salary (about $4,000 less) than John. Interestingly, all of the
professors included in the study (both male and female) also reported not
holding any biases against women despite the results. More recent studies have
replicated these results (Pollack 2013). These covert forms of discrimination
that occur shortly after graduation impede women from being able to continue a
career in the sciences.
For
my zine series, I specifically examined the number of female professors at top
universities and colleges in comparison to that of men
While
the number vary per institution, overall female professors only account for 10%
of all of those in the sciences (Wiley 2009).
When
we look closer at these positions we see that women are less likely “to obtain tenure (29% of women compared to
58% of men in full-time, ranked academic positions at 4-year colleges) and are
less likely to achieve the rank of full professor (23% of women compared to 50%
of men)” (Halpern et al. 2007). These stats were alarming to me – why were they
so drastic?
In
1979, the gender gap was thought to be due to women’s self-selection out of the
field – namely, deciding to choose an alternative career or leave the field
(Wiley 2009). The idea of women’s self-selection out of the sciences was
challenged by feminists who illuminated the idea that “women in science might be facing a
persistent pattern of underestimation and marginalization, such that the “rate
of exchange” by which they build research careers and reputations was different
than for comparably trained and situated men “(Rossiter 1981: 101 as cited by
Wiley 2009). The feminist perspective was found to be more accurate than the previous
reasoning: While some women may choose to leave the field, most are not self-selecting
out of the field but are rather institutionally selection out.
One major way women are being selected out of the
sciences is the differential treatment they receive after having a child: while
“[h]aving children is a career advantage for men; for women, it is a career
killer” (Mason 2014). Women who have children tend to fare worse than women
without children, and men with or without children (Ceci and Williams, 2010). But
why do men fare just as well with and without children? Why is this difference
only observed within females?
The
“baby factor” also accounts for why there are fewer women in higher-ranking
positions in the sciences. Stephan Brush, a professor of history of science at
University of Maryland, noted:
“By
the time a woman lands an assistant professorship, she is likely to be in her
late twenties or early thirties. She then has five or six years to turn out
enough first-rate publications to gain tenure. If she has children, she must
fulfill her family obligations while competing against other scientists who
work at least sixty hours a week. If she postpones childbearing, the biological
clock will run out at about the same time as the tenure clock” (MyGrayne 1993:
407)
Another
reason women are leaning out of the sciences opposed to leaning in,
is simply due to sexism within the field. In 1999, MIT did an internal review
of discrepancies between their male and female science faculty. The review
found differences, all of which were in favor of men, in salary, merit
increments, institutional responses to external job offers, internal support
for research, allocation of office and lab space, service expectations,
teaching assignments. In addition, one the professors who initiated the study
stated that in addition to the studies findings, she found that “even when
women win the Nobel Prize, someone is bound to tell me they did not
deserve it, or the discovery was really made by a man, or the important result
was made by a man, or the woman really isn’t that smart. This is what
discrimination looks like in 2011” (Pollack 2013). While these differences may
appear to be small, over a long period of time, they create a substantial difference
between male and female scientists were women do not really stand a chance.
________
The
real solution to making the field more equitable is to shift the focus from
fixing the women who leave STEM fields, to fixing the pipeline itself. In order
to start to fix the pipeline, we need to reconstruct harmful schemas and
expectations that are learned early on. In other words, the main issue is that
“women [don’t] become scientists because science — and scientists — [are coded
as being] male” (Pollack 2013). Including more bibliographies of women in
texts, mentioning famous women in science classrooms in addition to the men,
and creating programming that features happy and successful women scientists
would work to help deconstruct predominant schemas and expectations of science
and women in science.
Currently,
there is a large initiative to increase the visibility of women in science. One
way many have done so is by creating science programs explicitly for girls,
like Girls who Code (or other publications like my zine series :p). Not only do
these programs increase the visibility of women in science, but also work to
develop girls’ early visuospatial and quantitative skills. Science and
engineering toys – like GoldieBlox – also work to encourage girls to pursue
science and develop these same skills.
Another
method of fixing the pipeline is by creating networks of women in
science. One program, Cybermentor, networks young girls with women in the field
(Panek 2014). Connecting women in science to young girls interested in science
provides the next generation with access to informal mentoring. As mentioned
previously, informal mentoring gives students an advantage in the field. In
addition, there are many informal support networks that connect women in
science with others like them in the field. For example, I belong to a
wonderful network of women in science on Tumblr: using a blog format, we share
our experiences with one another and offer advice. This support has helped me
to feel secure as a woman in science.
