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Navigating the heteronormativity of engineering: The experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students
Abstract
While much is known about the experiences of women and racial/ethnic minorities in male-dominated fields such as engineering, the experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identifying individuals remain unstudied. Our article breaks this silence with an exploratory study of the ways LGB students at a major research university in the western United States both experience and navigate the climate of their engineering college. Based on interviews and focus groups, we find that both pervasive prejudicial cultural norms and perceptions of competence particular to the engineering profession can limit these students' opportunities to succeed, relative to their heterosexual peers. Nevertheless, through coping strategies which can require immense amounts of additional emotional and academic effort, LGB students navigate a chilly and heteronormative engineering climate by ‘passing’ as heterosexual, ‘covering’ or downplaying cultural characteristics associated with LGB identities, and garnering expertise to make themselves indispensable to others. These additional work burdens are often accompanied by academic and social isolation, making engineering school a hostile place for many LGB identifying students. This research provides an opportunity to theorize categories of inequality within engineering that do not have visible markers, and to consider them within a broader framework of intersectionality.
... Over the past decade, engineering education has made a shift from a field primarily focused on developing engineering curriculum to considering identity and experience as core aspects of education [1]- [3] . Much of this work has focused on engineering identity, or professional identity, formation and highlighting the interplay between individual identity and engineering culture [4]- [6] . While work in engineering identity has become a prominent area of engineering education research, it can also be somewhat narrow. ...
... Such enactments dictate what engineering is, how it is taught and who is allowed to become an engineer [14], [15] . In engineering education, the culture has been described throughout the literature as gendered, raced, heteronormative, ableist, and techno-centric [4], [16]- [23] . This body of work problematizes a variety of embedded, taken-for-granted norms by exposing their marginalizing and harmful impacts on students with non-normative identities. ...
... Similar findings have been identified in scholarship exploring the experiences of LGBTQ and disabled students. Cech and Waidzunas (2011) [4] highlight how heteronormativity (i.e., the hypervaluation or privileging of heterosexuality) is embedded in discussions of technical engineering topics, such as describing a plug and an outlet of a mechanical engine as a "man" and a "woman," respectively (p. 10). McCall and colleagues (2020) [26] identified ways in which descriptions of engineering culture, including "work hard, play hard" [19] and "meritocracy of difficulty" [27] , contributed to ableist underpinnings that are exclusionary to disabled engineering students. ...
... A woman with few or no women colleagues is estimated to be 1.68 times more likely to experience gender harassment than women working in gender balanced environments (Kabat-Farr & Cortina, 2014). Several studies have suggested that factors that create "chilly" climates for women in STEM also affect LGBTQ + scientists, because of the relationship between gender stereotypes and sexual orientation (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Freeman 2020;Hall & Sandler, 1982;Hughes, 2017). ...
... Specific attention to the intersectional nature of multiple marginalized identities is important in assessing and addressing hostile climates in STEM as interventions may not be "one size fits all". For example, LGBTQ people of color have found LGBTQ spaces to be just as racist, while spaces designed to support people of color can be homophobic (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). ...
... Despite similar rates of underrepresentation in STEM for LGBTQ + and other minority groups, few resources are devoted to interrogating why LGBTQ + people leave STEM (Freeman, 2020). As a result, there is a risk that experiences of homophobia are regarded as isolated incidents rather than systemic problems within STEM (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017). Previous studies have found LGBTQ + representation and mentorship to be factors correlated with persistence in STEM majors, though this has yet to be studied in a Canadian context (Garvey & Inkelas, 2012;Green & Sanderson, 2018). ...
A small but growing body of research confirms that people in the LGBTQ + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other identities) community are among those underrepresented in STEM (science, technology engineering, and math). This is concerning because diversity and inclusion improves science for all. In response, Canadian institutions have developed initiatives aimed to address issues in which LGBTQ + students disproportionately leave STEM fields. LGBTQ + postdoctoral scholars (postdocs) are of particular interest because they have developed clear professional and LGBTQ + identities, they are significant contributors to their fields, and they work at the intersection of STEM students and faculty. Studies have highlighted poor job satisfaction and career opportunities for this group. This qualitative study explored the values, beliefs, and experiences of 14 Canadian LGBQ + postdocs in STEM through semi-structured interviews about coming out, experiences of LGBQ + mentorship/representation, and their beliefs on staying within science and academia. Interview data was analyzed thematically from a post-structural perspective. Main themes emerged: (1) coming out, (2) representation, and (3) mentorship. This exploratory qualitative study offers insight into how the experiences of this understudied group are helpful in disentangling discourses surrounding coming out, representation, and mentorship for LGBQ + researchers in STEM.
... Some scholars even approach the domination from students' internalized "engineering identity" that associates masculinity with engineering competency. Adopting a more intersectional approach, Cech & Waidzunas contend that while the professional expertise of gay is often devalued due to the imposed norm of effeminacy, lesbians are often more accredited manifesting extra masculinity [6]. The research summarized above collectively demonstrates that the STEM environment can shape the experiences of LGBTQ students, while others take a constructivist approach to highlight students' efforts in navigating the STEM culture. ...
... Studies show that gay men tend to invest more in building their technical skills to compensate for the devaluation of their expertise. Other students choose to blend in as heterosexuals and enjoy the associated privileges [6]. Although the liberalist approach dominates both reactions that help students acquire equal status with their heterosexual peers, they fail to overturn and instead strengthen the systemic dominations simultaneously [7]. ...
... The questions asked in the survey are developed based on established research examing LGBTQ experiences in STEM. Knowing that sometimes LGBTQ students demarcate their personal and academic life by steering clear of discussion about their identity in STEM learning environments [6], I design Questions 1-4 to illuminate what specific institutional designs in STEM shift students' expression of sexual identity. And Question 5-7 derives from the multidimensional system of oppression that Cech & Waidzunas theorize based on national survey data. ...
For decades, scholars have researched social inequalities of race, gender and other minority groups experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Nonetheless, whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) professionals experience parallel disadvantaged circumstances remains to be further surveyed substantively. This paper draws on relevant literature concerning the normative STEM environment and different views (constructivism, liberalism, etc.), seeking to unpack the intersectionality between LGBTQ and STEM. Through conducting surveys targeted at international LGBTQ students regarding their academic, social, and mental experiences in STEM specifically, this paper argues that there exists a shared common dilemma for this group: sexual objectification and extra stress to increase their STEM competence. This paper comparatively analyzes the results and reveals the institutional and transnational barriers for those LGBTQ students of different cultural backgrounds in the context of globalization and international interactions and cooperation. This paper also contends that LGBTQ professionals in STEM become victims of sexual objectification mainly due to hypermasculinity and male-female dichotomy.
... Engineering education publications criticized their field for being a masculine discipline that enforced gender norms. Several studies referred implicitly and explicitly to a technical/social dualistic ideology that has arbitrarily divided engineering knowledge (which is emphasized) from cultural knowledge (often seen as irrelevant or incompatible) (e.g., Boudreau et al., 2018;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017;Jennings et al., 2020). Much of the research suggested the masculine/feminine binary mapped onto the technical/social dualism and helped explain why students with diverse non-normative genders and sexualities were likely to be excluded from the field (e.g., Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017;Jennings et al., 2020). ...
... Several studies referred implicitly and explicitly to a technical/social dualistic ideology that has arbitrarily divided engineering knowledge (which is emphasized) from cultural knowledge (often seen as irrelevant or incompatible) (e.g., Boudreau et al., 2018;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017;Jennings et al., 2020). Much of the research suggested the masculine/feminine binary mapped onto the technical/social dualism and helped explain why students with diverse non-normative genders and sexualities were likely to be excluded from the field (e.g., Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017;Jennings et al., 2020). ...
... Several ideas reported across the literature that were placed within the identity construct referred the importance of intersectional analysis in supporting all students, especially queer students (e.g., Broadway, 2019;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Reiss, 2019;Voigt, 2020). For instance, Miller and Downey (2020) conducted qualitative interviews with five queer students with disabilities at a research university. ...
Students who identify as LGBTQ continue to report feelings of being unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Access to a gender and sexual diversity (GSD)‐inclusive curriculum and supportive teachers may positively improve the school climate for LGBTQ students, but these supports are often not included in STEM classrooms. One response is to ensure that STEM teachers are prepared to integrate GSD‐inclusive STEM teaching into their classrooms. This review systematically analyzed the literature on supporting and affirming GSD in K‐12 and higher education STEM education contexts. The 81 selected studies were qualitatively analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and epistemic network analysis, and the findings showed that GSD‐inclusive STEM education literature coheres around six highly related constructs: Heteronormativity, Social Justice, Epistemic Knowledge of Science and Inquiry, Identity, Embodiment, and GSD language. Identifying these constructs, and the connections among them, led to the generation of an operational framework of GSD‐inclusive STEM teaching that can inform and guide STEM teacher education programs and STEM teacher professional development to develop STEM educators' equity literacy around GSD to foster bias‐free, equitable, inclusive STEM classrooms.
... The persistent challenges faced by LGBT + people in STEM are partly due to the fact that existing literature has prioritised understanding and reducing inequalities related to other underrepresented groups, chiefly by gender (Blackburn, 2017). This is an oversight as existing studies have highlighted how sexual minority, transgender, or gender non-conforming individuals face significant barriers to inclusion in STEM including hostility, homophobia, and transphobia (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Freeman, 2020;Mattheis et al., 2019;Yoder & Mattheis, 2016). As a result, LGBT + staff and students suffer from structural disadvantages and discriminations that are rendered invisible not only by heteronormative practices but also by partial and non-intersectional approaches to social inequalities. ...
... Studies in higher education (HE) focused on STEM disciplines employ a variety of concepts and theories to understand LGBT + experiences and identities, including campus climate, minority stress theory, and queer theory (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Mattheis et al., 2019;Patridge et al., 2014). Researchers have focused on academics, graduate, and undergraduate students, and expanded the field of inquiry from HE to research institutes and STEM organisations (American Physical Society, 2016;Institute of Physics et al., 2019). ...
... Pervasive stereotypes about who gets to be a scientist, a less diverse workforce and student population, and invisibility are frequently mentioned amongst the possible causes (American Physical Society, 2016;Freeman, 2020). The positivist epistemology and the language of STEM further reinforce marginalisation by rendering LGBT + identities and experiences seemingly irrelevant, as if LGBT + people in STEM can take their identities off like a jacket at the laboratory, office, or classroom doors (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Linley & Nguyen, 2015). Students and academics in engineering and science operate under the influence of professional cultures that actively prevent discussion of social justice issues and are then less prepared to understand and counteract systemic inequalities (Cech, 2013). ...
The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT +) individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) are still understudied and, despite some improvements, are still characterised by patterns of exclusion, disadvantage, and discrimination. In this article, we explore how visibility is perceived and navigated by LGBT + academics and PhD students in STEM, with a focus on the ways that interlocking systems of oppression impact people and groups who are marginalised and historically excluded. This article draws on a broader research project about the experiences of women and LGBT + people in STEM that was conducted between 2019 and 2020 at a UK university and is framed by intersectionality theory. Based on the thematic analysis of interviews and focus groups with 24 LGBT + participants, findings suggest that visibility is still a risk for LGBT + academics and PhD students in STEM. We found that the labour of navigating visibility was perceived as an unfair disadvantage and that the focus on individuals’ visibility in the absence of meaningful and transformative inclusion initiatives by higher education institutions was regarded as tokenistic. The article argues that addressing LGBT + visibility should firstly be an institutional responsibility and not an individual burden and that this work is essential to set the conditions for personal visibility to happen by choice, safely and without retribution.
... Cech and Waidzunas describe technical/social dualism as a central ideological component of the dominant engineering identity (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). A false distinction in practice, this dualism acts as "ideological separation between 'technical' activities and skills (such as design, science, and math-related activities) and 'social' tasks and skills (such as management, communication with other employees and clients, etc)," (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011, p. 4). ...
... The first DEI seminar speaker ended up being Prof. Erin Cech, a queer white woman who gave me an introduction to EER that I will never forget. Prof. Cech presented on the depoliticized and meritocratic nature of dominant engineering, gender inequities in STEM, and covering and passing strategies of queer folks in engineering that had me bawling (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011); (Cech E. A., 2013); (Cech E. A., 2014). The combination of the folks attending who saw to it that grad student organizing in the department was halted, Prof. Cech putting words to phenomena that we had just had to bump up against in order to see this seminar exist, actually feeling seen in the content of the presentation for the first time as a queer person who had to do a whole lot of covering in departmental spaces … having that happen in a department space, the gravity of realizing how it took years to open up a crack in the thin blue lines for a moment was too much for me to be able to contain. ...
... (Pawley A. L., Learning from small numbers: Studying ruling relations that gender and race the structure of U.S. engineering education, 2019b); (Riley D. , 2008); (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011); (Riley, Pawley, Tucker, & al., 2009); (Blue, Levine, & Nieusma, 2013 (Foor, Walden, & Trytten, 2007); (Riley D. , 2008); (Hill Collins P. , 2002). ...
Climate change is pushing many ecosystems toward collapse, bringing irreversible consequences for life on Earth. Climate change is driven by colonial relations and the undermining of Indigenous sovereignty; however, I posit that this understanding is not reflected within dominant materials science and engineering (MSE) specifically and dominant engineering more broadly. The research problem addressed in this study is how the assemblage of dominant engineering enacts performances structured to separate Indigenous land from life, focuses on properties that expand industrial complexes rather than transforming material conditions to affirm life, and upholds processes that refuse accountability to sociopolitical and socioecological contexts of dominant engineering labor in order to maintain the U.S. settler colony. I leverage a theoretical framework of queer theory and abolition to unpack relationships among settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and dominant engineering. In doing so, I discuss the narrow set of ways of knowing and ways of being legitimated within dominant engineering and how I have come to understand them as incommensurable with my relationships and obligations. I put in conversation conceptual frameworks of the materials tetrahedron as a representation of relevant relationships within dominant MSE, the concept of a third university from la paperson that holds a mission of decolonization, and a prototype engineering inquiry ecosystem that (re)centers the purpose of engineering inquiry as liberation/land back. I use the self-study methodology of autoethnography alongside the scientific method to tell stories rooted in my experiences as a settler labor organizer, community organizer, MSE student worker, and engineering education researcher at and around University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. As an electrochemical energy storage (battery) researcher, I studied impacts of changing lanthanum content in the lithium lanthanum zirconium oxide (LLZO) structure Li6.5La2+xZr1.5Ta0.5O12 and observed an increase in ionic conductivity from 0.649 mS/cm at x=0.2 to 0.789 mS/cm at x=1.0. Transitioning to a sodium solid electrolyte NASICON, I observed that changes in particle morphology from spray drying and heat treating NASICON particles at 900C resulted in an increase in total ionic conductivity from 0.292 mS/cm to 0.596 mS/cm. Methodological incommensurabilities of that labor with undoing relationships driving climate change pushed me to take accountability for harm I have been complicit in through studying within this dominant construction of engineering. I propose abolitionist engineering as a paradigm shift from dominant engineering capable of transforming the conditions and behaviors structuring harm in dominant engineering. I offer a deconstruction of dominant engineering, discussing its relationship to the maintenance of the U.S. settler colony through a metaphor from higher education studies called the house modernity built as well as the assemblage of an engineering-industrial complex. I discuss abolitionist labor organizing as a means of transforming harm that dominant engineering perpetuates, rooting in experiences of engineering student workers that participated in an abolitionist labor strike to name strikes as a form of liberatory pedagogy for engineers. Finally, I offer an example of how an abolitionist MSE education lesson might look by connecting crystalline ‘defects’ from dominant MSE to sociological theories of change used in a workshop series aimed at undoing barriers multipli-marginalized engineering undergraduate students face in bringing their whole selves into engineering spaces. From that lesson I propose a nucleation and growth theory of change to shift from dominant engineering to abolitionist engineering alongside life-affirming technologies like mutual aid and taking responsibility for normalized harm in institutions.
... There is consistent evidence in research that STEM fields are strongly associated with stereotypically masculine traits (e.g., Cejka & Eagly, 1999;Nosek et al., 2009). Moreover, while a few studies have shown that female students perceive that there is sexism in STEM environments (Fernández et al., 2006;Kuchynka et al., 2018), and that LGB students perceive that there is a heterosexist climate (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hugues, 2017), little research has examined endorsement of both sexism and homophobia from the perspective of heterosexual male students. In the present research, we contended that students in typically MDFS, and notably heterosexual male students, would adhere strongly to HM and, in turn, to sexism and homophobia, which would then account for female and LGB students' experiences of discrimination. ...
... Moreover, we found that students from MDFS reported higher adherence to HM, sexism, and homophobia than those from female-dominated fields of study. This is also consistent with previous studies showing that male-dominated occupational environments tend to promote a masculine culture and typical masculine traits (e.g., Cheryan et al., 2017), and cultivate sexist and heterosexist climates (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Fernández et al., 2006;Hugues, 2017;Kuchynka et al., 2018). Interestingly, MDFS students were found with higher HM, sexism, and homophobia, regardless of their sex and sexual orientation. ...
... LGB students in STEM fields (e.g., Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hugues, 2017). Despite that we did not examine directly whether heterosexual male students' sexism and homophobia predict female and LGB students' perceived discrimination, we nevertheless add to the literature by showing that discrimination occurred along with an overall sexist and homophobic climate prevailing in MDFS. ...
The current research investigated the endorsement of hegemonic masculinity, sexism, and homophobia, and the perceptions of discrimination, among samples of heterosexual male and female, and LGB students who had entered into traditionally male-dominated and female-dominated fields of study. Specifically, students from vocational and educational training in Swiss upper-secondary schools were recruited. Results revealed that adherence to hegemonic masculinity, sexism, and homophobia is higher in male-dominated fields of study (vs. female-dominated). Furthermore, heterosexual female and LGB students enrolled in male-dominated fields of study have been found to experience and anticipate more discrimination than heterosexual male students. Implications of these results are discussed.
... Women (Engineers Canada, 2020b;Franklin, 1985), racialized students-in particular Black and Indigenous students (Blosser, 2020;Burke et al., 2021;Engineers Canada, 2021;Fletcher et al., 2017)-and 2SLGBTQ+ students (Cech & Rothwell, 2018;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017) are all typically underrepresented in engineering education. Because the underrepresentation of women in engineering has received the most attention over the decades (Blickenstaff, 2005;Franklin, 1985;Rincón & George-Jackson, 2016), the number of women in engineering programs has been used as a marker of diversity. ...
... Some scholars have tied sexism and the unwelcoming environment for women in engineering to the underrepresentation of women in the field (Blickenstaff, 2005;Franklin, 1985;Rincón & George-Jackson, 2016), while others believe it is a result of a systemic culture based on the inequitable belief that engineering is meritocratic and apolitical (Cech, 2013;Seron, 2018). Studies have shown that engineering programs are also not inclusive for Black students (Berhane et al., 2020;Blosser, 2020;Fletcher et al., 2017), Indigenous students (Smith et al., 2014), and 2SLGBTQ+ students (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017), and that these students may struggle to find a sense of belonging in engineering. Furthermore, since racialized women (Ong et al., 2020) and racialized 2SLGBTQ+ students (Berhane et al., 2020;Cech & Rothwell, 2018) often experience discrimination and othering while studying engineering, a deeper examination of the use of tipping point theory using the voices of underrepresented students is needed. ...
Some Canadian undergraduate engineering programs report 30–40% of enrolled students are women. Kanter’s tipping point theory argues that women become less tokenized when they make up 30% of a group’s population. Other scholars have found that in comparable situations, women continued to experience discrimination, hostility, and competition. This critical study provides further evidence against a tipping point for equity by centring the experiences of traditionally underrepresented undergraduate students studying at a faculty of engineering with 35% women undergraduates enrolled. Reflective thematic analysis of experiences shared bywomen, racialized students, 2SLGBTQ+ students, and students from lower socio-economic statuses found instances of discrimination, varying perceptions of capabilities, and inequitable access to support, community, and on-campus leadership roles. Therefore, institutions need to acknowledge the intersectional experiences of students and work toward changing campus culture in addition to diversity efforts.
... Prior research has importantly shown how cisheteropatriarchy (i.e., a system of oppression that marginalizes QT people and cisgender women by reinforcing heterosexual and cisgender identities as normative and upholding misogyny) shapes undergraduate STEM as oppressive for QT students (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Miller et al., 2020). However, QT students of color were underrepresented in study samples, and the lack of intersectional analyses left implicit how racism figured into QT students' experiences of cisheteropatriarchy in STEM. ...
... I adopted my group interview methodology of presenting 3-4 prompts for stimulated-responses to explore variation in participants' intersectionality of STEM experiences (see Leyva, 2021 and for more details about the interview methodology). The prompts in Interview 2 featured excerpts from research about QT students' STEM experiences (e.g., Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Kersey & Voigt, 2020) and intersectionality of campus experiences among QT students of color (e.g., Nicolazzo, 2016;Vega, 2016). The excerpts provided concrete starting points to stimulate group dialogue about emergent themes from preliminary data analysis, including cisheteronormativity in STEM instruction and perceptions of STEM ability linked to race and gender. ...
The cisheteropatriarchal climate of STEM education shapes oppressive experiences for queer and trans* (QT) students majoring in the sciences. Intersectionality of STEM experiences for QT students of color is missing in the literature. Thus, it has been unexplored how undergraduate STEM as a racialized space shapes variation in experiences among QT students. Such intersectional analyses are especially necessary in mathematics-a discipline socially constructed as 'neutral' despite being a gatekeeper to STEM degrees for historically marginalized groups. To address this area of needed research, this paper presents findings from an analysis of undergraduate Latin* QT students' intersectionality of mathematics experiences as STEM majors with a focus on peer relationships. I conclude with implications for research and practice to disrupt mathematics education as white, cisheteropatriarchal space.
... Very little work has been done that specifically focuses on the experiences of students with queer genders in higher education. Most existing work either focuses specifically on students with queer orientations (Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017) or lumps queer genders and orientations together (Cooper and Brownell, 2016;Cech and Pham, 2017;Cech and Rothwell, 2018). Conflating gender and orientation masks the specific challenges students with queer genders face and the strengths they bring to overcome those challenges (Dickey et al., 2016). ...
... Thus, attempted neutrality in the classroom does not equal harmlessness. There are multiple studies documenting the harm of this attempted neutrality narrative for students with queer genders and/or orientations as well as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) students (Johnson, 2007;Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Dyer et al., 2019;Gibney, 2019). In our study, we found that this attempted neutrality led to the potentially inadvertent norming of binary sex and genders and the view that identities and personal perspectives were off topic. ...
Biology is the study of the diversity of life, which includes diversity in sex, gender, and sexual, romantic, and related orientations. However, a small body of literature suggests that undergraduate biology courses focus on only a narrow representation of this diversity (binary sexes, heterosexual orientations, etc.). In this study, we interviewed students with queer genders to understand the messages about sex, gender, and orientation they encountered in biology and the impact of these messages on them. We found five overarching themes in these interviews. Students described two narratives about sex, gender, and orientation in their biology classes that made biology implicitly exclusionary. These narratives harmed students by impacting their sense of belonging, career preparation, and interest in biology content. However, students employed a range of resilience strategies to resist these harms. Finally, students described the currently unrealized potential for biology and biology courses to validate queer identities by representing the diversity in sex and orientation in biology. We provide teaching suggestions derived from student interviews for making biology more queer-inclusive.
... Unfortunately, LGBTQ+ marginalization is also found in academia. Research shows that LGBTQ+ students in engineering are more disadvantaged and face greater marginalization than their non-LGBTQ+ peers [2][3][4]. Cech and Waidzunas [2] found that LGB students in engineering navigate a chilly climate where homosexuality is not valued and face heteronormative actions, as a result of which they employ coping strategies such as not revealing their identity. Likewise, Hughes [4] found that undergraduate engineering students were concerned about finding a job after graduating due to being openly gay and the hegemonic masculinity in engineering programs influenced students negatively. ...
... Research shows that LGBTQ+ students in engineering are more disadvantaged and face greater marginalization than their non-LGBTQ+ peers [2][3][4]. Cech and Waidzunas [2] found that LGB students in engineering navigate a chilly climate where homosexuality is not valued and face heteronormative actions, as a result of which they employ coping strategies such as not revealing their identity. Likewise, Hughes [4] found that undergraduate engineering students were concerned about finding a job after graduating due to being openly gay and the hegemonic masculinity in engineering programs influenced students negatively. ...
This work-in-progress paper examines four free online courses addressing LGBTQ+ topics and issues and provides recommendations for creating new content and resources for allies in higher education. This exploratory work is guided by the following questions: What free LGBTQ+ courses are available for learners and educators? What content do these courses cover? What are the overlaps among these courses and what new strategies could be adopted when developing new LGBTQ+ resources for people in academia? The scope of this paper explores the content and instructional strategies of courses offered on Coursera, a massive open online course (MOOC) platform. Our preliminary findings indicate that the courses offer many insights and strategies for becoming an ally, fostering inclusive environments, and showing up for LGBTQ+ students; however, they put a smaller emphasis on LGBTQ+ academics and their experiences. Based on these findings, recommendations for educators and course developers are suggested.
... In a large dataset (n = 4,162) of students across 78 higher education institutions, SGM-identified students aspiring to STEM majors were 9.5% less likely than their heterosexual and/or cisgender counterparts to remain in science by the end of their fourth year of college, despite being more likely to pursue research experiences as part of their studies [17]. In a qualitative study of SGM engineering students, participants described having strong engineering identities, but also described a relative silence around SGM identities in the sciences and concerns about potential discrimination in their future careers [18]. Their concerns are justified; SGM employees working in STEM fields within federal agencies report poorer treatment and lower satisfaction than non-SGM employees. ...
... This is the first analysis to examine barriers to STEM fields among SGM secondary school students, building on a small body of literature highlighting significant barriers to success in STEM fields among SGM scientists and a higher degree of marginalization experiences compared to their non-SGM peers [18][19][20]27]. Overall, nearly half of participants intended on pursuing a STEM discipline, which is higher than roughly 25% in general samples [38,39]. ...
Purpose
Research establishes the critical need to address the underrepresentation of women and racial/ethnic minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). While emergent research addresses similar challenges for sexual and gender minorities (SGM), this research remains scant and focuses on adult experiences. This analysis examines subgroup differences and the impact of bullying on STEM engagement outcomes among a national sample of SGM secondary students in the U.S.
Method
This report provides descriptive and multivariable regression analysis of national survey data (n = 539) on the experiences of pre-college students who identify as SGM, including the effects of within-school anti-SGM bullying on STEM identity, perceptions of STEM climate, and STEM intentions.
Results
Roughly 50% of the sample intended to enter a STEM field (compared to 25% in previous general samples). Bullying in school was negatively associated with STEM identity and perceptions of STEM climate. Sense of belonging is positively associated with perceptions of STEM climate and STEM intentions. Being non-binary and being a transgender man were associated with decreased sense of belonging and negative perception of STEM climate.
Conclusion
This report is the first to identify factors influencing STEM engagement among SGM secondary students and suggests that issues of STEM engagement are already present in adolescence. Moreover, the findings also establish the relationship between anti-SGM bullying and STEM outcomes highlighting the importance of this marginalization experience. Future research should further examine sub-group differences and the persistence of these effects. These findings highlight the need for research and intervention addressing STEM outcomes in SGM populations.
Clinical trial registration
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03511131 .
... The Experience of LGBTQ+ Individuals in STEM STEM fields have been described as hetero-and cisnormative and are perceived to be generally unwelcoming to LGBTQ+ individuals (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009;Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Atherton et al., 2016;Fidas and Cooper, 2018). Specifically, the prevalence of binary thinking in STEM, or classifications with only two options (e.g., male/female, positive/negative; Faulkner, 2007), delegitimizes individuals who identify as gender nonbinary and perpetuates a heteronormative culture (Cech and Waidzunas, 2021). ...
... Finally, the majority (96.1%) of students perceived that it is appropriate for a STEM instructor to reveal their LGBTQ+ identity during a course. LGBTQ+ instructors have expressed concern that revealing their LGBTQ+ identities is not appropriate in the context of STEM or the classroom (Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Cooper et al., 2019), and a study has previously shown that LGBTQ+ students were worried that their instructor revealing their LGBTQ+ identity may result in negative consequences for the instructor (Cooper and Brownell, 2016). The overwhelming student response that an instructor coming out during class is appropriate challenges these negative assumptions and suggests that current college students may have different perceptions of what is appropriate in the context of undergraduate college science courses. ...
Sharing personal information can help instructors build relationships with students, and instructors revealing concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs) may be particularly impactful. One CSI is the LGBTQ+ identity, but there has been no research on the student-perceived impact of an instructor revealing this identity. In this exploratory study conducted at an institution in the U.S. Southwest, an instructor revealed that she identifies as LGBTQ+ to her undergraduate biology course in less than 3 seconds. We surveyed students (n = 475) after 8 weeks to assess whether they remembered this, and if so, how they perceived it affected them. We used regression models to assess whether students with different identities perceived a disproportionate impact of the reveal. Most students perceived the instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity positively impacted them; regression results showed LGBTQ+ students and women perceived greater increased sense of belonging and confidence to pursue a science career. Students overwhelmingly agreed that instructors revealing their LGBTQ+ identities to students is appropriate. This study is the first to indicate the perceived impact of an instructor revealing her LGBTQ+ identity to students in the United States and suggests that a brief intervention could positively affect students.
... LGBTQ+ trainees face further challenges as they are not recognized as an underrepresented group [20][21][22]. Heteronormative assumptions and environments often silence conversations about gender and sexuality in medicine and STEM workplaces, leading LGBTQ+ trainees and scientists to report feeling "invisible" [5,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Concerns of LGBTQ+ trainees in combined dual degree programs, such as MD/PhD and DO/ PhD, are truly invisible, since data on this subgroup has not previously been collected or analyzed on a national level. ...
... Questions on gender identity and sexual orientation are not routinely collected at any level [44]. The lack of systematic data collection limits our knowledge about the characteristics, needs, and interests of LGBTQ+ physicians, scientists, and especially physician-scientists [20] and perpetuates the sense of invisibility reported by clinicians and researchers [5,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. ...
Background
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, non-binary, intersex, and/or asexual (LGBTQ+) individuals continue to suffer worse health outcomes compared to the general population. Data on LGBTQ+ individuals in medicine, particularly in medical training, remain sparse. National studies of LGBTQ+ students in MD/PhD and DO/PhD training programs have not been reported.
Methods
Trainees pursuing MD, DO, MD/PhD, and DO/PhD degrees at 32 nationally representative institutions completed a 70-item survey about their future career and anticipated challenges using an online survey tool from September 2012 to December 2014. There were 4,433 respondents to the survey. Of those, 2,837 completed the gender identity questions and 2,849 completed the sexual orientation questions. Completion of these questions was required for inclusion. Survey results were analyzed to examine differences between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ medical and dual degree trainees.
Results
LGBTQ+ students were underrepresented among MD/PhD and DO/PhD trainees (8.70%) compared to the US population, though their representation was higher than among MD and DO trainees (5.20%). LGBTQ+ dual degree trainees endorsed the greatest interest in pursuing careers involving academic medicine, with varying career focuses including research, clinical duties, education, and advocacy. LGBTQ+ dual degree trainees prioritized opportunities in patient care, work-life balance, and research as the most important factors for their career selection. Importantly, a higher percentage of LGBTQ+ dual degree trainees (15.50%) identified sexual harassment as a past barrier to career advancement compared to their non-LGBTQ+ peers (8.27%). LGBTQ+ dual degree trainees were more likely to report having a mentor who advocated for them.
Conclusions
LGBTQ+ physician scientist trainees remain under-represented and under-studied. It is vital that medical institutions devote more time and resources towards identifying and addressing the unique needs of this group in training. Training programs should be aware of the current and prior challenges faced by their LGBTQ+ dual degree trainees, work to overcome the unique barriers they face, highlight the strengths and unique perspectives they bring, and foster their professional growth and goals during and beyond their training.
... There has been a push to broaden the participation of students with marginalized identities in STEM over the past several decades; however, students with a Queer identity are chronically forgotten, understudied, and underrepresented in STEM spaces. As a result, there is limited prior research on Queer students' experiences in undergraduate STEM courses (Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Cooper and Brownell, 2016;Kersey and Voigt, 2021) and even less on Queer STEM students' experiences in different higher education environments. ...
Introduction
There is a critical need to foster inclusive educational spaces for Queer identifying students and to resist oppressive structures that seek to marginalize and inflict trauma on students because of their gender or sexual identity.
Methods
Drawing on thematic analysis and Queer theory, we interviewed 11 Queer identifying STEM students to understand the navigational strategies they leveraged within higher education environments related to their Queer identity.
Results
We developed a cyclical model of navigational strategies employed by Queer STEM students that involved evaluating the environments, performing psychological identity calculations, and engaging in behavioral actions. Students evaluated the environment by attending to the diversity of gender representation, presence of other Queer individuals, and contextual factors conveyed based on disciplinary expectations. Students engaged in psychological identity calculations whereby they assessed beliefs about the relevance, importance, and fears related to their Queer identity, with few perceiving any benefits. Behavioral actions resulted in students building a chosen community, disclosing or shelving their queer identity, and advocating for representation.
Discussion
In order to support Queer students to thrive in educational contexts, researchers and practitioners should examine ways to increase representation, use inclusive pedagogical strategies, and understand the relevance of Queerness within disciplinary fields. Questioning the relevance or presence of Queerness in higher education environments only further serves to oppress, inflict trauma, and marginalize Queer students.
... In terms of gender stereotypes, masculine lesbians have more career options compared to cis-gender straight women (Gedro 2009) and achieve success in masculine occupations (Blandford 2003). This situation can also be considered valid for STEM professions (Cech and Waidzunas 2011). It has been noted that they earn more (17-38%) than other women (Blandford 2000;Black et al. 2007). ...
Organizations operating in competitive environments or going through renewal and uncertainty tend to expect their employees to exhibit work behaviours often beyond their contractual agreements to cope with uncertainty and the fast pace of change. One of those behaviours that organisations expect of employees beyond the call for duty is proactive behaviour (PB). Proactive behaviours are often associated with masculinity in organizations due to their assertive nature. Despite this common observation , gender bias is largely ignored in research on proactive behaviour. In addition , there is no research on the proactive behaviour of LGBTQ+ employees in organizations. In this chapter, we discuss proactive behaviour from gender, gender identity and sexual orientation perspectives, exploring the extent to which PBs are framed in inclusive ways in the extant literature. We also discuss mitigation strategies that frame proactive behaviours in gender and LGBTQ+ inclusive lines.
... In terms of gender stereotypes, masculine lesbians have more career options compared to cis-gender straight women (Gedro 2009) and achieve success in masculine occupations (Blandford 2003). This situation can also be considered valid for STEM professions (Cech and Waidzunas 2011). It has been noted that they earn more (17-38%) than other women (Blandford 2000;Black et al. 2007). ...
Organizations operating in competitive environments or going through renewal and uncertainty tend to expect their employees to exhibit work behaviours often beyond their contractual agreements to cope with uncertainty and the fast pace of change. One of those behaviours that organisations expect of employees beyond the call for duty is proactive behaviour (PB). Proactive behaviours are often associated with masculinity in organizations due to their assertive nature. Despite this common observation , gender bias is largely ignored in research on proactive behaviour. In addition , there is no research on the proactive behaviour of LGBTQ+ employees in organizations. In this chapter, we discuss proactive behaviour from gender, gender identity and sexual orientation perspectives, exploring the extent to which PBs are framed in inclusive ways in the extant literature. We also discuss mitigation strategies that frame proactive behaviours in gender and LGBTQ+ inclusive lines.
... First, we discuss the implied change model present in a Qualitative Interviews with Marginalized Students Study, which comprises a large portion of qualitative diversity and inclusion research. Examples include some of our own prior work (Berhane et al. 2020;McCall et al. 2020) and the work of many of our respected colleagues (Blosser 2019;Cech & Waidzunas 2011;Simmons 2012). The typical research design for this type of diversity and inclusion research ( Figure 2) is to find students with a shared and marginalized identity (e.g., women, racially minoritized individuals, LGBTQ+, first generation to attend college) and to conduct qualitative interviews with the students in that population. ...
Background: The history of engineering education perpetuates a cultural inertia favoring dominant groups. Engineering education research on broadening participation implies a change towards a desired outcome: increased diversity, equity, and inclusion in the engineering profession. However, many research designs focus on knowledge generation without centering a process of change within research activities or collaborations. Purpose: In this theoretical article, we critically examine the current norms of qualitative research on broadening participation to center research designs that push towards change. Scope: First, we present a simple change model as a way of discussing prototypical qualitative research designs in terms of their component parts. We find that these research designs are limiting in terms of enacting significant change. Next, we point to a variety of institutional norms and values that inherently limit research innovation and impact in these contexts, including the traditional policies, practices, and values that shape our work. Lastly, we draw from experiences in our own work to introduce alternative approaches that center change for equity and inclusion within broadening participation research designs and frame this discussion using the same change model concept to highlight those features. Conclusion: In conclusion, we call for more innovation in qualitative research design and suggest some strategies for innovation that push beyond traditional approaches to instill change.
... Womxn are encouraged to pursue schooling and careers in STEM [4], but less than 45% of STEM college students' population consist of womxn and minorities [5] and academic definitions of womxnhood in engineering are often limited to dominant (i.e. cisgender, heterosexual, and white) perspectives, marginalizing the perspectives of diverse womxn in the field and creating systemic barriers to their equitable participation in STEM [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. ...
In celebration of 130 years of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the Women in Engineering Division (WIED) at ASEE convened a panel of current graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to discuss visions of gender equity in engineering 130 years from now, where all gender identities feel respected, experience gender equity, and are able to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The panelists reflected on their experiences on advancing womxn and gender equity in engineering, envisioned the progress that should be made in the coming 130 years, and shared ideas on how to achieve those visions, focusing on how dualistic thinking around gender and cis-normativity serve to marginalize womxn in engineering’s learning environments and workplaces, as well as the critical ways that racial identity and gender intersect in womxn of colors’ experiences. Presenters shared ways they are enacting structural changes and social justice initiatives to propel towards a more equitable future for all womxn in engineering. These reflections provide a perspective that is not commonly found in the current literature, and their conclusions provide insight into where future research efforts could be focused.
... There are also implications for equity in engineering education more broadly. We found that known barriers to employment, such as race, gender, physical appearance, ableness, and social status, continue to perpetuate throughout the engineering field [39][40][41][42] and the contextual factors we studied. Some students have had to learn how to navigate racial, gender, and other biases and discriminations at the career fair, in their classes, during extracurricular activities, or at their internships. ...
Evidence shows that biomedical engineering students face unique challenges in entering the workforce compared to peers in other engineering majors. The purpose of this study is to explore the factors impacting undergraduate engineering students’ career attainment, or the acquisition of employment in a chosen field, and how the students experienced these factors in their pathways towards post-graduate employment. By studying differences in processes towards career attainment, there is an opportunity to promote equity and better support the inclusion and persistence of women and racially minoritized groups in engineering, particularly their readiness to enter the engineering workforce. We sought to answer two research questions: (RQ1) What contextual factors are identified by engineering students as supports and barriers to their attainment of a career in the engineering field? (RQ2) How are engineering students experiencing inequities in their processes toward career attainment? We conducted six focus groups with undergraduate engineering students at a large Midwestern University. Participants were purposefully sampled based on demographics from four engineering disciplines: biomedical engineering and the three preferred majors for students transferring out of biomedical engineering at our university, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering. We used social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to inform our data collection and analysis and interpret the findings. The transcripts were analyzed by developing a codebook containing theory-driven codes from SCCT and emergent codes from the data. We identified five themes representing the contextual factors impacting engineering students’ processes toward career attainment: implications of (1) interpersonal relationships; (2) institutional infrastructure; (3) academics; (4) social identity; and (5) out-of-class experiences. We also found that these contextual factors may act as either a support or barrier depending on personal factors such as demographics, personality, or identity. The nuance revealed in this study, that a contextual factor may be both a support and barrier, presents implications for universities to provide more individualized career preparedness resources and recognize the ways that students’ positionalities impact their processes toward career attainment.
... She outlines how engineer identities are streamlined over the course of training, with exclusionary effects (on female students, among others). Other work by Tonso (1999) joins Cech andWaidzunas (2011), Faulkner (2007), and Weidler-Lewis (2020) in examining how disciplined engineering students are 'made,' for instance through a curriculum that maintains a markedly nonqueer, heteronormative order. Nespor (1994) explores similar processes in his comparative study on physics and management undergraduates in the US. ...
Academic training, especially at the undergraduate level, is a marginal topic in science studies today. Scientific practices have commonly been approached through studies of research contexts-most visibly, the lab-and only sporadically through studies of the classroom or other teaching contexts. In this article, we draw attention to the pivotal role that academic training plays in the formation and reproduction of thought collectives. Such training, in shaping what students think about their field and what they understand as proper ways of doing science, is an important site of what we call epistemological enculturation. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we make several suggestions on how epistemological enculturation can be studied at the level of training scenes, a concept we develop in the article. This includes a discussion of the methodological as well as theoretical difficulties that occur when analysing academic training in action.
... Furthermore, social prejudices can hinder engineering teams (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011; but see Loes et al., 2018). Team members can feel excluded due to visible characteristics like race and gender and hidden characteristics like political identity, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation (Cooper & Brownell, 2016;Eddy et al., 2015;Henning et al., 2019;Sullivan et al., 2018). ...
Poor interpersonal dynamics can hinder collaboration, but engineering educators have failed to address this problem. Short interactive exercises may ameliorate such problems. We introduced an introductory lecture and interactive exercises into engineering classes to evaluate their effects on interpersonal outcomes in student dyads. Two large-sample quantitative studies and one small qualitative study were
conducted (N = 227) to evaluate the exercises. Although the qualitative results (Study 2) indicated mixed effects, we found no evidence in the large-sample studies that the intervention improved any outcomes. The results suggest that cohesion and similar factors are enhanced through collaboration, and short exercises do not cause any further enhancement. Intensive long-term interventions may be necessary to produce stronger effects than acquaintance.
... Women and students of color are more likely to experience microaggressions, bias, harassment, and stress than their White and male counterparts (Ong et al., 2018;Rankin & Reason, 2005). In engineering, LGBTQIA+ students also experience biased and chilly climates; they report feeling isolated from their peers in the classroom and social activities, less accepted by their peers, and pressured to hide their identities and confirm to heteronormative standards (Cech et al., 2017;Cech & Waidzunas, 2011). Additional groups such as students with disabilities also experience the effects of the chilly climate, including lack of accommodations (Rao & Gartin, 2003), which impede their persistence (Weatherton et al., 2017). ...
Background
A better understanding of departmental climate and its relationship to engineering identity is needed to diversify engineering and improve marginalized students' experiences.
Purpose/Hypothesis
We investigated whether undergraduate engineering students from 16 social identity groups perceived departmental climate differently from one another and examined psychological and behavioral factors contributing to these perceptions and their relationship to engineering identification.
Design/Method
We surveyed 398 undergraduate engineering students about departmental climate and engineering identity, testing structural models across race and gender. Qualitative analysis of open‐ended items complemented quantitative results.
Results
Students rated climate for dominant identities (White, male, and/or US‐born) as more welcoming than for 14 nondominant identities, broadening the notion of “nondominant” identities in engineering. In structural models, invariant across race and gender, students' perceptions of bias, safety, and faculty support predicted climate ratings; peer relations and microaggressions predicted engineering identity. There were mean differences in perceptions across intersections of race and gender, but students in all groups perceived a climate gap favoring dominant identities. Open‐ended responses highlighted students' desire for a more diverse, inclusive program and the importance of peer relations.
Conclusions
Departmental climate can be less welcoming for engineering students with many different nondominant identities. Attending to both students' own social positioning and their perceptions of climate for other students can open opportunities for change in engineering departments. Results suggest that efforts to improve peer relations in group work could be important in promoting disciplinary identification in historically marginalized groups.
... As many scholars have argued, the marginalization and exclusion of students who do not fit the normative stereotype of engineering (i.e., White, male, cis-gendered, heterosexual) reflects prominent facets of engineering culture that continuously reproduce and validate some identities over others. For example, Tonso's work highlights the ways in which the cultural production of engineering identity often excludes women, and work by Riley et al. (Riley 2008;Riley et al. 2014), McCall et al. (2020, Cech andWaidzunas (2011), McGee andMartin (2011), and others have similarly highlighted cultural exclusions along race, (dis)ability, and sexual orientation. Their work, in conjunction with our proposed framework, suggests that these cultural exclusions may also limit who is recognized as able to enact engineering judgment. ...
Engineering judgment is critical to both engineering education and engineering practice, and the ability to practice or participate in engineering judgment is often considered central to the formation of professional engineering identities. In practice, engineers must make difficult judgments that evaluate potentially competing objectives, ambiguity, uncertainty, incomplete information, and evolving technical knowledge. Nonetheless, while engineering judgment is implicit in engineering work and so central to identification with the profession, educators and practitioners have few actionable frameworks to employ when considering how to develop and assess this capacity in students. In this paper, we propose a theoretical framework designed to inform both educators and researchers that positions engineering judgment at the intersection of the cognitive dimensions of naturalistic decision-making, and discursive dimensions of identity. Our proposed theory positions engineering judgment not only as an individual capacity practiced by individual engineers alone but also as the capacity to position oneself within the discursive community so as to participate in the construction of engineering judgments among a group of professionals working together. Our theory draws on several strands of existing research to theorize a working framework for engineering judgment that considers the cognitive processes associated with making judgments and the inextricable discursive practices associated with negotiating those judgments in context. In constructing this theory, we seek to provide engineering education practitioners and researchers with a framework that can inform the design of assignments, curricula, or experiences that are intended to foster students’ participation in the development and practice of engineering judgment.
... Many interventions have recrafted pedagogical practices by incorporating group work that mitigates marginalizing peer dynamics [15,16] and integrating affirmation activities that lessen the influence of stereotype threat [17,18]. As with issues of race, values of 'objectivity' and 'neutrality' in STEM can render sexuality and gender irrelevant or inappropriate for STEM contexts, and can pressure QT students to fragment or conceal their queer identities in order to assimilate [9,19,20]. However, common equity-oriented strategies, such as organizing groups to mitigate the degree to which marginalized students experience isolation from peers who identify similarly, can fall short in actualizing equity for QT students given the potential invisibility of queerness. ...
In this paper, we advocate for inclusion of queer and trans* (QT) students in physics by promoting epistemic diversity. We draw on literature documenting racial epistemic oppression and research exploring the experiences of QT students of color in STEM to build theory around intersectional, coalition-building epistemic justice for queer inclusion. We highlight the affordances of physics teaching that embraces queer epistemic subjectivity (ways of thinking shaped by the lived experience of transgressing regulatory categories of sexuality and gender), and offer implications for instructors that cultivate appreciation for diverse approaches to physics learning in the classroom.
... Education researchers have only relatively recently begun to explore the climatic experiences of LGBTQ+ people in Physics and STEM more broadly. Early qualitative efforts to understand the experiences of faculty [6] and students [7] found these groups often felt compelled to hide their gender and sexual identities to navigate their respective STEM communities. More recent quantitative work has highlighted climate issues limiting retention of LGBTQ+ faculty work [8] and shown disadvantages to LGBTQ+ employees in federal agencies [9]. ...
... This essentialization of gender ignores the way that race, sexuality, disability, religion, and other dimensions of identity affect a person's experiences in a STEM space, as well as the complexities of biological sex and gender presentation [17]. As Cech and Waidzunas found in their qualitative work, sometimes being stereotyped as queer woman helped people gain legitimacy in STEM spaces as they were perceived as more "serious" and "capable" due to being masculinized [18], and Eglash similarly found that access to technoculture is gatekept via a type of "nerdy" gender male presentation which is restricted to white and Asian men [19]. These are "genders" which do not fit into our usual categorizations, but have large impacts on people's experiences in the field and will have an impact on quantitative results. ...
... Most of these diverse programmes were largely focused on social issues related to marginalized women, ethnic and racial minorities in engineering profession. But these programmes have failed to reflect injustices and inequalities in educational programmes (Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;McLoughlin, 2012). ...
Engineering social justice education (ESJ) is an emerging core subject in engineering education (EE)and profession. However, several EE institutions are yet to incorporate social justice (SJ) into engineering courses, leading to strong advocacy for EE review of programmes. This paradigm shift is align with ESJ revised curricula to increase the power of engineering knowledge integrated with SJ, which explicitly harnessed in serving vulnerable society, thereby addressing injustices and inequalities; hence the crux of this paper. This paper was guided by Nancy Fraser’s theory of SJ that elucidates that a more equitable distribution of resources is interrelated with equal recognition of different identities/groups within a society. This theory looks at how individuals are prevented from participating as equals by denying them of available resources to do so. This paper takes a broad look at the impact of integrating SJ in EE in Africa, while examining the extent EE has addressed numerous inequalities and, exploring how engineering practitioners can work towards a more just and equitable society. The significance of SJ in EE in the 21st century were discussed among others. Thus, to address social justice in EE, collaboration amongst educational sector and engineering industrialists are central in building and revising EE curriculum inclusive of SJ themes to consolidate engineering professional ethics. This will transform the way educators think about ESJ through creating or converting existing core curriculum courses to attract, retain, and motivate engineering students to become professionals to enact SJ in engineering field.
... Sexual harassment and sexual orientation harassment are both used as tools in the workplace to punish deviations from traditional gendered expression (Konik & Cortina, 2008). The same masculinefocused environment that contributes to discomfort for women in STEM fields may also contribute to discomfort for gay men who face stereotypes of being feminine in these fields (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Hughes, 2017), and suffer lower retention rates (Hughes, 2018). In schools, individuals who violate traditional gender roles are frequently bullied. ...
We present an integrated interdisciplinary review of people’s tendency to perceive sexual orientation as a fundamentally gendered phenomenon. We draw from psychology and other disciplines to illustrate that, across cultures and over time, people view and evaluate lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals through how they conform or fail to conform to traditional gender expectations. We divide the review into two sections. The first draws upon historical, anthropological, legal, and qualitative approaches. The second draws upon psychological and sociological quantitative studies. A common thread across these disciplines is that gender and sexual orientation are inseparable constructs in the mind of the everyday social perceiver.
... The survey instrument was designed using both the literature and expertise of the C-LGBTþ committee [38,39,50,51] to assess (1) demographics, (2) climate experiences, and (3) consideration to leave. Section (1) was created to look for salient information about the participants such as their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, level of outness, and more. ...
LGBT+ persons in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have a small growing body of literature addressing their experiences and workplace concerns. This study offers workplace climate analysis of 324 survey respondents in the field of physics. The findings indicate that when building a climate model to predict for consideration to leave and outness, a positive workplace climate was a stronger predictor than a negative workplace climate or experiences of exclusionary behavior. This points to the importance of moving beyond workplace climates that are simply neutral, but to ones that are inclusive and welcoming for LGBT+ physicists. This is the final paper in a series of three.
... This apolitical and individualistic culture of engineering is related to the lack of representation of women and professionals of Color in the field (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2016). Beyond gender and race, Cech and Waidzunas (2011) found that LGBTQ þ engineering students felt isolated and performed as heteronormative, masculine and white as a shared coping mechanism to succeed. In sum, white masculinity as the prevailing culture in engineering reflects the voices of those who determined what engineering is and could be, with direct consequences to the content valued and legitimized in the discipline (Pawley, 2012). ...
While issues of (in)justice in K12 STEM learning have garnered increasing attention, limited research has attended to learning as social-spatial transformation. We draw upon a justice-oriented framework of equitably consequential learning to call attention to how learning and engagement in K12 STEM is rooted in the history and geographies of young people’s lives. Without attention to the ways in which learning is an historicized and sociopolitical activity, efforts to address seemingly intractable equity challenges in K12 STEM education across the intersections of racial and class inequality will remain elusive. Using data from middle school classroom studies focused on engineering for sustainable communities, where community ethnography is central to engineering design, we investigate the social-spatial relationalities that minoritized youth bring to engineering design, and how relationalities may support youth in transforming oppressive knowledge and power structures toward equitably consequential learning. Findings reveal that organizing learning engineering design around youths’ rich everyday experiences and community wisdom through community ethnography, addressed hyperlocal, sociopolitical community challenges. As a result, the social-spatial terrain upon which subject-object relations are enacted shifted, expanding the discourses, practices and outcomes of middle school engineering design that were legitimized. Making present this power-mediated terrain makes visible the often hidden, but ever present, unjust school-based relationalities, enabling them to be re-mediated in justice-oriented ways. Paying attention to social-spatial relationalities reveal (1) the multiple scales of activity, (2) inter-scalar mobilities and interactions, and (3) possible resultant impacts of such interactions that further affect activity at each scale. We discuss implications for how theories of equitably consequential learning can be advanced through the frame of social-spatial justice.
... Data on collection on marginalized identities in STEM through climate and other surveys should include LGBTQ+ identities and follow ethical guides such as the Vanderbilt University Survey guide [139] for LGBTQ+ people [2,3]. Although small sample size may lead to aggregation [131], disaggregation of both identity and discipline data allows better understanding of identity-specific experiences in different STEM contexts, especially since we know that LGBTQ+ experiences vary between disciplines such as the life sciences and engineering [26,136,140,141]. We also recommend institutions reference the growing and valuable findings from qualitative social science, where experiences of marginalized identities in science can be contextualized within broader narratives and systems [1]. ...
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other marginalized gender and sexual identities (LGBTQ+) face unique barriers to participation in the sciences rooted in cis-heteronormativity and heterosexism. We need to expand conversations on LGBTQ+ advocacy in science beyond personal beliefs and actions, and toward the recognition of structural and societal barriers to participation. In this paper, we review how structural deficits and heteronormativity serve as barriers to LGBTQ+ inclusion, well-being, and participation in science. To ground this conversation in a shared understanding of LGBTQ+ oppression and liberation movements, we highlight important historic events that aid in understanding current issues, including the historic and ongoing role of science in the lives and rights of LGBTQ+ people.
... LGBTQ+ faculty (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009;Patridge et al., 2014;Vaccaro, 2012), little has been done in specific STEM fields and less has been done looking at queer STEM students, although some recent studies are starting to fill that gap (Cech & Waidzunas, 2011;Friedensen et al., 2021;Miller et al., 2019;Stout & Wright, 2016;Vaccaro et al., 2021). Almost no work has been done on LGBTQ+ students in particular majors (Traxler et al., 2016) ...
This study explored how the feelings of comfort and safety of LGBTQ+ undergraduate science majors in their departments at a mid-size Midwestern university affected their academic success. The literature provides a number of studies about LGBTQ+ STEM faculty, campus and departmental climate studies for LGBTQ+ students, and microaggressions experienced by a variety of students and faculty from historically underrepresented groups. There is little literature directly connecting campus climate work to STEM departments’ climates and the experiences of LGBTQ+ undergraduates. This study utilized a qualitative approach to explore the experiences of STEM majors who identified as LGBTQ+. A narrative approach to the research emphasized the voices of these marginalized students. Three participants participated in one interview per semester over two subsequent semesters for a total of six interviews, which were then coded using emergent themes. The most interesting findings were related to potential microaggressions experienced by the students, such as specific passive negative experiences or general negative feelings about expressing their identities. This study found that LGBTQ+ undergraduates in science departments may experience microaggressions because of their sexual orientation but may lack the language to describe these situations in detail or identify them as harmful. Thus, there is a need to examine and potentially improve science students’ language tools to better identify and describe these experiences.
... This often hostile environment is rooted in STEM's competitive and heteronormative "dude" culture, which is particularly harrowing for STEM gender minority students and faculty (Fisher and Waldrip, 1999;Seymour and Hewitt, 1999;Toynton, 2007;Antecol et al., 2008;Grunert and Bodner, 2011;Stout and Wright, 2016;Mattheis et al., 2019;Miller et al., 2020;Voigt and Reinholz, 2020;Cech and Waidzunas, 2021;Haverkamp, 2021;Palmer et al., 2021;Campbell-Montalvo et al., 2022b). This environment can lead to a lack of fit for sexual and gender minority (SGM) 1 students and faculty (Toynton, 2007;Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009;Cech and Waidzunas, 2011;Patridge et al., 2014;Cooper and Brownell, 2016;Cech and Pham, 2017;Mattheis et al., 2019;Cooper et al., 2020;Voigt, 2020;Friedensen et al., 2021;Lezotte et al., 2021;Campbell-Montalvo et al., 2022b). For SGM students, and women along with historically excluded racial/ethnic minority students, feelings of not being welcomed or belonging in STEM along with limited access to social capital comprise barriers to SGM students' STEM persistence (Schneider and Dimito, 2010;Smith et al., 2015;Cooper and Brownell, 2016;Stout and Wright, 2016;Hughes, 2018;Blosser, 2020;Voigt, 2020;Campbell-Montalvo et al., 2021, 2022bHaverkamp, 2021). ...
In comparison to work on women and historically excluded racial/ethnic minority students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), research on sexual and gender minority (SGM) students in STEM is somewhat incipient. There is little scholarship available on SGM-focused STEM organizations (e.g., oSTEM). Building on the previous literature, we examine how SGM-focused STEM organizations provide social capital, both expressive (e.g., emotional support) and instrumental (e.g., academic resources), that helps students feel they fit in STEM and ultimately persist. We report findings from a large online survey with 477 SGM STEM undergraduates, 463 of whom participate in STEM organizations, which offers one of if not the largest study on the topic to date. We compare three types of identity-focused organizations, SGM-focused, women-focused, and race/ethnicity-focused, finding that they each provide expressive capital to SGM students. The organizations helped students cultivate supportive networks of peers like themselves who then help them feel they fit in STEM through similar but not identical mechanisms. For SGM-focused organizations, their assistance in helping students reconcile their SGM identities with their STEM identity was an important nuance tailored to SGM students' needs. However, students described how SGM-focused organizations provided instrumental capital far less, which we posit may take a back seat to SGM STEM students' expressive needs. Unfortunately, women-focused organizations were not always welcoming to SGM students, an issue not documented in race/ethnicity-focused societies. However, some identity-focused organizations established partnerships with other identity-focused organizations, highlighting the possible role of such collaboration in better serving SGM students, particularly those with minoritized ethnic/racial identities. Implications for research and practice are included.
Women may experience lower rates of entry and success into certain academic and professional spaces because of their observations that their work contributions are less valued than men's. We introduce sense of mattering as a mechanism that may help explain women's underrepresentation in male‐dominated fields and leadership roles, distinguish it from related constructs, and advance a theoretical framework for how sense of mattering may shape gender disparities. Women's professional contributions are often undervalued, and women perceive and anticipate this unfair disadvantage, which may in turn limit their success, retention, and representation in stereotypically masculine spaces and roles. Attending to sense of mattering has the potential to improve upon past attempts to reduce gender disparities by emphasizing the importance of increasing the extent to which women's contributions are recognized and valued.
Background
Engineers are socialized to value rational approaches to problem solving. A lack of awareness of how engineers use different decision‐making approaches is problematic because it perpetuates the ongoing development of inequitable engineering designs and contributes to a lack of inclusion in the field. Although researchers have explored how engineering students are socialized, further work is needed to understand students' beliefs about different decision‐making approaches.
Purpose/Hypothesis
We explored the espoused beliefs of undergraduate students about technical, empathic, experience‐based, and guess‐based approaches to engineering design decisions.
Design/Method
We conducted semistructured one‐on‐one interviews with 20 senior engineering students at the conclusion of their capstone design experience. We used a combination of deductive and inductive data condensation approaches to generate categories of beliefs.
Results
We identified a total of nine categories of beliefs, organized by approach. Although students' espoused beliefs did reflect the emphasis on technical approaches present in their socialization, they also described technical approaches as limited and overvalued.
Conclusion
The landscape of beliefs presented make explicit both the challenges and the opportunities that students' beliefs play as the backdrop for any efforts of engineering educators to develop engineers as effective and equitable engineering designers.
Background
It is well known that earning a bachelor's degree in engineering is a demanding task, but ripe with opportunity. For students from historically excluded demographic groups, this task is exacerbated by oppressive circumstances. Although considerable research has documented how student outcomes differ across demographic groups, much less is known about the dynamic processes that marginalize some students.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to propose a conceptual model of student navigation in the context of undergraduate engineering programs. Our goal is to illustrate how localized, structural features unjustly shape the demands and opportunities encountered by students and influence how they respond.
Scope/Method
We developed our model using an iterative, four‐stage process. This process included (1) clarifying the purpose of the development process; (2) identifying concepts and insights from prior research; (3) synthesizing the concepts and insights into propositions; and (4) visualizing the suspected relationships between the salient constructs in the propositions.
Results
Our model focuses on the dynamic interactions between the characteristics of students, the embedded contexts in which they are situated, and the support infrastructure of their learning environment.
Conclusion
The resulting model illustrates the influence of structural features on how students a) respond to demands and opportunities and b) navigate obstacles present in the learning environment. Although its focus is on marginalized students in undergraduate engineering programs, the model may be applicable to STEM higher education more broadly.
Background: Teamwork is a commonplace component of engineering practice. Engineering educators have been studying ways to make teams more effective and inclusive. However, students’ interpersonal interactions often create exclusionary experiences. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study investigates how the team formation process and what kinds of teaming practices and behaviors promote inclusive team environments. We were sensitized to Tuckman and Jensen’s (1977) revised theory of the five stages of teaming along with opportunity structures theory as frameworks to study how particular team interactions did or did not promote the inclusion of its members. Design/Method: This interpretive multi-case study used team observations, classroom artifacts, and student interviews in a first-year engineering course to understand the experiences of three teams. The primary data source, student interviews, were analyzed to understand the individual and collective team experience. These results were triangulated with the other data sources to build three team descriptions and a cross-team comparison. Results: Our findings indicate that the process of storming and norming in teams is an essential point in which social inclusion is built into teaming practices or not. While all teams, regardless of inclusive behaviors, were academically successful, the inclusive norms developed by some teams increased student learning and belonging. Conclusions: The emphasis on teaming in engineering education has often focused on the effectiveness of teams for a final project. However, the process of teaming and how peers shape the engineering environment is just as important for student’s belonging and persistence. The results of this work can provide strategies for supporting students’ teaming processes to develop more inclusive teams.
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Research on gender and intersectionality in Physics Education Research (PER) has begun to grow over the last decade, with a new emerging focus on the experiences of LGBT+ persons in the field. Across the literature we find a propensity to compare marginalized groups to majority groups without a firm focus on how individual identities are intersectional in composition. This work has been an important foundational first step, but is limited in its ability to capture and address the complicated experiences of students in physics. Furthermore, the burgeoning work on LGBT+ physicists demonstrates a problematic climate for their persistence while also underlying the compounding impact of LGBT+ physicists who are also women and/or transgender. We suggest that future research in PER should take anti-gap framing and methodologies to truly uncover students’ experiences, so policies can be developed to support their inclusion.
Since 1983, men who have sex with men have been prohibited from donating blood in the UK on the basis of purportedly elevated rates of HIV and other transfusion transmissible infections. This policy of deferral, known to many as the ‘gay blood ban’, has persisted in some form ever since and has been the subject of protest by individuals or groups termed blood donor activists. Utilising an array of theory from across science and technology studies (STS) and queer studies – situated at the nexus of a burgeoning queer STS – this thesis is a critical inquiry into UK blood donor activism. Drawing on archival research and 31 semi-structured interviews with blood donor activists in the UK as well as representatives of patient groups and the UK blood services, this research seeks to understand and critically interrogate the aims, motivations, and implications of the work of blood donor activists. This thesis argues, first, that blood donor activism in the UK is motivated both by an opposition to blood donor deferral criteria as a technology of homophobia and a contingent framing of blood donation as an altruistic act, which marks out blood donors as good and happy citizens (an affective economy into which queer men seek inclusion). This thesis goes on to argue, however, that blood donor activism is a deeply homonormative political form with a politics that tends to centre ‘respectable’ (e.g. monogamous) gay men at the expense of other figures of risk, like sex workers or promiscuous queers. These politics, this thesis contends, are a product not merely of activist agencies but the epistemic (hetero)norms of the biomedical context within which lay activists seek to raise their credibility. This thesis suggests, therefore, that blood donor activism operates in pursuit of Pyrrhic victories governed by chilling structures that demand we seek alternative routes of political investment.
Der Begriff Intersektionalität spielt in der feministischen Fachkulturforschung in den Ingenieurwissenschaften bisher eine marginale Rolle. Jedoch weist die Genese des Forschungsfeldes Ähnlichkeiten mit der Genese der Intersektionalitätsforschung auf. Dies aufgreifend, entwickle ich entlang meiner heteronormativitätskritischen Forschung eine Definition von Intersektionalität in der feministischen Fachkulturforschung als partiales, situiertes, immer im Prozess befindliches Wissen, das in Anschluss an Patricia Hill Collins (2019) als „critical social theory in the making“ gefasst werden kann.
The under-attribution of women’s contributions to scientific scholarship is well known and well studied. One measure of this under-attribution is the citation gap between men and women: the under-citation of papers authored by women relative to expected rates coupled with an over-citation of papers authored by men relative to expected rates. Here we explore this citation gap in contemporary physics. We find a global bias wherein papers authored by women are significantly under-cited, and papers authored by men are significantly over-cited. Moreover, we find that citation behaviour varies along several dimensions, such that imbalances differ according to who is citing, where they are citing and what they are citing. Specifically, citation imbalance in favour of man-authored papers is highest for papers authored by men, papers published in general physics journals and papers for which citing authors probably have less domain or author familiarity. Our results suggest that although deciding which papers to cite is an individual choice, the cumulative effects of these choices needlessly harm a subset of scholars. We discuss several strategies for the mitigation of these effects, including conscious behavioural changes at the individual, journal and community levels. The under-citation of woman authors in physics is quantified and measures that could overcome this inequity are presented.
As historically construed, both engineering culture and school science culture marginalize girls. With the focus on engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), engineering education researchers have called for a more targeted investigation of how girls at the K‐12 level engage in engineering. This study investigates, through critical participatory ethnography, how 6th grade girls engaged in an Engineering for Sustainable Communities unit (EfSC) guided by conceptual frameworks centered on Cultural Ways of Learning and Rightful Presence. Three in‐depth cases are presented that explore the kinds of engineering problem spaces girls chose to address through iterative design of functional prototypes. Findings reveal, first, how anchoring engineering in girls' embodied experiences supported new forms of participation, new roles for embodied experiences and new making present practices, thereby solidifying a more equitable culture. Second, as the girls moved and hybridized embodied community/STEM ideas and resources, they organized and put into action (through decisions made while “doing” engineering) their values, ideals and desires and that of their communities. Third, we found signifiers, themes, symbols and practices of an emergent engineering culture in which girls positioned themselves as able. These effected engineering for social‐spatial justice using a technically rich and socially specific iterative engineering process which seeded a rightful presence for girls in middle school science.
This paper presents findings from research about the experiences among 39 undergraduate queer and trans* (QT) students of color in STEM majors that illustrate how introductory physics reinforces white cisheteropatriarchy. Two cases of Black queer STEM students’ counter-stories highlight how uncertainty about faculty bias, lack of identity- conscious support, and stereotypes of ability shaped intersectional oppression in introductory physics courses. The counter-stories also exemplified agency in managing oppression as physics students, including strategic concealment of their queer identities. The paper concludes with implications for pedagogical practice in introductory physics to advance queer and intersectional justice for QT students of color.
Efforts to increase diversity and create more inclusive environments in geoscience academic spaces often lack LGBTQ+-specific initiatives. The LGBTQ+ community in the geosciences is composed of wide spectrums of sexuality and gender, yet many feel that LGBTQ+ people in geology are not visible or represented. LGBTQ+ geoscientists have also reported a lack of support during their time as a student. Based on LGBTQ+-focused surveys and previous literature, we propose some best practices that geoscience instructors and departments can implement to begin creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people. This includes in-class and out-of-class practices including pronoun usage, incorporating LGBTQ+ themes into course content, confronting homophobia and transphobia, and celebrating the achievements of LGBTQ+ people. In order to make the geosciences more welcoming and inclusive, there must be explicit intention and effort to create impactful change regarding LGBTQ+ identities.
Recent US studies showed that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) young adults develop hopeful views about their occupational careers by emphasizing future workplaces’ friendly climates and denying their risk of experiencing discrimination. The results may partly reflect American labor market conditions and social discourses that endorse these views, and little is known about how LGBQ young adults may perceive their career chances and make plans in different labor market and discursive conditions. To extend the literature, the present study focuses on LGBQ young adults in Japan and contrast the results to those from a US study based on an equivalent design. Analysis of in-depth interviews highlighted Japanese LGBQ young adults’ anticipation of chilly industry climates. Further, they disengaged sexuality from their career plans by prioritizing career stability over industry climates and by deciding to hide their sexual identities from their future colleagues. They explained these decisions by addressing the importance of labor immobility and by drawing on a social discourse that linked career stability to a better life. Overall, the results underscored that the ways in which people respond to social marginalization greatly depend on what structural resources and constraints exist and what social discourses are present in the national context.
Introduction to a book of readings that explores the ways in which gay men in the United States engage in, contest and modify these notions and develop a sense of masculine identity. The book examines the creation of identity through the everyday lives of gay men: their work; home; community; and relationships.
Social Text 20.2 (2002) 49-64
The development of technological expertise requires not only financial resources but also cultural capital. Nerd identity has been a critical gateway to this technocultural access, mediating personal identities in ways that both maintain normative boundaries of power and offer sites for intervention. This essay examines the figure of the nerd in relation to race and gender identity and explores the ways in which attempts to circumvent its normative gatekeeping function can both succeed and fail.
Turkle (1984) vividly describes nerd self-identity in her ethnographic study of undergraduate men at MIT. In one social event "they flaunt their pimples, their pasty complexions, their knobby knees, their thin, underdeveloped bodies" (196); in interviews they describe themselves as losers and loners who have given up bodily pleasure in general and sexual relations in particular. But Turkle notes that this physical self-loathing is compensated for by technological mastery; hackers, for example, see themselves as "holders of an esoteric knowledge, defenders of the purity of computation seen not as a means to an end but as an artist's material whose internal aesthetic must be protected" (207).
While MIT computer science students might be an extreme case, other researchers have noted similar phenomena throughout science and technology subcultures. Noble (1992) suggests that contemporary cultures of science still bear a strong influence from the clerical aesthetic culture of the Middle Ages Latin Church, which rejected both women and bodily or sensual pleasures. He points out that the modern view of science as an opposite of religion is quite recent, and that even in the midst of twentieth-century atheist narratives, science (and "applied" technological pursuits such as creating artificial life or minds) continues to carry transcendent undertones. Noble's historical argument easily combines with Turkle's social psychology of nerd self-image.
Normative gender associations are not the only restrictions that nerd identity places on technoscience access. In an essay whose title contains the provocative phrase "Could Bill Gates Have Succeeded If He Were Black," Amsden and Clark (1995) note that the lack of software entrepreneurship among African Americans cannot simply be attributed to lack of education or start-up funds, since both are surprisingly low requirements in the software industry. Rather, much of the ability of white software entrepreneurs appears to derive from their opportunities to form collaborations through a sort of nerd network—either teaming with fellow geeks (Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft) or pairing up between "suits and hackers" (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple).
But if nerd identity is truly the gatekeeper for technoscience as an elite and exclusionary practice, it is doing a very inadequate job of it. First, while significant gaps are still present, there has been a dramatic increase in science and technology scholastic performance and career participation by women and underrepresented minorities since the 1960s (Campbell, Hombo, and Mazzeo 1999); yet during that time period nerd identity has become a more and not less prominent feature of the social landscape. Second, this change has been far stronger in closing the gender gap than in closing the race gap. For example, in the 1990s the gender gap in scholastic science performance for seventeen-year-olds was significantly lower, while the gap between black and white seventeen-year-olds remained the same. Yet Noble and Turkle portray gender/sexuality, not race, as the overriding feature of nerd identity (Turkle does not, for example, offer any reflections about the possibility of racial identity in her comments about "pasty complexions"). Finally, we might note that in comparison to, say, Hitler's Aryan Übermensch, the geek image is hardly a portrait of white male superiority.
Indeed, the more we examine it, the more nerd identity seems less a threatening gatekeeper than a potential paradox that might allow greater amounts of gender and race diversity into the potent locations of technoscience, if only we could better understand it. Of course, to the extent that geekdom fails to create such barriers—to the extent that it allows women and underrepresented minorities to fully participate in technoscience without being nerds—one can simply...
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender LGBT people are everywhere in engineering; we are members of the National Academy of Engineering, deans of engineer- ing schools, and corporate executives; we are on the shop floor, in the field, and in the cubicle. Social trends and workplace policies that support inclusion have made LGBT people more visible, further driving diversity and equality efforts. As LGBT visibility in- creases, new strategies are needed to support this expression of diversity and ensure a workplace free from prejudice and an environment conducive to everyone's success. While large corporations have led the way in LGBT diversity efforts, it is critical now that smaller businesses follow suit in order to recruit and retain the most talented individuals.
Heterosexism has become a recognized social problem since the rise of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) activism in the 1970s. One of its manifestations is heteronormativity: the mundane production of heterosexuality as the normal, natural, taken-for-granted sexuality. My research uses conversation analysis to explore heteronormativity as an ongoing, situated, practical accomplishment by people oriented to other actions entirely. I show that family reference terms—across a dataset of 59 after-hours calls to the doctor—are deployed so as to construct a normative version of the heterosexual nuclear family: a married couple, co-resident with their biological, dependent children. I examine the inferences normatively attached to family reference terms, consider how these inferences are used interactionally, and document how this everyday talk-in-interaction both reflects and reconstitutes the culturally normative definition of the family. This research advances our understanding of normativity by showing how a social problem can exist even when there is no orientation to “trouble” in interaction. Here, the persistent and untroubled reproduction of a taken-for-granted heteronormative world both reflects heterosexual privilege and (by extrapolation) perpetuates the oppression of non-heterosexual people, denied access to key social institutions such as marriage and unable to take for granted access to their culture's family reference terms. The article shows how the heteronormative social order is reproduced at the level of mundane social interaction, through the everyday conversational practices of ordinary folk.
Workable Sisterhood is an empirical look at sixteen HIV-positive women who have a history of drug use, conflict with the law, or a history of working in the sex trade. What makes their experience with the HIV/AIDS virus and their political participation different from their counterparts of people with HIV? Michele Tracy Berger argues that it is the influence of a phenomenon she labels "intersectional stigma," a complex process by which women of color, already experiencing race, class, and gender oppression, are also labeled, judged, and given inferior treatment because of their status as drug users, sex workers, and HIV-positive women. The work explores the barriers of stigma in relation to political participation, and demonstrates how stigma can be effectively challenged and redirected.
This article integrates the extant literature and the results from the analysis of two national surveys to identify the factors that influence the participation of women and minorities in science and engineering. Although evidence is more limited for minorities than for women, notions of self-concept/self-efficacy, peer influence, and goal commitment, which can be traced to early socialization experiences, may account for most of the participation disparities by race and gender.
Sex. Religion. There is no denying that these two subjects are among the most provocative in American public life. Even the constitutional principle of church-state separation seems to give way when it comes to sex: the Supreme Court draws on theology as readily as it draws on case law when rendering decisions that touch on sexuality. In this compelling and carefully argued study, Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini examine this powerful and disturbing connection as they explore the reasons why secular institutions habitually use religion to regulate sexual life. From state legislatures to the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court, from daily newspapers to popular magazines and television talk shows, Jakobsen and Pellegrini illustrate the intensity of America's obsession with sex in the name of values and the dangers it poses to some of our most basic freedoms. Using a wide range of case studies, Love the Sin offers an insightful critique of the ways in which sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular are discussed and debated in the public arena. Additionally, the book sets forth constructive alternatives that highlight the vital links between sexual and religious freedom and expose the hazards of using religion as a justification for regulating sexuality. A timely, necessary, and refreshing contribution to the many debates surrounding religion, morality, and sex, Love the Sin boldly dreams an America that lives up to its promise of freedom and justice for all.
33 Mindsets in Engineering "The technical rationality that is the engineer's stock-in-trade requires the calculation of means for the realization of given ends. But it requires no broad insight into those ends or their consequences. Engineers are aware of, are trained to be aware of, these limitations; insofar as they do consider ends, they cease to act as engineers." Robert Zussman [1: 122–123] This chapter uses engineering humor to draw out some mindsets commonly found in engineering and relates them to the intersection of engineering and social justice. Some mindsets are so much a part of mainstream engineering culture (or mainstream culture) that we may be unaware of alternative perspectives. The in-tent of this chapter is to separate the worldviews from the profession of engineering itself.
We are a collective of black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we see black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.
We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) The genesis of contemporary black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) black feminist issues and practice.
Before looking at the recent development of black feminism, we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Y. Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.
A black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973 black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).
Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us were active in those movements (civil rights, black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and antisexist, unlike those of black and white men.
There is also undeniably a personal genesis for black feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual black women’s lives. Black feminists and many more black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence.
Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and, most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in...
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
Questions arising from research on automation and women's work have led me to explore patriarchal elements in the culture of engineering/management. In an elite technological institute, the engineering faculty, compared with the humanities faculty, reported more distance in childhood from experiences and qualities generally gender-linked with females—intimacy, sensuality, one's own body, social complexity. Engineers valued social hierarchy on a continuum giving most prestige to scientific abstraction, least to feminine qualities. Such values were transmitted in the engineering classroom, for example, through professors' jokes, to a new generation of engineering/ management. A persistent mind/body dualism was exhibited, subordinating sexuality and the body, and elevating scientific abstraction. The dualism translated into a mechanical view of the person and to continued separation of functions of mind and hand. Further examination of mind/body dualisms may help us to understand how the persistence of this body of ideas in Western technology affects labor processes, and in particular, women, workplace and machine.
There seems to be a general penchant for dichotomous styles of thought in engineering, in which hierarchies and gender are often evident - both symbolically and organizationally. This paper explores these themes, drawing in part on a pilot ethnographic study of software developers. The technical/social distinction is strongly gendered inasmuch as it maps on to masculine instrumentalism and feminine expressiveness. Also, the two sides of this dualism are seen as mutually exclusive such that 'the technical', which defines the core of engineering expertise and identity, specifically excludes 'the social'. Still, the related distinction between specialist and heterogeneous roles becomes valued, and gendered, in contradictory ways. The abstract/concrete dualism is even more contradictory. The privileging of analytical abstraction in science and education sits sometimes uncomfortably alongside the obvious practical importance of, and pleasures in, a hands-on relationship with technological artefacts - conflicting versions of masculinity. Multiple tensions coexist around such dualisms, yet they endure. The concluding discussion considers possible factors related to the co-existence of certainty and uncertainty around technology, and to the performance of gender more generally.
When nations redefine their priorities and re-plot their directions of travel, engineers get worried about the contents of their knowledge. The cultural and historical specificity of their responses illustrates the extent to which the questions of what counts as engineering knowledge and what counts as an engineer are linked tightly together, and also suggests that both may be tied to local images of the nation. After summarizing recent historical work comparing national patterns in engineering knowledge and engineers' work, this essay outlines how a focus on professional identity may provide a way of accounting for national and transnational influences on engineers while avoiding the specter of determinism. Offering brief case studies drawn from France, the UK, Germany and the USA, the authors describe engineers as 'responding' to codes of meaning that live at different scales, including contrasting metrics of progress and images of private industry. The paper is concluded with a brief assessment of some further implications of the analysis of professional identity for work in engineering studies.
It is frequently claimed that women who enter engineering have to ‘fit in’ to ‘a masculine culture’, but there is little systematic evidence on this. This article presents observations about gender dynamics in engineers' everyday interactions, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in three companies. The overall picture is mixed. Engineers are generally respectful in their interactions, but there are subtle dynamics which make it easier for (more) men than women engineers to build effective work relationships and to ‘belong’. Topics of conversation are generally quite wide-ranging and inclusive amongst close colleagues, but lean heavily on gender-stereotypical subjects with outsiders. Most engineers take some care not to cause offence to others, but in some workplaces the humour and chat are very sexualised and sexist. Engineering can accommodate a range of masculinities, but some are more influential than others. Throughout, we see that doing the job often involves ‘doing gender’. Workplace cultures not only oil the wheels of the job and the organisation; they can also have a huge bearing on who stays and gets on in engineering. Part II of this article (in a later issue) takes this analysis further, by highlighting an ‘in/visibility paradox’ facing women engineers.
Participant observation, focus groups, and in-depth interviews were used to study the professionalization of women enrolled in engineering school. Two aspects of the professionalization process were examined: adapting to the professional culture and internalizing the professional identity. The study found support for a Goffmanesque interpretation of professionalization; engineering students learn how to manage others' impressions of them as professionals to gain their trust and confidence. Women also must learn to manage impressions male engineers hold of them. They present themselves as competent, nonthreatening, and solidary members of the profession.
This article seeks to open up a new avenue for feminist technology studies - gender-aware research on engineers and engineering practice - on the grounds that engineers are powerful symbols of the equation between masculinity and technology and occupy significant roles in shaping new technologies. Drawing on the disparate evidence available, the author explores four themes. The first asks why the equation between masculinity and technology is so durable when there are such huge mismatches between image and practice. The second examines this mismatch in the detail of engineering knowledge and practice to reveal that fractured and contradictory constructions of masculinity frequently coexist. The third theme addresses the suggestion that women and men might bring different styles to engineering. Finally, the author explores subjective experiences of engineering to argue that engineers' shared pleasures in and identification with technology both define what it means to be an engineer and provide appealing symbols of power that act to compensate for a perceived lack of power or competence in other arenas.
Part I of this paper (in Volume 1, Issue 1) presented fieldwork observations about everyday interactions in engineering workplace cultures, which tend to make it easier for men than for women to build working relationships and to ‘belong’ in engineering. This second part extends the analysis, by examining the ‘in/visibility paradox’ whereby women engineers are simultaneously highly visible as women yet invisible as engineers. This paradox is a key to understanding how women engineers experience engineering workplace cultures, and a major factor underlying the poor retention and progression of women in engineering. Women engineers' invisibility as engineers is evident in the greater effort required of them to be taken seriously as ‘real engineers’ and the undermining of confidence which can ensue. Their visibility as women brings contradictory pressures – to be ‘one of the lads’ but at the same time ‘not lose their femininity’. These in/visibility dynamics have a significant cumulative effect, not least because they are subtle and taken for granted. To understand why they occur, the study proposes a related concept – gender in/authenticity – to capture the apparent congruence or non-congruence of gender and engineering identities for men and women engineers. This concept gives us a wider perspective on why gender norms are slow to change in engineering, and on how gender change might be achieved in engineering workplaces.
Engineers have two types of stories about what constitutes 'real' engineering. In sociological terms, one is technicist, the other heterogeneous. How and where boundaries are drawn between 'the technical' and 'the social' in engineering identities and practices is a central concern for feminist technology studies, given the strong marking of sociality as feminine and technology as masculine. I explore these themes, drawing on ethnographic observations of building design engineering. This is a profoundly heterogeneous and networked engineering practice, which entails troubled boundary drawing and identities for the individuals involved - evident in interactions between engineers and architects, and among engineers, especially around management and design. Many engineers cleave to a technicist engineering identity, and even those who embrace the heterogeneous reality of their actual work oscillate between or straddle, not always comfortably, the two identities. There are complex gender tensions, as well as professional tensions, at work here - associated with distinct versions of hegemonic masculinity, with the technical/social dualism, and with what I call 'gender in/authenticity' issues. I conclude that technicist engineering identities persist in part because they converge with (and perform) available masculinities, and that women's (perceived and felt) membership as 'real' engineers is likely to be more fragile than men's. Engineering as a profession must foreground and celebrate the heterogeneity of engineering work. Improving the representation of women in engineering requires promoting more heterogeneous versions of gender as well as engineering.
Perhaps all of us have some quality, some trait that we would prefer not to have, or at least prefer not be known. It could be our economic background, or perhaps something about our parents. Whatever the quality is, it is usually something that shapes, in some way, how (and who) we became who we are. At the same time, the quality has some social weight or stigma attached to the term to describe the general (but not necessarily our own) experience. So in some situations, we hide our less-appreciated qualities; we eschew terms to describe them (and us); we deny, at least in some public situations, our identity.
The student affairs profession was one of the first to realize the competing complexities of identity. Despite recent research (Abes, Jones, & McEwen, 2007; Renn, 2004) into the multiplicity of student identities, however, we have few sustained investigations of how such juxtaposition of socially-competing identity plays out in individual students' lives over their collegiate lifetimes. Kenji Yoshino's Covering is such a work, and more. Yoshino, deputy dean for intellectual life and professor at Yale Law School, provides a vivid and compelling depiction of living such a life of covering, extrapolating from a personal analysis of the effects of such acts of personal denial to public life and political standing.
Yoshino's Japanese parents immigrated to the United States before he was born. He relates his difficulty managing two cultural identities while growing up: the Japanese of his parents and grandparents with whom he lived, and the American culture of his elementary and junior high schools. Summers of his youth spent in Japan with other Japanese-American students made shifting cultures part of Yoshino's identity: "By virtue of my two native parents, I had a chance to assimilate no American of non-Japanese descent possessed" (p. 117). Yoshino lived "a mantra in [his parents'] home: 'Be one hundred percent American in America, and one hundred percent Japanese in Japan'" (p. 118). This made the summers an even starker contrast to the rest of his Americanized year:
[I]t seems more likely I do not code as Japanese because of a set of behaviors—how I hold my body, how I move through space, how I speak. Japanese who interact with me are assaulted by my difference from them. They make sense of that difference by implanting it in my body.
In other words, being different from the norm is viewed as something within the individual that does not allow him to fit within a culture or society.
In addition to trying to decipher where he, as an individual, fit within the American-Nipponese divide, Yoshino grappled with sexuality. His personal reflections and legal analyses provide a very accessible basis for readers just beginning their study of identity and "otherness," which is often easy to theorize yet difficult to convey viscerally. Indeed, Yoshino's reflexively analyzes his sexuality in both Japanese and American cultures, allowing the reader to feel the scars that cannot be obliterated simply by concealing the stigma of not fitting into a culture.
Yoshino utilizes that concept of covering, barrowed from sociologist Erving Goffman's Stigma (1963), to allow the reader this emotional insight. He then expands his thinking into how the practices of covering undermine civil rights. His central thesis is by covering, individuals undergo normative assimilation, rather than be punished by dominant cultures in society. Yoshino provides a model for the processes of covering, consisting of four axes: appearance (how one physically embodies one's identity); affiliation (one's self-concept of one's cultural identification); activism (the politicization of identity); and association (public allegiance and membership). When one covers, one actively conceals any indication within the four axes that might place one outside the norm of the group one is in at the time (whether that be ethnic, national, sexual, or any other).
Covering, as a concept, works on the predication of "don't ask, don't tell:" the majority group or society will accept differences in identity only to the extent that society and its norms are not confronted with nonconformist behavior. Challenging the premises of covering, though, often puts one...
In this article, Professor Kenji Yoshino seeks to explain why the category of bisexuality has been erased in contemporary American political and legal discourse. He first argues that the invisibility of bisexuality relative to homosexuality does not reflect the incidences of those orientations in the population. Defining bisexuality as the possession of more than incidental desire for both sexes, Yoshino shows that the major sexuality studies demonstrate that the incidence of bisexuality is in fact greater than or comparable to the incidence of homosexuality. Yoshino explains the erasure of bisexuality by positing that both self-identified heterosexuals and self-identified homosexuals have overlapping interests in the erasure of bisexuality that lead them into an "epistemic contract" of bisexual erasure. These interests include: (1) the stabilization of exclusive sexual orientation categories; (2) the retention of sex as an important diacritical axis; and (3) the protection of norms of monogamy. Noting that such contracts tend to become visible only when they are challenged, Yoshino describes how bisexuals have increasingly contested their own erasure. Finally, Yoshino examines the effects of bisexual invisibility and visibility in the legal realm, focusing on the sexual harassment jurisprudence of recent decades.
George Weinberg’s introduction of the term homophobia in the late 1960s challenged traditional thinking about homosexuality and helped focus society’s attention on the problem
of antigay prejudice and stigma. This paper briefly describes the history and impact of homophobia. The term’s limitations
are discussed, including its underlying assumption that antigay prejudice is based mainly on fear and its inability to account
for historical changes in how society regards homosexuality and heterosexuality as the bases for social identities. Although
the importance of Weinberg’s contribution should not be underestimated, a new vocabulary is needed to advance scholarship
in this area. Toward this end, three constructs are defined and discussed: sexual stigma (the shared knowledge of society’s negative regard for any nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship, or community),
heterosexism (the cultural ideology that perpetuates sexual stigma), and sexual prejudice (individuals’ negative attitudes based on sexual orientation). The concept of internalized homophobia is briefly considered.
The book that helped earn Thomas P. Hughes his reputation as one of the foremost historians of technology of our age and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, American Genesis tells the sweeping story of America's technological revolution. Unlike other histories of technology, which focus on particular inventions like the light bulb or the automobile, American Genesis makes these inventions characters in a broad chronicle, both shaped by and shaping a culture. By weaving scientific and technological advancement into other cultural trends, Hughes demonstrates here the myriad ways in which the two are inexorably linked, and in a new preface, he recounts his earlier missteps in predicting the future of technology and follows its move into the information age.
Timothy Meyer started a new job last year, soon after he received his master's in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. At work, he doesn't bring up his personal life, because he's afraid of being discriminated against or even fired. Meyer is gay. The fact remains that in the U.S. workplace, as in society, gays and lesbians are not yet recognized as a group that deserves benefits and legal protection.
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