ERIC Number: EJ1161135
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1946
EISSN: N/A
Whose STEM? Disrupting the Gender Crisis within STEM
Heybach, Jessica; Pickup, Austin
Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v53 n6 p614-627 2017
This article challenges implicit understandings of scientific inquiry and gender within contemporary responses to the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Failing to recognize the gendered history of science, and thus STEM disciplines, we argue that much research and curricular interventions are overly invested in simply providing women institutional access to or creating feminized environments within STEM. Such shortsighted analyses lead to processes we term "gender washing" and "painting pink," both of which diminish the possibilities for meaningful engagement with gendered ontologies within scientific inquiry. Working from important and diverse strands of feminist theory, we suggest that serious considerations of women and STEM must include a framework that critically engages the entanglement of gender and science. We conclude that a focused and intentional analysis of gender and scientific inquiry, that opposes constructions of STEM as fixed entities to simply be imparted or made accessible to women, has important implications for understanding science as a (post) human endeavor.
Descriptors: Inquiry, Gender Differences, Gender Bias, Disproportionate Representation, Females, STEM Education, Equal Education, Equal Opportunities (Jobs), Employed Women, Womens Education, Feminism
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A