It has long been known that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines have a gender problem. Recruitment of women to STEM undergraduate programs is generally low and, once recruited, women leave at much higher rates than men. This has been characterised as the ‘leaky STEM career pipeline’ (see for example Pell, 1996). In the pipeline metaphor, there is one main route to a STEM career, and women leak out of the system much more than men (see Clark Blickenstaff, 2005 for a critique of the pipeline metaphor). However, not all STEM disciplines have the same recruitment and retention problems—some, such as biological sciences and chemistry, have much more ‘gender-balanced’ cohorts of students. In this project the researchers set out to document the experience of students studying on these so-called gender-balanced undergraduate science programs using the following research questions:
- What is the gendered experience of undergraduate students in science disciplines of biology and chemistry?
- How do these experiences impact students’ intentions to persist in science majors at university and their overall science career intentions?
The small-scale study involved a questionnaire to 55 students (33 female and 22 male) from two third-year science courses in biology and chemistry at an Australian university.
In the survey, the majority of both male and female students reported that they believed that gender inequalities were limited to other, male-dominated disciplines such as physics and mathematics. The most frequent theme to emerge from the data, then, was the belief that there were no gender issues in science (57,1 %). A typical quote here from a female student:
"I believe in my major there is no gender discrimination and more or less equal [male/female] ratio."
Interestingly, the claim of no gender discrimination here is linked to the proportion of male and female students on the program. The suggestion is that because the program is gender-balanced, issues of discrimination have been mitigated.
However, in the survey, one of the open questions asked was the following:
Gender bias occurs when people treat others unfairly due to their gender. Please describe if you have had any experiences with gender bias in your discipline during your degree.
And here is a typical quote from a female student in response to the question:
"I have had a couple of experiences, one particularly bad, where I was not listened to, respected etc. in my chemistry lab groups because I was a girl. Having said this, 95% of the time things have been okay."
So, despite a general belief that discrimination does not occur in such gender-balanced disciplines, one third of female students still reported experiences of gender bias and implicit discrimination in their undergraduate programs. In contrast, only one male student mentioned discrimination, and then only to suggest that this was not a problem.
The picture was not all bad however—many women in the survey reported their appreciation of female role models in their education:
"There is a large amount of female academics that I have had the opportunity to interact with, which is inspiring."
"It’s a woman heavy degree and many female tutors/lecturers helps form a culture that we’re all meant to be here."
The paper concludes by stressing the importance of science identity and a sense of belonging for female students’ persistence in STEM (see discussion in Trujillo, & Tanner, 2014). The authors suggest that any future research should focus on this aspect of the female STEM experience with a view to proposing potential interventions.
Comment: One of the central principles of science is the expectation that experiments will give the same results regardless of who carries them out. Nature, it is argued, is not biased, and gives the same answers to everyone. From there, it is a short step to believing that the practices of science itself are gender neutral. In physics this phenomenon has been documented by Traweek (1988) who described a widespread belief that physics is ‘culture-less’. As pointed out by Gonsalves et al (2016) this denial of disciplinary culture makes it difficult to identify how physics actually works in terms of who might be gaining from the culture and who might be disadvantaged. Whilst there do appear to be some positive aspects for female students of studying in this gender-balanced program, the work reported in the study also confirms the problematic nature of believing science practices to be intrinsically impartial. The majority of students suggested that there were no gender issues in science. At the same time one third of the female students gave specific examples of gender bias that they had experienced during their studies. In contrast, none of the male students saw discrimination as a problem. One way of interpreting this data is that the powerful default image of the impartial scientist holds sway until we experience discrimination first hand for ourselves.
Text: John Airey, Department of Teaching and Learning
Keywords: biology/chemistry education research, gender issues, recruitment, persistence, discrimination, science identity, belonging, attitudes, beliefs.
Further reading
- Clark Blickenstaff*, J. (2005). Women and science careers: leaky pipeline or gender filter?. Gender and education, 17(4), 369-386.
- Gonsalves, A. J., Danielsson, A., & Pettersson, H. (2016). Masculinities and experimental practices in physics: The view from three case studies. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 12(2), 020120.
- Pell, A. N. (1996). Fixing the leaky pipeline: women scientists in academia. Journal of animal science, 74(11), 2843-2848.
- Traweek, S. (1988). (1988a). Beamtimes and lifetimes: The world of high energy physicists. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Trujillo, G., & Tanner, K. D. (2014). Considering the role of affect in learning: Monitoring students' self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and science identity. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13(1), 6-15.
