Whose STEM? Disrupting the Gender Crisis Within STEM. Issue 6 (2nd November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Heybach, Jessica; Pickup, Austin
• Is Part Of: Educational studies. Volume 53:Issue 6(2017)
• Page Start: 614
• Page End: 627
• Publication Date: 2017-11-02
• Subjects: Education -- Book reviews -- Periodicals; Education -- Periodicals; Éducation -- Recensions de livres -- Périodiques; Éducation -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 370
• DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2017.1369085
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-1946

Abstract

Abstract : 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.