Factors Underlying Persistent Gendered Option Choices in School Science and Technology in Scotland

The past 15 years have seen a persistent underrepresentation of girls in school science and technology subjects. The article is in three parts. The first part surveys the persistence of girls' opting out of science and technology in their school option choices and reviews from a wide range of literature the influences which affect girls' choices. These influences are: early socialisation, primary teachers as change agents, option choice processes, guidance and careers advice, teachers and teaching, and work experience. The second part presents a meta-analysis of initiatives to encourage girls and women into science, engineering and technology (SET) courses and careers, drawing upon a survey undertaken as part of a Scottish initiative to encourage women students and staff to enter courses in SET in higher education and to progress in careers there. The analysis is then used to illuminate various school initiatives and to estimate the likelihood of their success in addressing the underlying influences on girls' choices away from science and technology.     

Engineering Difference: Discourses on gender,sexuality and work in a college of technology

ABSTRACT This article explores the reasons behind the continuing underrepresentation of women in science and engineering. Reviewing existing debates, the article argues that there exists an impasse in debates on women in engineering which can be related to the dualistic frameworks within which existing research has tended to work. Explanations for the poor representation of women in these areas tend to emphasise either individual or structural factors, neither of which allow women's agency to be fully understood. Drawing on empirical research which examined the subject choices and occupational decision-making processes of two groups of students in a college of technology (one undertaking a course in traditional 'women's work' and the other a course in a non-traditional area), the analysis here employs a post-structuralist approach, employing aspects of discourse theory, to offer a new understanding of women in engineering and of the relationship between gender, sexuality and work, more generally.     

Self‐definition of women experiencing a nontraditional graduate fellowship program

Women continue to be underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). One factor contributing to this underrepresentation is the graduate school experience. Graduate programs in STEM fields are constructed around assumptions that ignore the reality of women's lives; however, emerging opportunities may lead to experiences that are more compatible for women. One such opportunity is the Graduate Teaching Fellows in K–12 Education (GK–12) Program, which was introduced by the National Science Foundation in 1999. Although this nontraditional graduate program was not designed explicitly for women, it provided an unprecedented context in which to research how changing some of the basic assumptions upon which a graduate school operates may impact women in science. This exploratory case study examines the self‐definition of 8 women graduate students who participated in a GK–12 program at a major research university. The findings from this case study contribute to higher education's understanding of the terrain women graduate students in the STEM areas must navigate as they participate in programs that are thought to be more conducive to their modes of self‐definition while they continue to seek to be successful in the historically Eurocentric, masculine STEM fields. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 852–873, 2006     

The intellectual labour market in developed and developing countries: Women's representation in scientific research

Women's representation in scientific research in countries with differing levels of development is analysed. The under‐representation of women in this area is worse in developed countries than in the group of semi‐industrialized and newly industrialized countries. In countries which were late to industrialize, the development of science took place at a stage when women's economic and social participation was more acceptable. Moreover, in developing countries the links between research and the productive system are weak. Both facts are connected with greater discrimination against women in scientific research in developed countries. Within the framework of long‐term economic cycles and technological change, some assumptions can be made about the future. This approach can be used to set up a theoretical framework for women's strategies.     

‘Science Is Truly a Male World.’ The Interconnectedness of Knowledge,Gender and Power within University Education

In the 1970s the vicissitudes of university education were an important impetus for female students and members of staff to formulate feminist criticism on science subjects. Women's studies came into being, aiming at transforming academic scholarship and women's experience in education. Now that women's studies themselves are becoming institutionalised, new problems have developed and we need to question if science is now less of a male dominated bastion. In this article a case study is presented on the ‘trials’ and ‘tribulations’ of female university students at Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands. A theoretical framework is introduced and an analysis of empirical material offered. It is apparent that female students are rather critical of their studies, although generally they do not leave the university before graduating. The university teacher emerges as a gatekeeper, holding the key of the door to the academic community, and using knowledge as a key resource.     

Diverse experiences of women leading in higher education: locating networks and agency for leadership within a university context in Papua New Guinea

The ways in which women deliberately press back against practices of oppression and demonstrate agency in higher education institutions are highly contextual and culturally bound. The formal and informal networks that women develop and maintain are important elements of generating agency and enhancing women's access to and opportunities for leadership. This article presents a case study from research that explored women's leadership experiences in a higher education context in the Pacific Islands – Papua New Guinea. Situated within a feminist poststructural methodology, the research examined women's experiences of leadership and considered aspects that influenced women's access to formal leadership roles. The findings illustrated that the women faced numerous barriers to formal leadership opportunities. A range of culturally and contextually located approaches supported women to demonstrate agency with regard to their own leadership development and practice. This research highlighted the importance of considering the relationship between networks and agency and the impact of associated cultural and contextual practices within organisations, providing insights into the culturally located complexities of women's leadership in higher education contexts.     

A Risky Business? Mature Working-class Women Students and Access to Higher Education Correspondence : Diane Reay,Kings College London,UK. E-mail: Diane.reay@kcl.ac.uk

This article looks at the experiences of a small, qualitative sample of 12 working-class women attending an Access course in a large, inner-city further education college. The risks and costs involved in making the transition to higher education were evident in the women's narratives, and both material and cultural factors inhibiting their access to higher education are examined. The desire to 'give something back' which motivated all these women's attempts to move into higher education is discussed. The women were either juggling extensive labour market commitments or childcare and domestic responsibilities with studying. In such circumstances, when any sort of social life is sacrificed, what becomes visible is time poverty, and, in particular, a lack of time for 'care of the self'. Six of the women were lone mothers and it is further argued that complexities of marital status intersect with, and compound, the consequences of class. Beck's thesis of individualisation is used as a backdrop to the women's stories in order to highlight the costs of individualisation for the working classes, but also to problematise the discrepancies and disjunctures between projects of the self and the women's experiences of returning to education. The article concludes with an exploration of the consequences of a policy of widening access and participation for working-class mature women and suggests that, while currently all the change and transformation are seen to be the responsibility of the individual applicant, universities, especially those in the pre-1992 sector, need to change if they are to provide positive experiences for non-traditional students like the women in this study.     

The puzzling relationship between international development and gender equity: The case of STEM postsecondary education in Cambodia

Gender inequality persists in certain science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) postsecondary fields. Notably, cross-national evidence suggests the STEM gender gap is smaller, not wider, in less developed nations. This is the first known case study to examine this gap within a developing country: Cambodia. This study investigates the following question: how does development – specifically socioeconomic and gender equity indicators – affect women’s share of enrollment in specific STEM and STEM-related fields? Merging two sources of national data, we leverage provincial census figures and institutional administrative data to estimate women's enrollment share in STEM as well as in specific fields (i.e., accounting, information technology, and health). Findings show women’s share of STEM and information technology majors is larger outside the capital. Further, socioeconomic development and urbanization indicators distinctly predict women’s share of health and information technology majors. These fields also have an inverse relationship between women’s share and gender egalitarian characteristics. We discuss potential explanations and implications for gender and inequality in higher education, within and between nations, in the context of larger theoretical debates on the nature of sex segregation.     

Straight Roads and Winding Tracks: Swedish educational policy from a gender equality perspective

A review of Swedish educational policy and educational research indicates that labour market considerations have had a high visibility. Straight routes through the educational system have been laid out in order to equalise and make the system more efficient. Empirical studies show that women's strategies to combine education, work and family often resulted in ‘winding tracks’ through education. Predominant research models tend to adjust to the ‘straight roads’ of educational policy while women's winding routes have been set aside. The current Swedish goal of equality between men and women gives work and parenthood the same weight for both sexes. This article discusses whether this goal could set a challenging framework for a research agenda where more gender‐sensitive methodologies are developed as well as gender‐sensitive concepts, upgrading women's knowledge, experiences and values.     

The effect of the Horsham Greenpower Goblin Challenge on children's attitudes towards science,engineering and technology

This research examines the effects of the Horsham Greenpower Goblin Challenge (HGGC), a hands-on science, engineering and technology (SET) project, on the attitudes of Year 5, primary-school children towards SET. The data collection centred on pre- and post-HGGC questionnaires using Likert scales and picture/word images of scientists and engineers. It was found that the HGGC did not significantly alter children's attitudes to SET and did not dispel previous negative images and attitudes. It was concluded that a greater understanding and acknowledgement of children's existing attitudes was required when designing initiatives aimed at dispelling negative and promoting positive images of SET.     

WISE Choices? Understanding Occupational Decision-making in a Climate of Equal Opportunities for Women in Science and Technology

Since the launch of the Women into Science and Engineering (WISE) campaign in 1984, many initiatives to increase the participation of women in these areas of work have been launched under its banner and the WISE approach has come to represent the dominant discourse on equal opportunities for women in science and technology, having a major influence on both policy and practice. This article examines the WISE discourse in depth, arguing that WISE has had only very limited success because it is so narrowly focused on women's 'choices', which it understands as being constrained both by a lack of information about scientific and technological work and by a masculine image of science and technology which, it infers, is alienating to women. Drawing on empirical research which examined both women's and men's occupational decision-making processes, this article takes issue with this construction of the problem, arguing that whilst the assumptions of the WISE discourse cannot be supported empirically, the discourse itself nevertheless continues to structure and limit the space women have to speak of the conflicts and contradictions they experience, explanations for which require a better understanding of the ways in which subjective experiences of both gender and sexuality impinge upon work choices.     

A Question of Management Style: Women school governors, 1800-1862

ABSTRACT The article examines the way women managed schools prior to the rise of technocratic management practice and theory and explores the consequences for women of the introduction of 'rational' methods of bureaucratic management. The article begins by looking at women's access to management positions in education at the start of the nineteenth century. It then considers the structural and societal barriers constraining their work before focusing on the women governors' authority style. The work of women school governors is related to the wider question of gender and power and in particular to the historical construction of bureaucratic, technocratic management in discourses of 'reason', which is seen as a form of male power within the project of modernity. The women's work is placed in a Foucauldian framework in which women governors are simultaneously constructed as powerful and powerless due to their straddling of the discursive space of both 'public' and 'private'.     

BLACK POWER AND BLACK STUDENTS IN KANSAS CITY

In this research I examined the enactment of liberatory pedagogy, a teaching practice that promotes equity for all learners, from the uniquely informative perspective of young women majoring in mathematics and elementary education. It is grounded theory that seeks to understand the role of personal identity and social location in learning and teaching. I collected data over a two-year period, following two young women from the final semester of their teacher education program to their first teaching positions. Three distinct influences inform the conceptual framework of this study: (a) the underrepresentation of women in mathematics; (b) the devaluing of elementary teachers' content and pedagogical knowledge; and (c) the marginalization of the education major and pedagogical knowledge. I ask research questions regarding the type of preservice education these women experience and how it informs their enactment of liberatory pedagogy. Themes among the findings include coping with being a stranger in both lands, the desire to know oneself as a learner, and enacting liberatory pedagogy as beginning inservice teachers.     

Foregrounding Women in the Doctoral Classroom: Mainstreaming and Single-Sex Approaches to Graduate Education

An increasing number of published studies have drawn attention to gender disparities in various dimensions of Christian higher education. Although the majority of students on the campuses of member institutions of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) are women, and the percentage of women holding faculty and administrative roles has increased, the male-normed environment of the academy continues to be evident in various ways, particularly in these Christian institutions. At the same time, higher education—and doctoral education in particular—is an important pathway to prepare future leaders and professors for Christian organizations. One potential way to begin to shift toward a more welcoming climate that benefits both men and women on CCCU campuses is to “foreground,” or make central, women's issues and concerns as part of regular classroom teaching. Such foregrounding can help counter the historic tendency to treat men's experience and concerns as normative for the human race. In the discipline of missiology, women make up the bulk of the practitioners yet are underrepresented as scholars, making it a pertinent field to challenge the neglect of women's voices and concerns in the academy. This article describes how a missiology classroom has been used to create a climate where women have opportunities to be central and where women's perspectives are treated as equally important as men's perspectives. To do this, I used three key practices: intentionally addressing gendered topics in mixed classes, offering selected single-sex education opportunities for women, and focusing on gender-related topics for research and publication. Using the discipline of missiology as a case study in relation to the importance of giving women's contributions to the field both recognition and voice may also offer transferable insights for doctoral faculty in other disciplines.     

Women's Rights,Writing and Education in Iran

In pursuit of my rights, I joined the revolution that imposed the veil upon me and then joined a political party, where I found that I was making decisions against myself. Following this, I researched the only women's magazine published in Iran at that time and found that it was against women. The questions that came to mind were about whether women writers voice their own experiences. Were my experiences unique? Could I learn from others, particularly through what they wrote? Since literature cannot exist without education, this may be the main reason why Iranian women started so late. In the l960s, mass education created a mass readership and with it the first novel by a woman. The issues of women's rights, education and writing are intertwined.     

‘Special strengths for their own special duties’: women,higher education and gender conservatism in late Victorian Britain

The article discusses contributions towards female higher education made by a group of women whose views on gender roles were conservative, rather than feminist or suffragist. Four women's conservative ideals and interconnected work for women's education are reviewed in the context of late Victorian Oxford. This study is prefaced by a discussion of historical literature on women's higher education which concludes that twentieth century feminist historians have sometimes downplayed the role of reformers who deliberately disassociated women's educational reform from the advance of gender equality. A study of conservative reformers complicates definitions both of feminism and anti‐feminism, and provides an important reminder of the broader intellectual and political contexts which produced them both.     

Mapping the terrain of female education in Ireland, 1830–1910

Education for Irish women and girls developed significantly in the period 1830–1910. During this time, formal state‐funded education systems were established in Ireland by the British government. Some of these systems included females from their inception and some attempted to exclude girls and women. This article charts the opening up of formal schooling and university to Irish girls and women, examining the points at which they were excluded, the alternative educational provision developed by Protestant women and Catholic religious, and the means whereby the case for female education was successfully made. Moving from the public/private paradigm which has dominated much of the discussion around women's education for the period in question, the article focuses on what was occurring in some political and social institutions of the period and identifies women's agency and autonomy within such institutions. Through ‘mapping’ this ground, the article notes women's success in gaining access to institutions previously dominated by men, and highlights areas that require sustained scrutiny by scholars.     

Being and Becoming a Woman Teacher: Journey through Nepal; the path taken [1]

ABSTRACT Using the life history method, I explore elements in Nepalese women teachers' stories that transcend culture, society, time and space. Contrary to the popular belief that people from one culture cannot possibly shift their ground to understand the concepts and experiences of people from another culture, in my doctoral study I explored-universal and particular-received gendered archetypes on the sentient journey taken to school. The legend of the Sleeping Beauty I was told as a female child in Canada might have kept me half-asleep on such a journey. To provide an alternative to such stories, I am beginning to draw on women's and girls' physical and conceptual space(s) in transitions to higher education. Stories to structure activism, in terms of increasing the participation of females in the educational activities of Nepal, must come from women teachers' life histories, which reveal the path(s) to follow.