Distancing as a Gendered Barrier
- 3 October 2011
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Gender & Society
- Vol. 25 (6), 696-716
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243211422717
Abstract
Gendered barriers to women’s advancement in STEM disciplines are subtle, often the result of gender practices, gender stereotypes, and gendered occupational cultures. Professional socialization into scientific cultures encourages and rewards gender practices that help to maintain gendered barriers. This article focuses more specifically on how individual women scientists’ gender practices potentially sustain gender barriers. Findings based on interview data from thirty women in academic STEM fields reveal that women draw on gendered expectations and norms within their disciplines to discursively distance themselves from other women they perceive as having deviated from such norms and expectations. The types of distancing in which these respondents engage reflect and support gendered structures, cultures, and practices that ultimately disadvantage women and obscure gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of women scientists’ distancing practices for efforts to change the gendered cultures of STEM disciplines.Keywords
This publication has 30 references indexed in Scilit:
- Perceiving Glass Ceilings? Meritocratic versus Structural Explanations of Gender Inequality among Women in Science and TechnologySocial Problems, 2010
- Women and science careers: leaky pipeline or gender filter?Gender and Education, 2005
- Creating Status of Women Reports: Institutional Housekeeping as ?Women's Work?NWSA Journal, 2004
- Academic Careers and Gender Equity: Lessons Learned from MIT1Gender, Work & Organization, 2003
- Crumbling Ivory Towers: Academic Organizing and its Gender EffectsGender, Work & Organization, 2003
- The Contradiction of the Myth of Individual Merit, and the Reality of a Patriarchal Support System in Academic CareersEuropean Journal of Women's Studies, 2001
- WORK HARD, PLAY HARDGender & Society, 1999
- THE POWER IN DEMOGRAPHY: WOMEN'S SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF GENDER IDENTITY AT WORK.The Academy of Management Journal, 1995
- The Effects of Organizational Demographics and Social Identity on Relationships among Professional WomenAdministrative Science Quarterly, 1994
- HIERARCHIES, JOBS, BODIES:Gender & Society, 1990