Abstract
This chapter explores how narratives written by girls who have chosen to study subjects where they are strongly underrepresented, such as technology, engineering, mathematics and physics, challenge common perceptions about girls and/in science. Developing a gender-critical narrative approach, I explore whether communicating broad generalizations based on sex/gender differences stands the risk of losing important nuances that again might lead to the cementation of gender stereotypes.
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Notes
- 1.
For a historical review of girls and science, see for example Brotman and Moore (2008).
- 2.
I will mainly use the term “girl” throughout the text. The category ranges from early childhood to young women in higher education and young women generally in society, the latter constituting the context for this chapter.
- 3.
See discussion of the concept “socio-cultural” in James Wertsch’s book, Voices of the Mind: A sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action (1991), where he also includes the historical dimension in socio-cultural.
- 4.
Such tacit or implicit knowledge can be seen in relation to what Svein Sjøberg (2000a), calls the “body-language” of science, which is a metaphor to “describe the often hidden and implicit messages about the nature of science (as well as scientists as persons), aspects relating to the perceived values, norms and ideologies of science”.
- 5.
See Chap. 4 in this book, for a more detailed conceptualization of gender in third wave feminism.
- 6.
But I also sympathize with theories which move beyond postmodernism and post-structuralism in the sense that they theorize gender as historical-socio-cultural and / or semiotic-discursively constructed, while also emphasizing agency of materiality (artifacts, technology, body, clothes, time, text, etc.) See for example Lykke (2012) and Barad (2007).
- 7.
Norms exist in the form stereotypical perceptions about girls’ educational choices, cultural barriers at school, in research communities, in the world of academia, in the world of work and in ‘society-at-large’. Such discourses can be reproduced without resistance, if we take knowledge for granted.
- 8.
For more information about the project, see: naturfagsenteret.no (in English). http://www.naturfagsenteret.no/c1515605/prosjekt/vis.html?tid=1519446
- 9.
This is consistent with postmodern philosophy that does not believe there exists an entity that provides a stable inner core. But we are, according to a postmodern mindset popularly said, different people at different times and in different situations, what Gilles Deluze calls a nomadic subject – a term Braidotti (1994) borrows from Deluze.
- 10.
See Quinn and Lyons (2011) for a critical look at students’ perceptions of school science and science careers, which is most relevant for the discussion in this chapter.
- 11.
May be translated as “innovation camp” or “entrepreneurship camp”.
- 12.
The Norwegian research project Lily has served as a pilot to the IRIS project. See Sinnes & Løken (2012) for a more detailed analysis of gendered assumptions in the Lily report.
- 13.
See also Chap. 18 which describes how traditional male STEM students, more than females, tend to “rely on pre-established roles, which in the case of science and technology are easily available and provide them with reassurance.”
- 14.
See Karen Barad (2007) for a discussion of the concept of intra-activity.
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Løken, M. (2015). When Research Challenges Gender Stereotypes: Exploring Narratives of Girls’ Educational Choices. In: Henriksen, E., Dillon, J., Ryder, J. (eds) Understanding Student Participation and Choice in Science and Technology Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7793-4_17
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