Professional Cultures and Inequality in STEM

Can the culture of STEM help reproduce inequality?The professional cultures of STEM, which give each discipline its particular “feel” and unite discipline members under a taken-for-granted system of meanings and values, are not benign. Drawing from several NSF-funded survey and interview-based studies, I argue that these professional cultures can have built within them disadvantages for women and other under-represented groups in STEM. Specifically, I discuss the role of three particular cultural ideologies - schemas of scientific excellence, depoliticization and the meritocratic ideology - in producing these disadvantages. I end by explaining why decisions (e.g. admissions, hiring, tenure) that partially rely on assessments of individuals’ “fit” with professional cultures are particularly important to critically examine for their potential to contribute to inequality.

Speaker: Erin Cech, Univ. of Michigan