“Threshold concepts” have been explained as
concepts that can be difficult or counter-intuitive to understand but which
provide a new perspective and transformed way of experiencing phenomena once
they are understood (Meyer and Land 2003). I suggest that understanding that
science and engineering are gendered is a threshold concept.
Acker (1990) described gendered organizations. Such organizations reinforce
a gendered hierarchy. Men and women in these organizations adopt a culture
in which it is assumed that all of the characteristics associated with the
dominant gender, including communication styles, leadership styles and
family responsibilities, are normal and ideal.
Findings consistent with gendered cultures have arisen in engineering
organizations (Fletcher 1999, Gill et al. 2008) and engineering faculties
(Godfrey 2003). Individuals, scientific and engineering professions, and
consequently society, suffer due to gendered cultures. A recent study of
mine found the presence of subconscious bias towards stereotypically
masculine competencies among senior engineers who rated the importance of
competencies for engineering work (Male et al. 2009). This could undermine
development of stereotypically feminine competencies in engineering
education, bias recruitment and promotion of engineers, and contribute to
identity conflict. At the WISENet 25th Anniversary Forum, Rosemary White
highlighted the prevalence of subconscious gender bias in judgements made by
women and men related to recruitment and promotion in science (White 2009).
A difficult part of the threshold concept that science and engineering are
gendered is that the concept is both foreign and hidden for scientists and
engineers. That engineers' assessments could be affected
by culture, conflicts with their prowess in identifying with objectivity and
is therefore a foreign concept. It is difficult for people within a culture
to be aware of the culture and the assumptions arising from it (Ihsen 2005)
and therefore the concept is hidden. A method many female engineering
students use to survive the masculine culture is to demonstrate support for
its practices (Jolly 1996), which makes it difficult to acknowledge the
culture's limitations. I suggest that many engineers never accept an
understanding that engineering is gendered and many cross the threshold too
late. By this time they have already suffered from not having the
understanding that the concept provides, for example, by individualising
experiences that are systemic in the gendered culture.
We have a responsibility to society, and especially to female students in
science and engineering, to take steps to ensure that women and men in
science and engineering understand the threshold concept that science and
engineering are gendered. If more scientists and engineers understand this
threshold concept, then there will be a better chance that subconscious
gendered assumptions will be recognised and questioned, and eventually the
limitations arising from the gendered cultures of science and engineering
might be removed.
References
Acker, J., 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered
organizations.
Gender and Society, 4 (2), 139-158.
Fletcher, J., K., 1999.
Disappearing acts: Gender, power and relational
practice at work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gill, J., Sharp, R., Mills, J. & Franzway, S., 2008. I still wanna be an
engineer! Women, education and the engineering profession
European
Journal of Engineering Education, 33 (4), 391-402.
Godfrey, J.E., 2003.
The culture of engineering education and its
interaction with gender: A case study of a New Zealand university.
Thesis (PhD). Curtin University of Technology.
Ihsen, S., 2005. Special gender studies for engineering?
European
Journal of Engineering Education, 30 (4), 487-494.
Jolly, L., 1996. An ethnographic investigation of the first year engineering
student experience
The Third Australasian Women in Engineering Forum,
Finding the challenge in change: choices for women in engineering
University of Technology, Sydney.
Male, S.A., Bush, M.B. & Murray, K., 2009. Think engineer, think male?
European Journal of Engineering Education, 34 (5), 455-464.
Meyer, J.H.F. & Land, R., 2003. Enhancing teaching-learning environments in
undergraduate courses Occasional Report 4. Centre for Teaching, Learning and
Assessment, The University of Edinburgh.
http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk/docs/ETLreport4.pdf
White, R., 2009. WISENet where to from here?
WISENet Journal, 82,
16-19.
