Deboning the Fish: Hosting a Future Creating Workshop with Undergraduate Women in STEM

Abstract

Despite the broad scope of literature on the topic of women in STEM, women in male-dominated spaces within academia are rarely given the opportunity to speak openly about their disadvantages in the toxic STEM culture. The current study implements a Critical Utopian Action Research method, Future Creating Workshop (FCW), with undergraduate women in STEM in order to highlight women’s voices in the context of their experiences in their undergraduate STEM programs, and develop a salient and timely action plan with women in STEM that capitalizes on their strengths and works towards dismantling barriers to their STEM participation. Four key themes that arose from the FCW that highlighted barriers women in STEM majors face: (1) Social Inequalities, (2) Research Accessibility, (3) Unwelcoming Academic Environment, and (4) Lack of Confidence. A fifth theme, ‘Need for Mentorship,’ developed from the action phase of the FCW, in which the women came up with suggestions for programming moving forward. The current study is couched in a larger participatory action research project, Participatory Opportunity for Women Researchers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (POWER in STEM). The purpose of POWER as a whole is to understand the lived experiences of women in STEM at the University of Cincinnati, and mobilize this knowledge to create an action plan that will influence programming.