Identities in/out of physics and the politics of recognition

Lucy Avraamidou

doi:10.1002/tea.21721

Abstract

AbstractFramed within intersectionality, this multiple case study explores women's participation in physics through the construct of physics identity and with a focus on recognition. The study is drawn upon an empirical life‐history exploration of three women: a native to Northwestern Europe, late‐career white woman and two immigrant women to Northwestern Europe, one is an undergraduate student of color, and the other, an early career Muslim woman. The data for this study were collected through multiple, semistructured, interviews in a period of 2 years, which were analyzed using a constant comparative method. Collectively, the three life‐histories tell stories of otherness, persistence, hope, and failure and they elucidate the kinds of identities that are deemed “in‐place” and “out‐of‐place” in physics. They showcase how the three women authored multiple identities that simply co‐existed for them, while for others were seen as conflicting and caused misrecognition. The findings point to four main insights: (a) recognition is neither linear nor binary and it comes in many different forms that range from explicit encouragement to no opposition; (b) it is drawn upon various sources including ones in the early years of life: family, school teachers, university instructor, students, and social community; (c) it is culture‐dependent and as such, it is influenced by factors on multiple levels, including cultural and gender stereotypes, organizational policies, racism, sexism, classicism, and other forms of discrimination. The implications of these findings speak to the need for: (a) systemic programs on how women are recognized by others and which seek to widen and diversify physics environments from the school level to the professional level; (b) research exploration of the politics of recognition and how they perpetuate the underrepresentation of women in physics; and, (c) disrupting monolithic theorizations of recognition and adopting intersectional approaches to exploring physics identity that value women's personal histories, subjectivities, and positionalities.

Highlights

In every region of the world, women researchers remain underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019; Unesco, 2018)
A wealth of policy reports and research studies have offered evidence throughout the last two decades of how individuals who belong in minority groups (e.g., Black women, women of color, ethnic minorities) have been traditionally excluded from physics and have experienced a lack of recognition (Hyater-Adams et al, 2019; Ong, 2005; Rosa & Moore-Mensah, 2016; Traxler et al, 2016). The findings of these studies are consistent and show that Black women and women of color have experienced a lack of recognition and have been excluded from physics due to structural and systemic barriers related to their racialized identities (Hyater-Adams et al, 2019; Ong, 2005; Rosa & Moore-Mensah, 2016; Traxler et al, 2016)
The findings showed that all participants exemplified strong identification with physics and experienced struggles in performing their physics identities due to structural and systemic barriers related to their racialized identities

Summary

Introduction

In every region of the world, women researchers remain underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2019; Unesco, 2018). More evidence of the fact that non-participation does not equal a lack of competence has been drawn from another set of studies to reveal how women's non-engagement in science is solely due to structural barriers including racism and sexism as well as social stereotypes and cultural expectations (e.g., Archer et al, 2020; Avraamidou, 2020b; Nasir et al, 2017). The study reported in this article focuses on physics because it remains a mainly male-dominated field where women are the least represented (Unesco, 2018). The underrepresentation of women in physics is problematic both from an equity perspective as well as talent utilization

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Results

Conclusion