Alice Through the STEM Looking Glass: A Feminist Critique on the Perceived Crisis of Increasing Female Representation in STEM Education

• In Event: 25.042 - (Re)Considering STEM Education for Social Justice and Sustainability

Abstract

Question: This paper reports on the findings of a study employing frame analysis and visual frame analysis to uncover how selected news media and STEM related policy initiatives have framed the crisis and solution of too few women in STEM fields. Given the international importance placed on the subjects of mathematics, science, technology, and engineering (STEM), it is essential that education researchers pay close attention to the explicit and implicit objectives behind these policies and how the programs they influence are communicated to the public at large.
Framework: Employing the theoretical and methodological framework taken from Altheide’s (1997) “the problem frame” and Entman’s (2007) frame analysis, the paper sets out to discuss how normative views about the crisis of women in STEM are disseminated publically in the sense that it explains how a, “perceived reality [is made] salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (p. Entman, p. 52).
Method: Incorporating visual frame analysis, this paper uncovers the way in which ameliorate efforts to get girls in STEM programs represent their objectives through explicit visual imagery (McChesney, 2004; Goldstein, 2010). Through an extensive Internet and media search, the author generated an extensive list of programs tailored to meet the need to get more women and girls interested in STEM fields. Images and taglines of these programs are analyzed and critiqued through a critical feminist lens and critical discourse analysis framework.
Conclusions: Findings reveal a genderized picture of STEM programs tailored to women and girls that perpetuated white male dominate worldview. However, the analysis is complex presenting some programs leaving space for women and girls to create their own vision of what STEM may hold for the future. The paper discusses the problem of the lack of girls and women in STEM related career paths, how that problem is portrayed in multiple public texts, and identifies the the kinds of solutions given to address the appointed problem.
Significance: The author of this paper hopes that the knowledge generated by this study helps researchers, educators, and learners understand the present conditions, assumptions, and rationales that influence the way in which heteronormative biases are perpetuated in STEM education. This knowledge can move the conversation past the superficiality of economic and corporate objectives of STEM education to question if empowerment and equity can be achieved through these means given the Western patriarchal society that continues to pay women less for equal work and experience, refuse paid maternity leave, and ignore divergent voices on key women’s rights issues such as abortion. It is this space for a non-dichotomous future of STEM that the author concludes the paper.

Author

• Nataly Z. Chesky, SUNY - College at New Paltz