The Borderlands of Education by Camacho Michelle Madsen;Lord Susan M.;

Author:Camacho, Michelle Madsen;Lord, Susan M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

In this example, the student describes how she was perceived by her internship manager as “giggly” and concludes that she has to appear more “manly.” Her comments echo those of the other student presented earlier who described having to take on a different persona in working with men in academic groups. This student’s narrative about her internship subtly hints at the tensions involved in working in a field in which women sense that their gender is so out of place that they must construct new gender norms for themselves, becoming more masculine, in order to fit in. This poses a burden for some women who must construct a new gender-coded script for themselves because they believe this will have a more positive effect on how they are treated in the field.

When Latinas were asked about stereotypes, they reflected in terms of gender, not ethnicity, and described stereotypes that emerge because of their low representation as women in engineering. One said, “I don’t think that people look at me and automatically [think], ‘she’s dumb,’ or, ‘she won’t be as good of an engineer.’ I don’t know, that’s just how I feel.” Another disagreed, “It just seems to me at least that there are some guys here that just get things. Like they don’t spend any time outside class, you know, get an A on the test, and, whereas I spend hours upon hours outside of class getting to know the material. . . . My other friends that are girls, they do the same thing. We just—we just work at it, and I think sometimes guys have this gross stereotype that girls have to work at it a lot harder than guys do, and therefore . . . they think that they’re more superior than you because they get it before you do.” When asked by the Researcher, “And is that true, or is that a stereotype?” respondents had much to say about this. One added, “I think it’s just a gross stereotype. I may not get it right away in class, but if I spend a few hours after class, I’ll be able to understand it at the same level that you do.” Another qualifies the response, “But I think that depends, because I’ve met—I’ve seen such smart girls in class . . . [Respondents murmur agreement] they get it just like that, even faster than guys. So the problem is that here we have so many guys, that of course [given] the amount of guys, you’re going to have a higher number of guys getting it faster than a high number of girls getting it faster. [P]robably for every ten guys that get it faster, we only have one girl who gets it faster. That’s because of the difference in the number of people. But I think it’s just the same. If we had the same amount of girls as the same amount of guys that we have here, it’d be basically the same.” Here we see that the women concur that perceptions of women’s intelligence are affected by the low numbers of women.

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