US and Germany

The problem of women’s underrepresentation in physics is observed in countries all around the world¹, but let’s zoom in on the education context of the United States and Germany. I focus on these two countries for two reasons: First, I am familiar with the education system in both countries through first-hand experience — this helps me place findings in context; Second, a good portion of the published literature refers to US or German education contexts. Probably some findings generalize to other education systems or countries as well, but bear in mind this geographical-contextual focus when engaging with the information on this website. Note also that I do occasionally refer to empirical findings from other contexts — these instances are usually marked with a footnote and rationale. 

Secondary and tertiary education

I am aware that the problem extends beyond the stages of education this project is focusing on. The gender pay-gap, a challenging work-life-balance, discrimination when it comes to promotions and sexual harassment are real concerns that contribute to the problem². As an education researcher, I acknowledge but have to put aside these other factors to concentrate on the role of education, more specifically learning and teaching in middle/high schools and universities. 

Physics

Many publications and initiatives cast the net a little wider and include all STEM subjects. However, as we will see in more detail in the Analysis, there are considerable differences between, for example, biological sciences and physics. This is why I differentiate between different STEM subjects and really focus on physics. Again, occasionally I will refer to evidence from related subjects such as math or engineering but you will find a footnote on those references. 

Gender-related questions

This is perhaps the most challenging to define. Inequalities take on many different forms, and gender is only one of a potential multitude of causes for disadvantage. Ethnicity, socio-economic status, nationality, sexual identity and other factors can each be a cause for discrimination, and to make matters more complicated, they also intersect. If this project is about women being disadvantaged in physics, what about a black transwoman from Ghana compared to a white western-born woman like myself? Such questions are important and I hope I will one day go deeper to investigate them in detail as well. For this project, unfortunately, I leave the complexities of such intersectionality mostly for future research. To give but a glimpse, I present some data and a few studies that touch upon ethnicity in relation to gender-related issues in physics in the Analysis part. 

Please also note that I use the terms ‘female’ and ‘woman’ here interchangeably, neglecting the — important! — semantic and psychological difference. For this project, they both refer to the construction of gender. Similarly, I acknowledge that gender is fluid and not as binary as the dichotomy of female/male makes us believe, and encourage everyone to think about these words in this project as placeholders until such time as we develop more suitable means of linguistic expression for them.