By Gwen D'Arcangelis

Science has been critiqued by feminists on two counts-on one hand, for the low numbers and lack of equity for girls and women in science, and on the other hand for the less visible sexist and gendered practices and concepts in science itself. While these two issues are certainly related-the exclusion of women from science is at least partially responsible for gendered concepts such as "sexual selection", where human females are biologically programmed to be coy and males to be aggressive in mating, there is also much tension between those who wish to leave the core of science as is, so long as girls and women have increased access to it, and those who wish to change the very way that science is conceptualized and practiced.

With this quandary in mind, I set out to explore these issues by interviewing two physical chemists--both women-currently involved in science education. I asked them about their experiences as girls/women in science and about their perspectives on the matter of science access for girls/women and science as gendered or sexist. Maria Alicia Lopez-Freeman is (since 1998) the Executive Director of the California Science Project (CSP), a university-based, state-wide professional development network for teachers of science at all levels. CSP aims to improve science education for all students, and focuses especially on schools that are low-performing. Jodye Selco served as Director of the Center for Education and Equity in Mathematics, Science, and Technology (CEEMaST) since 2002. CEEMaST is a project of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona that promotes the study of science and mathematics by all students, with a particular outreach to females and ethnic minority group members.

Both Maria and Jodye were interested in science from a young age, while still in elementary school. Jodye was interested in how things worked and recalled being fascinated by the cause of electrical storms. Maria, despite the fact that she was not exposed to formal science education until high school (the schools in her hometown of East LA lacked funding), became interested in chemistry and wanted to be a chemist after visiting geological exhibits in natural history museums with her father. As young girls, both hated biology, excelled at mathematics, and loved physics and chemistry.

As a college student, Jodye considered mathematics, physics, and chemistry as possible subjects to specialize in but because the mathematics teachers were unsupportive of her, and she could not see how mathematics could be applied to real world problems she looked elsewhere for her major. Jodye's physics teachers were similarly discouraging of her promise as a physicist; some blatantly declaring to her that being female and being a physicist were incompatible. Jodye finally decided on chemistry because she had received support from some of her chemistry teachers.

Unlike Jodye, Maria's choice to pursue chemistry was not affected by the barriers for women until after college. Maria, who had attended an all-female Catholic college as well as an all-female high school, was taught by female faculty who were themselves heavily involved in their professional scientific careers. Maria described her career choices as being totally open and supported until she attempted to get an industry job, while pondering graduate school, in the late 1960's. Maria described not getting any call backs from employers. She was also asked inappropriate interview questions about her physical abilities, abilities to work with men, and her marriage plans. One interviewer even flat out told her that he would not hire her because she was engaged to be married, and she therefore would prove to be an unreliable employee because she would need to take time off for children. This unfriendly climate would prove to be a mixed-blessing--women may not have been wanted in industry, but they were certainly wanted in science teaching. Maria easily found herself a teaching job through a friend and discovered that her true passion lay in the challenges of teaching high school science and not at the laboratory bench.

The larger issues of girls/women's access to science continued to affect Maria and Jodye throughout their careers. Once Jodye decided to major in chemistry, she looked for a laboratory to work in. She encountered much discrimination. One professor would not even let her work in his laboratory, stating explicitly that females were not cut out for chemistry. Another professor sexually harassed her for years, beginning when she was a freshman, despite the fact that she had filed a formal complaint. Graduating from college in the early 1980's, Jodye decided that she wanted to continue on to a Ph.D., especially since it was harder to get a job with just a bachelor's degree in Chemistry. At her first job after graduate school Jodye was paid a lower wage than what she had been promised on paper. Even Jodye's threats to sue were of no avail, and she eventually found herself another job at the University of Redlands where she stayed for fifteen years.

Both Maria and Jodye are currently working on issues of access for girls and others who have been marginalized in science education. Maria has always had an interest in the policy side of education, and left teaching after fifteen years to work on improving science education. Maria described the barriers, such as the "old boys network" that exists in universities and the state Department of Education, to keep women out of the top decision-making positions affecting science education. In her work Maria notices how in industry women tend to be concentrated in the foundation and public relations side, whereas men are concentrated in the industry management and research-and-development side. The same gender division-of-labor can be said to explain the preponderance of women scientists in teaching fields and not in research.

In 2002, Jodye moved into the realm of science education in her role as the Director of CEEMaST, which she describes as aiming to change the way we think about doing science and math education. Jodye wants to change the way that chemistry is taught and to make it more accessible and relevant to students. For example, Jodye describes her work on overhauling the standard physical chemistry textbooks, which are currently extremely boring and a-contextual. She believes that this discourages many students, particularly girls and ethnic minorities, from understanding the problems or from thinking that these problems relate to their lives. Jodye's own experience of having had her learning style be invalidated by teachers has led her to her current work where she is changing the nature of science teaching making it more open to all types of learning styles, and accounting for the fact that girls and ethnic minorities are differently situated in life than white boys, to whom science education is typically geared.

Barriers to science for girls and women clearly occur throughout all educational levels and aspects, from elementary school to the professorial level, from the realm of school to government and industry. If Jodye had not been hired into the male-dominated Chemistry department at Redlands, how would female science students have fared without a role model and friendly encouragement? If there continues to be few women like Maria and Jodye in directorship roles, how can science education issues affecting girls and other groups typically marginalized from science be adequately represented? If our worldviews and life experiences can shape the way that we understand scientific concepts, then can they not also affect the way that we construct scientific concepts? If girls and women have been and continue to be excluded from the practices that shape science in the classroom and in the laboratory, what are the implications for the nature of science itself?


Gwen D'Arcangelis is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Women's Studies Programs