2014;3-19.

Intersections of African American women in STEM and lingering racial and gender bias.

Catherine Martin-Dunlop, Whitney Johnson

UIID-AD: 1926

Abstract

A dearth of knowledge exists regarding the experiences of African American women during their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. During the mid-1990s, gender research rarely considered the effects of race (Scantlebury, 2012), and any "assumptions about the mismatch between women's interests and STEM often are based on the experiences of white women" (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010, p. 23). Despite the progress that women have made, the culture of science and mathematics continues to be a White male culture, with research giving "little attention to subgroups of women" (Hanson, 2009, p. 1). The study described in this chapter attempts to understand the successes and struggles of three African American women with undergraduate degrees in science and engineering who persisted for decades in the face of lingering racial and gender bias in order to reach their goals. The STEM acronym refers to four disciplines, but our chapter focuses on the women's experiences in only two of these areas. Only through deep understanding of the experiences of underrepresented groups such as African American women will educators be able to make significant headway at improving STEM education for the growing diverse workforce of the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)

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