IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/inorps/v11y2018i02p267-290_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From “Her” Problem to “Our” Problem: Using an Individual Lens Versus a Social-Structural Lens to Understand Gender Inequity in STEM

Author

Listed:
  • Miner, Kathi N.
  • Walker, Jessica M.
  • Bergman, Mindy E.
  • Jean, Vanessa A.
  • Carter-Sowell, Adrienne
  • January, Samantha C.
  • Kaunas, Christine

Abstract

Increasing the representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is one of our nation's most pressing imperatives. As such, there has been increased lay and scholarly attention given to understanding the causes of women's underrepresentation in such fields. These explanations tend to fall into two main groupings: individual-level (i.e., her) explanations and social-structural (i.e., our) explanations. These two perspectives offer different lenses for illuminating the causes of gender inequity in STEM and point to different mechanisms by which to gain gender parity in STEM fields. In this article, we describe these two lenses and provide three examples of how each lens may differentially explain gender inequity in STEM. We argue that the social-structural lens provides a clearer picture of the causes of gender inequity in STEM, including how gaining gender equity in STEM may best be achieved. We then make a call to industrial/organizational psychologists to take a lead in addressing the societal-level causes of gender inequality in STEM.

Suggested Citation

  • Miner, Kathi N. & Walker, Jessica M. & Bergman, Mindy E. & Jean, Vanessa A. & Carter-Sowell, Adrienne & January, Samantha C. & Kaunas, Christine, 2018. "From “Her” Problem to “Our” Problem: Using an Individual Lens Versus a Social-Structural Lens to Understand Gender Inequity in STEM," Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 267-290, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:inorps:v:11:y:2018:i:02:p:267-290_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S175494261800007X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goli, Imaneh & Azadi, Hossein & Najafabadi, Maryam Omidi & Lashgarara, Farhad & Viira, Ants-Hannes & Kurban, Alishir & Sklenička, Petr & Janečková, Kristina & Witlox, Frank, 2023. "Are adaptation strategies to climate change gender neutral? Lessons learned from paddy farmers in Northern Iran," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    2. Tao, Hung-Lin & Cheng, Hui-Pei, 2022. "Parental and sibling influence on study field choice: Gender-stereotypical or field preference transmission," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:inorps:v:11:y:2018:i:02:p:267-290_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/iop .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.