Chutes and Ladders: Gendered Systems of Privilege and Marginalization in University Science Teaching

Abstract

This article reports on how gender shapes the work of university science faculty. Theories of gender as a social system are used to disentangle how individuals, social interactions, and institutions (re)produce inequality by sustaining occupational gender segregation in higher education science. The study uses qualitative data from an ethnography of six teaching faculty at a large research-intensive public university in the United States. These teaching faculty, largely women in a department in which the majority are men, are ineligible for tenure and institutionally positioned as having lower status. The disadvantages are experienced in different ways across all the women on the teaching faculty. In contrast, men on the teaching faculty are recognizable as scientists and are by default treated with respect. As such, they are elevated regardless of their skill as teachers. This study offers a theoretical contribution to the current understanding of gendered occupations by suggesting that the experiences of the science teaching faculty can be conceptualized as chutes and ladders. Ladders are mechanisms reserved for the elevation of men. Chutes are reserved for women because regardless of how women approach their work, the gender system is constructed to hold them back.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ I use the term physical science in this article to blur the specific discipline and protect participants’ confidentiality. The U.S. National Science Foundation classifies physical science as chemistry, physics, astronomy, and material science.

² I recognize gender as a fluid social construct. For the purposes of this study, however, gender might be understood as binary, as all participants identified as women or men.

³ The term non–tenure line is used interchangeably with non–tenure track in this article, aligning with terminology in the cited literature.

⁴ Demonstrations of science, such as chemical reactions. These are provided to show how the science explained in lecture or a book happens in real life.