New media, old images: constructing online representations of women and men in science, engineering and technology

Abstract

This paper looks at online representations of women and men in science, engineering and technology. We show that these representations largely re/produce dominant gender discourses. We then focus on the question: How are gender clichéd images re/produced online? Drawing on a discursive analysis of data from six interviews with web authors, we argue that there are two reasons why their awareness of gender issues does not always translate into website content. First, web authors think of themselves as working within either journalistic or scientific cultures, and draw on associated criteria, which exclude gender equity, to make content decisions. Second, they construct distinctions between representation and reality, judging representations on their ‘empirical realism’ (how accurately they represent a reality seen to exist outside the text), foreclosing considerations of their productive power. Finally, we draw on interview data with young people to show that these constrain the meanings made by web users.

Keywords:

• science
• technology
• online media
• representation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the UKRC for funding this research; Arani Ilakuberan, the project administrator; and all the research participants. We are very grateful to Gill Kirkup and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

We use the word cliché as a way of describing representations that follow over-used and predictable patterns, in this case in relation to gender. We do this in order to avoid using the word stereotype which derives from social psychology and suggests that there is a ‘truth’ that is being distorted within the stereotypical representation. The constant comparison of representation to reality is something that we want to move away from in this paper.

Pseudonyms are used throughout with the London participants choosing their own and the others being assigned by the researchers.

Brian Cox is a UK physicist who has become well known through his extensive broadcasting work – most notably the series Wonders of the Solar System (2010) and Wonders of the Universe (2011) (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)). His impact has been read as so great that the recent upturn in take-up of science subjects at 16+ in the UK has been attributed to a ‘Brian Cox effect’.