Gender and Science Education

Abstract

Research into the important issue of gender in science education has seemed to me to have had a somewhat ironic origin. In 1981 Alison Kelly produced The Missing Half: Girls and science. This book has ever since been regularly cited by researchers, including most feminist ones, as the inspiration for this sub-area of research in science education. It is also often quoted as the basis for the very strong movement of concern about gender issues in the science curriculum that arose during the 1980s in a number of countries. Internationally, this concern manifested itself in the Girls and Science and Technology (GASAT) organisation, that has held biennial conferences around these issues, beginning in Norway in 1981. The concern stemmed from the fact that girls were participating less than boys in school science, particularly the physical sciences, and consequently females were under-represented in most countries in the many professional roles for which success in these physical sciences is the gatekeeper.

My professor was a man, everyone I worked with were men — and I couldn’t handle it. I refused to work in that environment. Because I couldn’t laugh at their sexist jokes, if I couldn’t be a part of the “boys”, then I wasn’t really welcome. I wasn’t one of the original people strong enough to get things changed. I couldn’t do it by myself. I went searching for something else.

Doris Jorde, USA, later Norway