Femininities in STEM: Outsiders Within

Pat O’Connor, Clare O’Hagan and Breda Gray
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Pat O’Connor: University of Limerick, Ireland; University College Dublin, Ireland
Clare O’Hagan: University of Limerick, Ireland
Breda Gray: University of Limerick, Ireland

Work, Employment & Society, 2018, vol. 32, issue 2, 312-329

Abstract: This article describes a typological framework with axes relating to career and (non-work) relationship commitment to show how a specific cohort of women enact femininity(ies) in the context of the institutionalised practices that define science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as a masculine domain. Based on the accounts of 25 women in such disciplines in an Irish university, four types are identified: careerist femininity; individualised femininity; vocational femininity; and family-oriented femininity. All of these are constituted in relation to the meanings attached to the masculinist STEM career which performatively render women outsiders. The typology moves beyond the career/paid work and work/life dichotomies to encompass both the re-envisioning of career as vocation (Type 3) and the development of a highly individualised lifestyle orientation based on a high commitment to both (Type 2). It points to the variation, complexity and contradictions in how women do femininities in the academic STEM environment.

Keywords: career; career commitment; case study; femininities; Irish; outsiders; relational commitment; STEM; typology; university (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:32:y:2018:i:2:p:312-329

DOI: 10.1177/0950017017714198

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