Posted on 03/29/2018 6:34:49 PM PDT by Eurotwit
A recent academic journal article claims that "meritocratic ideology" and "depoliticized" classroom environments contribute to a sense of exclusion and isolation among female students.
The professors argue that the emphasis on "meritocracy," "individualism," and "technical prowess" in engineering all contribute to a "masculine culture" that marginalizes women.
Four professors are warning that the “hegemony of meritocratic ideology” and other manifestations of “masculine culture” in engineering courses are detrimental to women.
Led by Carroll Serron, who teaches at the University of California-Irvine, the March 1 study contends that the sense of exclusion and isolation felt by female engineering students is exacerbated by the overwhelming “meritocratic ideology” in the field.
Though some scholars argue that engineering culture upholds hegemonic masculinity, Serron and her team take a different approach, arguing that it is not specifically “hegemonic masculinity” that hurts women but rather “meritocratic ideology.”
[RELATED: Meritocracy is a ‘tool of whiteness,’ claims math professor]
The professors are especially concerned with how engineering courses tend to be “depoliticized” compared to classes in other fields, which they contend is due in part to engineering culture’s emphasis on meritocracy and individualism.
“Socialization into the ideologies of meritocracy and individualism, coupled with a valorization of ‘technical’ prowess at the expense of ‘socially focused’ work processes, depoliticizes the gendered structure of the profession,” they write.
The professors add that this can be problematic because “students learn that raising concerns about marginalization—of themselves or others—is tangential or even distracting to what counts as the ‘real’ practical and objective work of engineering.”
“In its commitment to empirical science, technical thinking, merit, and individualism, engineering culture allocates what it sees as political issues, such as gender equality, to the realm of the social and subjective, therefore, off-limits,” the paper asserts. “Thus, the depoliticized culture of engineering also constitutes a degendered space where issues that may be of social concern to women in science are also devalued and marginalized.”
Based on a review of diary entries from three-dozen female engineering students, the professors conclude that female students are also guilty of upholding this problematic culture through their unwillingness to critique it.
“Rather than telling what [some researchers] describe as a subversive story...these women engineers are often reproductive agents of the ideology of meritocracy, helping perpetuate existing relations of power and inequality,” they write.
“Rather than resisting hegemonic meritocracy, these brilliant young women engineers are its active promoters,” they say, later adding that this commitment to meritocracy undermines women’s best interests, as it unwittingly reinforces the “gendered consequences of engineering professional hegemony.”
The study—“I’m not a Feminist, but…”: Hegemony of a Meritocratic Ideology and the Limits of Critique Among Women in Engineering”—was published in the recent issue of the journal Work and Occupations.
Stupid.
Professor Carroll Serron is trying to say, in her cute way, that “science is hard!”
I graduated with a BS in a true science and had to take every math class and chemistry twice.
Didn’t cry about it just did it.
This is what we get for throwing money at education when Leftist control the universities.
They create social sciences out of Leftist ideology. Then they populate these new sociology schools with SJWs.
These professors are like other professors, they have to publish or perish.
Thus, we get papers like this. These academics must find new socially misanthropic dragons to slay.
So, the new dragon is ‘meritocracy and individualism’. We can only hope that this paper is laughed off campus.
Note to self: Stay off recently constructed bridges.
Preach it!
Then if the bridge falls, a male scapegoat who was not even associated with the project will be found and punished, simply because he is male, thus an oppressor.
2+2 doe snot equal 4 if it hurts some idiot’s feeling they didn’t know that.
“In my opinion, the people who should rise up and challenge this nonsense first and foremost is intelligent people of colour and females and whatnot.”
They are going to ruin the reputation of female scientists the same way they did it for black physicians. It used to be that for a black to become a Dr meant he was at least as good as a white. Then they started admitting and graduating them using affirmative action. Now I wouldn’t trust one to work on my dog.
I have worked with many good female scientists and can tell you that they they are very capable of doing “empirical science”. There is no need to dumb down anything or raise questions about their ability.
“Four professors are warning that the “hegemony of meritocratic ideology” and other manifestations of “masculine culture” in engineering courses are detrimental to women. ... “Socialization into the ideologies of meritocracy and individualism, coupled with a valorization of ‘technical’ prowess at the expense of ‘socially focused’ work processes, depoliticizes the gendered structure of the profession,” they write.”
How would you like to be riding in a plane designed by these gals?
Give them a participation trophy and then send them to a Fauxcahontas Warren rally.
If the ghost of Marie Curie starts hunting these idiots down I swear I'd hand her the axe.
These ‘professors are full of s1ht.
Don’t EVER let them near an engineering project !
Carroll Seron
Professor of Criminology, Law & Society
Social Ecology II, Room 3389
Susan S. Silbey
Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology and Anthropology
Professor of Behavioral and Policy Sciences, Sloan School of Management
Erin A. Cech
Assistant Professor
Gender and Sexuality; Culture and Knowledge
Brian Rubineau
Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour
The enemy of the godless left Globalists is always the same one: white male heterosexual men who are competent and intelligent. They are the least likely to be manipulated by the garbage these Communists are selling, therefore they must be marginalized and eliminated.
Sloan School of Management
That’s MIT.
Massachusets Institute of Technology.
Yeah...
As you were...
Slouching toward mediocrity.
Dumbing down science to make idiots feel good about themselves.
Who decided that women and non-white people lack merit? That sounds sexist and racist to me.
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