What does Gender have to do with Physics?
- Date: Nov 27, 2020
- Time: 10:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Prof. Tomas Brage
- Dempt. of Physics Lund University, Sweden
- Location: Virtual Talk - Registration data will be sent before the event starts.
- Contact: gleichstellung@mpie.de
Physics is often seen, by Physicists not the least, as an objective
Science and we believe we are surrounded by a “culture without culture”.
At the same time our history, class and board rooms are dominated by
men. This is a paradox that should awaken the curiosity of anyone. In
this talk I will give some examples on how you can approach the question
on “what does gender have to do with Physics?”. There have been several
studies of Physicists and I will combine a discussion of these with
some general theory and personal experiences, to paint a picture on how
gender transgress Physics, like all other fields. By using the three
levels of change introduced by Schiebinger, I refer to studies of e.g.
Anthropologists, Sociologists and Psychologists. The bias against women,
due to the fact that Physics is stereotypically male, combined with the
“myth of meritocracy” could be one key to understand the lack of women
in the field. The talk is intended as a translation of results from
recent progress in Gender Science to an audience of non-experts in the
field, especially people within STEM-fields. The aim is to give some
answers to the question in the title, but also to show that this is an
extremely interesting and active research field.