:: netwoman's blog ::

What does a female researcher look like?

From Hilde :

"In 1990-1993, children between 7 and 15 were invited to send a drawing of a 'typical researcher'. Most of them illustrated men, chemists and 'mad scientists'.
The same invitation in 2005, to children 6-13 years, showed a larger variation, both in gender and in research fields. 28% of the scientists were drawn as women, 15% as gender neutral and 57% as male. And while the 'mad researcher' still is visualised as male, the female researcher is rather fancy dressed and apparently a kind of 'cool researcher'."

There are some other things to consider here as well. For example, class is apparent in the 'fancy dress' outfits. Also race and ethnicity as most are depicted as white. It's unfortunate that most kids still think of researchers as male. I think that if we specified the type of research, we would see much more gender disparities in the drawings.

posted by Netwoman @ 12:52 PM