A Gendered Approach to Science Ethics for US and UK Physicists

Abstract

Some research indicates that women professionals-when compared to men-may be more ethical in the workplace. Existing literature that discusses gender and ethics is confined to the for-profit business sector and primarily to a US context. In particular, there is little attention paid to gender and ethics in science professions in a global context. This represents a significant gap, as science is a rapidly growing and global professional sector, as well as one with ethically ambiguous areas. Adopting an international comparative perspective, this paper relies on 121 semi-structured interviews with US and UK academic physicists to examine how physicists perceive the impact of gender on science ethics. Findings indicate that some US and UK physicists believe that female scientists handle ethical issues within science in a feminine way whereas their male colleagues approach ethics in a masculine way. Some of these physicists further claim that these different approaches to science ethics lead to male and female scientists' different levels of competitiveness in academic physics. In both the US and the UK, there are "gender-blind" physicists, who do not think gender is related to professional ethics. Relying on physicists' nuanced descriptions this paper contributes to the current understanding of gender and science and engineering ethics.

Engineering Skills: Systematic Review in the Field of Professional Ethics

“…Formal and informal rules compliance (Ecklund & Di, 2017;Hojem & Lagesen, 2011;Lurie & Mark, 2016;Maria Gil-Martin et al, 2010;Miñano et al, 2017;Ogunsanmi, 2016;Zhu & Jesiek, 2019) SC6 Professionalism (Abdul-Rahman et al, 2011;Ballesteros-Sanchez et al, 2017;Burnik & Košir, 2017;De Campos et al 2020a, 2020b, 2020cFischer et al, 2019;Lurie & Mark, 2016;Monteiro et al, 2017;Ogunsanmi, 2016;Trope & Ressler, 2016;Zhu & Jesiek, 2017) SC7 Teamwork (Ballesteros-Sanchez et al, 2017;Burnik & Košir, 2017;De Campos et al, 2020a, 2020b, 2020cFernández-Sanz, et al, 2017;Fischer et al, 2019;Itani & Srour, 2016;Jafari-Marandi et al, 2019;Knobbs & Grayson, 2012;Masoud & Al Muhtaseb, 2019;Matturro et al, 2019) SC8 Leadership (Ballesteros-Sanchez et al, 2017;Burnik & Košir, 2017;De Campos, et al 2020a, 2020b, 2020cCustovic, 2015;Fischer et al, 2019;Karmis, 2017;…”

“…The content analysis highlighted that the literature has valued the approach on Professional Ethics in the context of teaching and exercising Engineering. However, some researchers point out that ethical education in schools is insufficient (Cheruvalath, 2019;Ecklund & Di, 2017;Vu Anh & Le Quoc, 2019;Zhu & Jesiek, 2017), which emphasis the need for a pragmatic (Zhu & Jesiek, 2017) and multidisciplinary approach (Staniškis & Katiliute, 2016;Verbic et al, 2017).…”