College Chemistry Textbooks Fail on Gender Representation

Abstract

This study examines gender representation in 10 current (2016−2020) US college-level general chemistry textbooks. On average, females were found to constitute 30% of images and 3% of the named science, technology, engineering, math, and medical (STEMM) professionals in the index. A male name appears on average every four pages of text, while a female name appears every 250 pages of text. Male overrepresentation is not driven by a pedagogical need to include specific individuals, since the textbooks only have eight names in common. Gender imbalance was ubiquitous among all publishers examined and observed in both traditional and electronic texts. We speculate that male overrepresentation in chemistry textbooks reflects and perpetuates unconscious gender bias in STEMM.

Representations of women and men in popular chemistry textbooks in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

“…For high school textbooks in the study, the ratio of men to women represented in photographs, drawings, and names was 3.6, 30, and 5.8 respectively (Kahveci, 2010). Recent analysis of college level chemistry textbooks in the US generated similar outputs: women were represented in 30% of images and 3% of names listed (Becker and Nilsson, 2021).…”

A QuantCrit Investigation of Society’s Educational Debts Due to Racism and Sexism in Chemistry Student Learning

“…Few studies, however, have investigated equity in undergraduate chemistry education 1 . In our review of the literature, we found 18 articles that quantitatively measured race order inequities in undergraduate chemistry classrooms [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] . Studies that examined race classified students as either majority (White and Asian students) or underrepresented minority students (URM; Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Native students).…”

Not All Chemists are White Men: Incorporating Diversity in the General Chemistry Curriculum

“…As has been shown by others and confirmed here, when it comes to biographical material on chemists, the consensus curriculum is very small. 1,2 Even though textbook authors overwhelmingly choose to feature chemists who are white males, the list of chemists that are common to all of the textbooks that we analyzed is only 15 white men. The logical conclusion is that a supplemental chemistry curriculum to the mainstream curriculum can be created by individual faculty members that does not rely so heavily on featuring white men, regardless of what is included in any particular textbook.…”