Sexual harassment reported by undergraduate female physicists

Abstract

Sexual harassment occurs more frequently in male-dominated fields and physics is a more maledominated field than most other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Thus, it is important to examine the occurrence and impact of sexual harassment on women in physics. A survey of undergraduate women, who attended a conference for undergraduate women in physics, revealed that approximately three quarters (74.3%; 338=455) of survey respondents experienced at least one type of sexual harassment. This sample was recruited from a large fraction of undergraduate women in physics in the United States. We find that certain types of sexual harassment predict a negative sense of belonging and exacerbate the imposter phenomenon. The types of sexual harassment that predict these outcomes, both forms of gender harassment, while seemingly less severe types of harassment, have been found to have substantially negative personal and professional consequences. These findings are important since prior work has found that sense of belonging and the imposter phenomenon are related to students' persistence in STEM fields. Our results have implications for understanding and improving persistence in physics by informing the community about the occurrence of sexual harassment and its effects so that we can begin to work towards reducing its occurrence and mitigating its effects.

The context dependence of physics identity: Examining the role of performance/competence, recognition, interest, and sense of belonging for lower and upper female physics undergraduates

“…The instrument was also reviewed by science education experts and by the National Organizing Committee of the CUWiP Conferences. The instrument was administered to CUWiP attendees in Fall 2014 and 2015 prior to the current version and was further assessed for reliability and validity, and was also tested in later administrations (Aycock et al, 2019; Pelaez, 2017). Reliability for different sub‐scales ranged from 0.7 to 0.9 for Cronbach's alpha.…”

From School to University: An Overview on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Gender in Brazil

“…It is noted that among Brazilian Physics Society, women represent nearly one fourth of the members, with similar numbers in Brazilian Astronomic Society. This leaky pipeline effect indicates being associated not only with social and historical constructions attributed to women by patriarchy, but also to gender violence suffered by students and scientists in Exact Sciences in universities, as discussed by Morcelle [14] and Aycock [15] in their works made in Brazil and United States, respectively. Demonstrating that still occur severe violations of human rights in academic and research space.…”

Sense of belonging within the graduate community of a research-focused STEM department: Quantitative assessment using a visual narrative and item response theory

“…Sense of belonging is defined as the extent to which a person believes that they are accepted and included as a legitimate member of an academic community and that their presence and contributions to that community are valued [16,[19][20][21]. It encompasses the sociopsychological aspects of academic membership that are not directly related to intellect-such as a sense of shared identity, social connectedness with peers, and mental health [22]-and is known to negatively impact persistence among women and underrepresented minorities (URMs) in STEM [6,16,19,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30].…”