Professional Cultures and Inequality in STEM

The Hanson Center for Inclusive STEM Education is delighted to be hosting Dr. Erin Cech, Associate Professor of Sociology (with a courtesy appointment in Mechanical Engineering) & Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Cech is the author of two recent books Misconceiving Merit: Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering (published in 2022 by the University of Chicago Press and co-authored with Dr. Mary Blair-Loy who will be speaking at Lafayette in April) and The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (published in 2021 by the University of California Press). Dr. Cech research is funded by the National Science Foundation and she is the author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. Professor Cech's research examines cultural mechanisms of inequality reproduction: “specifically, how inequality is reproduced through processes that are not overtly discriminatory or coercive, but rather those that are built into seemingly innocuous cultural beliefs and practices.”

Dr. Cech’s presentation is co-sponsored by the Hanson Center for Inclusive STEM Education, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Africana Studies Program, the Anthropology and Sociology Department, the Engineering Division, and the Psychology Department. 

Reception to follow presentation in the Oechsle Hall Lobby.

Abstract

Can the culture of STEM help reproduce inequality? The professional cultures of STEM, which give each discipline its particular “feel” and unite discipline members under a taken-for-granted system of meanings and values, are not benign. Drawing from several NSF-funded survey and interview-based studies, Dr. Cech argues that these professional cultures can have built within them disadvantages for women, people of color, and other under-represented groups in STEM. Specifically, she will discuss the role of three particular cultural ideologies—schemas of scientific excellence, depoliticization, and the meritocratic ideology—in producing these disadvantages. Dr. Cech will end by explaining why decisions (e.g. admissions, hiring, tenure) that partially rely on assessments of individuals’ “fit” with professional cultures are particularly important to critically examine for their potential to contribute to inequality.