Speaker
Description
Although some progress has been made over the last 50 years, physics still has one of the largest gender gaps of the sciences. The gap has been attributed to a variety of causes, including aspects of culture, early exposure to STEM, and gender-based psychologies, but few studies approach this issue centering the perspectives and experiences of women in physics. We focus on the role of family to understand the engagement and success of undergraduate women in physics. In this presentation, we will discuss our qualitative analysis of 120 surveys and 31 interviews of undergraduate physics students (92% identifying as female). We relate our findings to recent established STEM- and physics identity frameworks (including Carlone & Johnson and Hazari), and present new aspects emerging from our data.
