Gender Perspective on Affective Dimensions of Chemistry Learning - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 76

Girls are then implicitly forced to behave like “girls” and to act feminine. The major
distinction with the essentialist feminist perspective is the assertion that the differ-
ences between women and men spring from their upbringing and not from their
nature (e.g., different hormones) (Rosser, 1997 ).
The major third-wave feminist strand, postmodernist feminism, rejects the idea
that as claimed, the various feminisms would address all women s needs. As Rosser

( 1997 ) states, “postmodernism dissolves the universal subject, and postmodern
feminism dissolves the possibility that women may speak in a unified voice or
that they may be addressed universally” (p. 99), because factors such as race, class,
nationality, and sexual orientation make women different from each other.
Poststructuralist feminists, on the other hand, “have sought to deconstruct existing
metanarratives and to develop new theoretical approaches which insist on historical
and geographical specificity and no longer claim universal status” (Weedon, 1997 ,
p. 172). Instead of making generalizations while addressing women

'

s oppression,

'

poststructuralist feminists argue for attending to women s differences both within

and between historical periods or cultures. They deny a fixed (gendered) “self” and
view this self as being constructed through language-articulated experience.
According to Barton ( 1998 ), third-wave feminism demands “self-reflexivity,”
which is about being aware of one

'

s own positionality (personal history, biography,
gender, class, ethnicity, etc., in a specific context and history) while making sense
of the world or taking certain actions.

'

3.2 How Women Remain on the Margins of Science

The fact that women are less likely to enter science, mathematics, and engineering
majors at the college level than men is very closely related with women s histor-

ically subordinated status. In a sense, women are “suffering” prolonged effects of
alienation from these fields since ancient times. As discussed before, the forces that
keep women away from these disciplines originate from the nineteenth-century
(and earlier) conservative scientists ' insistent work of justifying cultural expecta-
tions of women and the sexual division of labor.
The “masculine” structure of science as a discipline (Lederman, 2003 ),
established in the past by not accepting women as participants, has had its effects
as an invisible “repelling” force from these fields (Nichols, Gilmer, Thompson, &
Davis, 1998 ). Furthermore, with the rise of the theory of complementarity in the late
eighteenth century, certain natural sciences were thought as “more appropriate” for
women, and one of them was botany (Schiebinger, 1989 ). Societal expectations can
be very powerful in shaping personal orientations. More recently, researchers find
that girls hold more positive attitudes toward biology than any other natural science
(Brotman & Moore, 2008 ; Vockell & Lobonc, 1981 ; Weinburgh, 1995 ). A large-
scale survey study conducted with more than 2,500 scientists in research universi-
ties in the USA reports that most of the reasons for the differences in the distribution
of women in biology and physics are stated as being limited mentoring for women

'