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A Gendered Approach to Science Ethics for US and UK Physicists

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Abstract

Some research indicates that women professionals—when compared to men—may be more ethical in the workplace. Existing literature that discusses gender and ethics is confined to the for-profit business sector and primarily to a US context. In particular, there is little attention paid to gender and ethics in science professions in a global context. This represents a significant gap, as science is a rapidly growing and global professional sector, as well as one with ethically ambiguous areas. Adopting an international comparative perspective, this paper relies on 121 semi-structured interviews with US and UK academic physicists to examine how physicists perceive the impact of gender on science ethics. Findings indicate that some US and UK physicists believe that female scientists handle ethical issues within science in a feminine way whereas their male colleagues approach ethics in a masculine way. Some of these physicists further claim that these different approaches to science ethics lead to male and female scientists’ different levels of competitiveness in academic physics. In both the US and the UK, there are “gender-blind” physicists, who do not think gender is related to professional ethics. Relying on physicists’ nuanced descriptions this paper contributes to the current understanding of gender and science and engineering ethics.

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Notes

  1. This study has received the approval from our university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).

  2. Completing 71 interviews with 132 potential respondents in our main sample led to a response rate of 53.8 %. It is important to note, however, that this is the most conservative calculation. We also have 32 potential participants who agreed to conduct an interview with us but were unable to schedule an interview due to schedule conflicts and other kinds of practical difficulties.

  3. Conducting 90 interviews among 179 potential respondents yielded a response rate of 50.28 %. But, again, this is a very conservative calculation given that we were unable to schedule interviews with some of the respondents; 15 participants in addition to the 90 who completed the interviews, were not scheduled due to practical difficulties.

  4. Different from questions in survey-based quantitative studies (Cresswell 1997; Rubin and Rubin 2011; Strauss and Corbin 1998), in this question, we are not seeking yes or no answers. We are interested in respondents’ in-depth and nuanced narratives.

  5. We borrow this particular label of “gender-blind ideology”—abstract liberalism and gender minimization—from Bonilla-Silva’s (2006) argument about “color-blind racism.”

  6. US_08, female, associate professor, elite university, conducted 03/25/2013.

  7. UK_09, male, professor, elite university, conducted 09/19/2013.

  8. US_17, female, non-elite university, assistant professor, conducted 04/03/2013.

  9. UK_42, male, reader, elite university, conducted 02/26/2013.

  10. US_17, female, assistant professor, non-elite university, conducted 04/03/2013.

  11. UK_42, male, reader, elite university, conducted 02/26/2013.

  12. US_08, female, associate professor, elite university, conducted 03/25/2013.

  13. US_21, male, associate professor, elite university, conducted 04/15/2013.

  14. UK_14, male, lecturer, elite university, conducted 09/30/2013.

  15. UK_76, male, lecturer, non-elite university, conducted 05/20/2014.

  16. US_21, female, associate professor, elite university, conducted 04/15/2013.

  17. US_08, female, associate professor, elite university, conducted 03/25/2013.

  18. US_06, male, assistant professor, non-elite university, conducted 03/22/2013.

  19. UK_73, female, 40 years old, senior lecturer, non-elite university, conducted 05/10/2014.

  20. US_13, male, associate professor, non-elite university, conducted 03/26/2013.

  21. US_79, male, professor, elite university, conducted 11/06/2013.

  22. US_11, male, non-elite university, conducted 03/26/2013.

  23. UK_62, male, academic fellow, non-elite university, conducted 04/04/2014.

  24. UK_70, male, professor, non-elite university, conducted 04/30/2014.

  25. Our data is based on the perception from our participants. It may have implications for but does not necessarily indicate the actual productivity of female physicists. Other studies, such as Long (1992), assert that although female scientists may publish less, on average, papers that are produced by female scientists receive more citations.

  26. The conceptualization of indirect discrimination is borrowed from Essed’s (1996) discussion about the interplay of race, gender, and ethnicity.

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Acknowledgments

Research for this paper was funded by National Science Foundation EESE Grant 1237737, “Ethics among Physicists in Cross-National Context,” Elaine Howard Ecklund, PI, Kirstin R.W. Matthews and Steven Lewis, co-PIs.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Rice University, MS-28, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX, USA

    Elaine Howard Ecklund & Di Di

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  1. Elaine Howard Ecklund
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Correspondence to Elaine Howard Ecklund.

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Ecklund, E.H., Di, D. A Gendered Approach to Science Ethics for US and UK Physicists. Sci Eng Ethics 23, 183–201 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9751-8

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