The Gender and Science Debate at Indian Institutes of Technology
出版項
2020
說明
1 online resource (205 pages)
文字
text
無媒介
computer
成冊
online resource
附註
Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 82-05, Section: B
Advisor: Sutton, Margaret;Peppler, Kylie
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2020
Includes bibliographical references
This ethnographic study, which spanned seven months, aims to produce a nuanced understanding of the experiences of Indian women students in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) programs at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK). The study explores early experiences that motivated them to enroll in CSE as well as their future aspirations. It analyzes the barriers to achieving the goals that they expect to encounter, and how existing policies and programs help promote gender equity on campus. It draws on 30 life histories of female students in the CSE programs, 40 semi-structured interviews with both men and women professors, deans, directors, and student leaders, more than 100 informal conversations with men and women scholars, and my observational field notes compiled at both IITM and IITK. The findings suggest that the campus culture empowers female students by providing opportunities for them to shape their beliefs and also question the internalized "common knowledge" mediated by their families and culture. However, women's occupations are still centered on the realm of domesticity. Indian women in CSE classrooms do not share the Western frameworks of feminism and science that emphasize computing as a male domain. That said, as women aspire to occupy greater positions of power, they are constrained by normative gender roles. Rituals of policy create mystification about these constraints which, in turn, allow men to wield power and attribute their success to individual merit rather than the systemic processes that reinforce structural gender inequities. A lack of understanding of the complexity of how gender and power relations are conceptualized has resulted in a depoliticized discourse on gender. Finally, this study provides a description of the intersectionality of gender, caste, and class embedded in the interplay of power structures, rituals, and myths about gender policies and programs
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest, 2021
