Gender and the Workplace

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We continue to witness the gender gap in academia, even though more women have entered the workforce and educational setting.  Despite the alarming statistics that continue to show that women are underrepresented in high ranking positions, very little is know as to how and why this continues to happen. I worked with 17 undergraduates studying in humanities and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. at a public university in Colombia to answer the question: How do undergraduate students position themselves in terms of gender in academic writing? The participants signed up for the academic writing courses offered at the university to improve their writing in English for research, internship, scholarship, and employment opportunities. I collected data using students’ artifacts (brainstorm maps, cover letters, résumés, and online responses), pupils’ diaries, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions. Once I had obtained the data, I used aspects of the Grounded Theory Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to find commonalities among instruments, participants, and theories. The results revealed that both men and women use an array of femininities and masculinities to position themselves. However, gender positioning is still marked by the division of labor and gender role expectations. For example, the female participants position themselves using a collective “we” to describe their supportive role in research groups. Meanwhile, the male participants are more likely to describe themselves through hegemonic masculinities, which appears to highlight the participant’s strengths over his weaknesses. The results also showed that both male and female students could benefit from having spaces to reflect on their emotions as a way to challenge gender stereotypes and ascribed positions. In doing so, men and women can work together to restructure an employment system that prefers hegemonic masculinities instead of femininities.