We know that women students and staff remain underrepresented in Higher Education STEM disciplines. Even in subjects where equivalent numbers of men and women participate, however, many women are still disadvantaged by everyday sexism. Our recent research found that women who study STEM subjects at undergraduate level in England were up to twice as likely as non-STEM students to have experienced sexism. The main perpetrators of this sexism were not university staff, however, but were men STEM degree students.
We cannot do effective corollary research if groups are not independently researched with their own data, a ‘minimum impact’ is still an impact, one which can be used to portray a larger or smaller effect than there is between the actual groups being compared against, especially when there’s a distinct call of ‘white males’ being a problem with no determination of class, culture or variance of religious vs non religious.
People are not blocks, they don’t vote as blocks they don’t work as blocks and they most assuredly do not behave as blocks. It’s important to specify, separate, and effectively research each group and sub group in order to determine the veracity rather than just applying a claim to a useful and popular current enemy, e.g. ‘white male’.
