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Centering Disabled Women in STEM Professions: A Critique of Identity Isolation in STEM Data

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Empowering Change: Cultivating Inclusive and Sustainable Futures in STEM Education

Tagged Divisions

Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/48450

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Paper Authors

biography

Sydni Alexa Cobb University of Texas at Austin Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-9816-9100

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Sydni Cobb is a Mechanical Engineering doctoral student and graduate research assistant at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from the illustrious North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 2015 and entered the engineering workforce. She has since completed her MSE at The University of Texas at Austin and is currently working toward her PhD.

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Ariel Chasen University of Texas at Austin Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6889-3202

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PhD candidate in STEM education at University of Texas at Austin. and is a Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering Education. She received her B.S in biology and her Masters in Science Education from Brandeis University. Her work centers disabled experiences in post-secondary STEM settings.

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Chandel Burgess University of Texas at Austin

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Chandel Burgess is a doctoral student studying STEM Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a mixed methodologist whose research interests center the experiences of Black women in postsecondary mathematics and engineering spaces.

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Abstract

The purpose of this WIP research paper is to explore intersectional outcomes of disabled women in the STEM workforce. Our research will focus on how analyzing marginalized identities in isolation may erase effects at their intersections. This approach will serve to better represent individuals with multiple underrepresented identities. In this paper, we examine the effect disability status, race, and sex has on salary in STEM fields. In order to attend to these intersectional identities in our analysis, we will utilize tenants from both the critical quantitative methodology (QuantCrit) and the disability critical race theory framework (DisCrit). This analysis will use data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) Diversity and STEM: Women, Minorities, and People with Disabilities biennial report to parse the methods of categorizing and analyzing disabled women within the STEM workforce. Using baseline data provided by NCSES, we will compare salaries across intersectional groupings (i.e., disabled Black women, nondisabled Hispanic men). Reframing this data will shed light on if treating marginalized identities as separate, as how is done in the NSF NCSES Diversity and STEM report, does a disservice to exploring the experiences of disabled women in STEM. Quantitative methods such as chi-square analysis will be used to integrate and combine the race, sex, and disability data and compare those results to the overall averages amongst each population. This article will analyze if the separation of race, sex, and disability in this report is suppressing or erasing the negative implications for these marginalized groups in STEM.

Cobb, S. A., & Chasen, A., & Burgess, C. (2024, June), Centering Disabled Women in STEM Professions: A Critique of Identity Isolation in STEM Data Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://strategy.asee.org/48450

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