Symposium: Gender and Physics?

Abstract of Prof. Brage's talk:

Physics is often seen, by Physicists not the least, as an objective Science and we believe we are surrounded by a “culture without culture”. At the same time our history, class- and board rooms are dominated by men. This is a clear paradox that should awaken the curiosity of anyone. In this talk I will give some examples on how you can approach the question on “what does gender have to do with Physics”. There have been several studies of Physicists and I will combine a discussion of these with some general theory and personal experiences, to paint a picture on how gender transgress Physics, like all other fields. By using the three levels of change introduced by Schiebinger, I refer to studies of e.g. Anthropologists and Psychologists. The bias against women, due to the fact that Physics is stereotypically male, combined with the “myth of meritocracy” could be one key to understand the lack of women in the field. The talk is intended as a translation of results from recent progress in Gender Science to an audience of non-experts in the field, especially people within STEM-fields. The aim is to give some answers to the question in the title, but also to show that this is an extremely interesting and active research field.