An academic discipline or field of study is a branch of knowledge, taught and researched as part of higher education. A scholar's discipline is commonly defined by the university faculties and learned societies to which they belong and the academic journals in which they publish research.
Sandra G. Harding is an American philosopher of feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of science. She directed the UCLA Center for the Study of Women from 1996 to 2000, and co-edited Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society from 2000 to 2005. She is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education and Gender Studies at UCLA and a Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. In 2013 she was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize by the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S).
The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments of women, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work peer-reviewed and accepted in major scientific journals and other publications. The historical, critical, and sociological study of these issues has become an academic discipline in its own right.
The Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts is a college of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. It is one of the six academic units at the university and named for former two-term Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr., a Georgia Tech alumnus and advocate for the advancement of civil rights in America.
Ayanna MacCalla Howard is an American roboticist, entrepreneur and educator currently serving as the dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University. Assuming the post in March 2021, Howard became the first woman to lead the Ohio State College of Engineering.
Jessie Shirley Bernard was an American sociologist and noted feminist scholar. She was a persistent forerunner of feminist thought in American sociology and her life's work is characterized as extraordinarily productive spanning several intellectual and political eras. Bernard studied and wrote about women's lives since the late 1930s and her contributions to social sciences and feminist theory regarding women, sex, marriage, and the interaction with the family and community are well noted. She has garnered numerous honors in her career and has several awards named after her, such as the Jessie Bernard Award. Jessie Bernard was a prolific writer, having published 15 sole-authored books, 9 co-authored books, over 75 journal articles, and over 40 book chapters. The final chapter of her book American Community Behavior is heavily based on Raphael Lemkin's work and is considered one of the earliest sociological studies of genocide.
Sexism in academia refers to the discrimination and subordination of a particular sex or gender academic institutions, particularly universities, due to the ideologies, practices, and reinforcements that privilege one sex or gender over another. Sexism in academia is not limited to but primarily affects women who are denied the professional achievements awarded to men in their respective fields such as positions, tenure and awards. Sexism in academia encompasses institutionalized and cultural sexist ideologies; it is not limited to the admission process and the under-representation of women in the sciences but also includes the lack of women represented in college course materials and the denial of tenure, positions and awards that are generally accorded to men.
Engineering studies is an interdisciplinary branch of social sciences and humanities devoted to the study of engineers and their activities, often considered a part of science and technology studies (STS), and intersecting with and drawing from engineering education research. Studying engineers refers among other to the history and the sociology of their profession, its institutionalization and organization, the social composition and structure of the population of engineers, their training, their trajectory, etc. A subfield is for instance Women in engineering. Studying engineering refers to the study of engineering activities and practices, their knowledge and ontologies, their role into the society, their engagement.
Women are often under-represented in the academic and professional fields of engineering; however, many women have contributed to the diverse fields of engineering historically and currently. A number of organizations and programs have been created to understand and overcome this tradition of gender disparity. Some have decried this gender gap, saying that it indicates the absence of potential talent. Though the gender gap as a whole is narrowing, there is still a growing gap with minority women compared to their white counterparts. Gender stereotypes, low rates of female engineering students, and engineering culture are factors that contribute to the current situation where men dominate in fields relating to engineering sciences.
The School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) is one of six units of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The School focuses primarily on interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities, social sciences, and science/technology to provide "Humanistic Perspectives in a Technological World."
Athena SWAN is a equality charter mark framework and accreditation scheme established and managed by the UK Equality Challenge Unit in 2005 that recognises and celebrates good practices in higher education and research institutions towards the advancement of gender equality: representation, progression and success.
Julie Ancis currently is a Distinguished Professor of Informatics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She served as the interim chair of the Department of Informatics and was also a Professor of Psychology and the inaugural Director of Cyberpsychology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She was previously a professor at Georgia State University for 15 years and Associate Vice President of Diversity at Georgia Institute of Technology. Ancis is an expert in the areas of cyberpsychology, multicultural competence and diversity. She has authored 4 books and over 80 scholarly publications.
Diana Mary Leonard, AcSS, known while married as Diana Leonard Barker, was a British sociologist, social anthropologist, academic, and feminist activist. From 1998 to 2007, she was Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Education, London, after which she was Emeritus Professor of the Sociology of Education and Gender department there.
Tequila Harris is an American mechanical engineer and professor. She is Professor of Manufacturing at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. She works on polymer processing and mechanical system design.
Mary Chayko is an American sociologist and Distinguished Teaching Professor of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She is the director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information and a five-year Faculty Fellow in Residence at the Rutgers-New Brunswick Honors College (2017-2022). She is an affiliated faculty member of the Sociology Department and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Rutgers.
Willie Pearson Jr. is an American sociologist, who has studied and encouraged the participation of African-Americans and other minorities, as well as women, in science. He has published several books on the experience of African-American scientists with PhDs, including major studies on chemists and engineers. Pearson has had a leading role in many activities and policy development roles in relation to the participation of minorities and women in science, including chairing the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE), a congressionally mandated committee at the National Science Foundation (NSF). He served on the U.S. president's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Kaye Husbands Fealing is an American economist who is Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. She previously taught for 20 years at Williams College, served in several staff positions with the National Science Foundation, and chaired the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. She is a former president of the National Economic Association.
Cassidy R. Sugimoto is an American information scientist who is the Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She studies the ways knowledge is processed and disseminated. She is the author of the 2016 MIT Press book Big Data is Not a Monolith.
Joya Misra is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
