Gender Salience and Racial Frames, Potholes for Women in Science: Understanding the Context Before and the Potential Consequences of Sexual Harassment

This talk grounds the experience of harassment sociologically drawing attention to the way that race and gender interact to shape who experiences gender harassment and how they respond to it. Gender salience explains how gender moves from the background to the foreground when women experience harassment and racial frames account for the hypersexualization of women of color that makes them more vulnerable to harassment. Dealing with the culture of harassment is integral to creating climates where women can fully contribute to science. Conceiving of the challenges to diversifying science as a pipeline problem, fails to appreciate the hazards, such as harassment, that women experience along the way. I introduce the road with exits, pathways, and potholes to articulates the ideas of agency and constraint for women in science and offer suggestions of what we can do to ease their journey.

Date:
Speakers:
Anna Branch
Affiliation:
UMass Amherst