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"Am I Doing Enough?": Exploring How Neoliberal Discourses Inform Women Doctoral Students' Experiences in Biology.

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Title: "Am I Doing Enough?": Exploring How Neoliberal Discourses Inform Women Doctoral Students' Experiences in Biology.
Authors: Steele, Ariel1,2 steel250@umn.edu, Parson, Laura3
Source: Innovative Higher Education. Apr2025, Vol. 50 Issue 2, p487-511. 25p.
Subject Terms: *Women doctoral students, *STEM education, *Graduate education, Neoliberalism, Biology
Abstract: While women make up over half of doctoral students in the biological sciences, that number decreases as they progress through academic job rankings. The "leaky pipeline" and other metaphors have been used to describe the underrepresentation of women in STEM, but these metaphors fail to address how institutional structures, such as policies, practices, and discourses, inform the inequities women experience in graduate school and beyond. In this institutional ethnography, we sought to uncover how institutional structures informed doctoral women's experiences in biology. Using in-depth interviews and the analysis of institutional texts, we uncovered how neoliberal discourses (e.g., productivity, competition, and accountability) underlie the institutional structures that inform women's experiences in biology and created points of tension for the participants. This study documents how women centered their work on maximizing research productivity, but struggled to keep up with their other responsibilities that were unrecognized. This study points to how we should reconsider success in academia and encourage creative ways to meet expectations within graduate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Innovative Higher Education is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: While women make up over half of doctoral students in the biological sciences, that number decreases as they progress through academic job rankings. The "leaky pipeline" and other metaphors have been used to describe the underrepresentation of women in STEM, but these metaphors fail to address how institutional structures, such as policies, practices, and discourses, inform the inequities women experience in graduate school and beyond. In this institutional ethnography, we sought to uncover how institutional structures informed doctoral women's experiences in biology. Using in-depth interviews and the analysis of institutional texts, we uncovered how neoliberal discourses (e.g., productivity, competition, and accountability) underlie the institutional structures that inform women's experiences in biology and created points of tension for the participants. This study documents how women centered their work on maximizing research productivity, but struggled to keep up with their other responsibilities that were unrecognized. This study points to how we should reconsider success in academia and encourage creative ways to meet expectations within graduate education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Innovative Higher Education is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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