Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering

ISSN for PRINT: 1072-8325

For Online Access

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2000, Volume6

Issue 1

100 pages

Issue price - $42.00

Juan C. Lucena
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

This is a cultural history of the creation of women and minorities in science and engineering as a statistical category in the United States. The main thesis is that narratives about the nation, its problems, and its solutions, shape policies and programs for the education and training of scientists and engineers, as well as the meaning of the category women and minorities in science and engineering. This cultural relationship among nation, policy, and statistical categories has been evident in the development of programs for education and human resources at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Power struggles and social negotiations surrounding NSF programs define national solutions in terms of scientists and engineers, and create the category women and minorities in science and engineering. During the last 3 decades different groups have used a variety of strategies in their attempts to participate in the policy-making processes that determine both their access to science and engineering education and their acceptance as scientists and engineers. This is a brief history, from the 1970s to the present, of how these struggles resulted in programs at the NSF to recruit, educate, and retain women and minorities in science and engineering in appropriate ways, where what is appropriate changes over time. This cultural and historical process is called making women and minorities in science and engineering for national purposes.

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