SUBJECT: Annotated Bibliography

As a reminder my ARP studies the relationship between gender disparity in STEM related fields of study in the academic and professional environments with advertisements that show a gender divide for toys that integrate the fundamentals of STEM. My primary source is an early advertisement for an Erector Set, which employs fundamentals of mathematics, physics, and several areas of engineering for the user to construct a workable object. My hypothesis is that the advertisements had failed to evolve throughout the years to include girls as a target audience for the toy, which has led to a loss of interest for adolescent girls to pursue a degree in a STEM field and subsequently an oversaturation of males in post-secondary and professional fields of study, but that recent developments in gender neutral advertisements have created a positive trend to the contrary.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Effect of Erector Set Advertisements on the Gender Divide in Interest in STEM Related Fields of Study.

English 1100.01, The Ohio State University, October 8, 2015

Michael Kruse

Litzler, Elizabeth, Lorah, Julie, and Samuelson, Cate. “Breaking it Down: Engineering Student STEM Confidence at the Intersection of Race/Ethnicity and Gender.” Research in Higher Education : Journal of the Association for Institutional Research 25 Jan. 2013: 810-832. Springer Link. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.

This peer-reviewed article conducted a study on the confidence of STEM confidence in post-secondary education by race and gender. The authors found that women were less confident than men in their respective STEM majors. While this does not provide a quantitative measure of gender disparity in STEM fields, it does provide insight into how confident women are in their STEM academic abilities, and what may attribute to this, including a “lack of role models and limited encouragement” (814). Additionally, there is a wealth of resources within the article to further explore the factors that lead to lower confidence of Women in STEM fields.

Sadler, Philip, et. al. “Stability and Volatility of STEM Career Interest in High School: A Gender Study.” Science Education 20 Jun 2011: 411-427. Wiley Periodicals. Web. 23 Jan 2012.

This peer-reviewed article studies the interest that girls have in STEM related fields of study throughout high school. The article mentions the general interest in STEM related fields in elementary and middle school students which may be of use to my ARP, but its focus is the decline in interest in STEM fields for adolescent girls in high school. This statement in particular: “Female students may still experience fewer opportunities or feel less welcome in science-related clubs and activities” (424) is of importance to my ARP.

Educational Attainment: CPS Historical Time Series Tables. Census. United States Census Bureau, 20 Jan 2015. Web. 08 Oct 2015.

The US Census Bureau holds some of the most complete sets of data for several metrics. Specific to my ARP is the educational attainment by gender over time. This source is of great use as it provides both summary and raw data of educational attainment of women compared to men from 1940 to 2014. As my ARP is focused on ads beginning in the early and mid 1900’s, this information will be useful to determine the trend of participation of women in secondary and post-secondary education. While this information does not include specific fields of study, it will help to show variance of participation from women to men in post-secondary education in the past, and the trends of such participation over the last 74 years. There may be a correlation between participation of women in post-secondary education and participation of women in STEM related fields of study.

Olsen, Randy. “Percentage of Bachelor’s degrees conferred to women, by major (1970-2012).” Randal S. Olsen. Wordpress, 14 Jun 2014. Web. 08 Oct. 2015.

 

This site contains articles published by Dr. Randy Olsen from the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Biomedical Informatics. This particular article examines the trend of degrees awarded to women from 1970 to 2012. This information will be useful for my ARP in comparing the participation of women in post-secondary education, and interest in STEM related fields, to the STEM related degrees awarded to women over a large period of time.

Another mass shooting and another wave of arguments about how to prevent the next inevitable mass shooting is all the rage this past week. There have been some seriously ignorant insinuations that the President doesn’t care about American Heroes that stop shootings (as evident by the meme below)

despite his invitation of the Americans that stopped the shooter on the train in Europe (but that wasn’t America, so who cares, right?). The President only cares about inviting young bright minds that were wrongfully arrested for bringing a clock to school. Oh and also that kids name was Mohamed, further cementing the “fact” that Obama is a socialist Muslim. I can’t really blame the authorities (school and police) in the case of Mohamed – I mean with their extensive knowledge in IED’s, coupled with the fact that middle school terrorism is rampant in this country, why take the risk? Well, I mean they took the risk of what they thought was a bomb by not immediately evacuating the school, or taking it away from anybody it could potentially hurt, but they REALLY thought it was a bomb. Their bad I guess. I’m just kidding, I can blame them, and I will. Also, this guy was in the hospital for about a day before this meme was generated. Gotta be on top of your game, Obama!

Then there’s this shitty meme.

Claiming that we protect so many things and people with guns – but not our children. I mean, apart from the standing police force that is tasked with protecting each community, of course. Also, who is the “we” that protects banks, office buildings, congressmen, factories, and celebrities? Well I suppose that the secret service and Capitol Hill police protect congress and the President, but that’s a separate armed force that are protecting against seemingly constant and credible threats. I suppose the other institutions hire armed guards to protect them – but do you know how much they make? Is it hero salary? What kind of training do they have?

Regardless, it’s inaccurate to say we don’t protect kids. Many schools have a resource officer, but apparently that’s not enough. Do we need to put sharpshooters on the roof and patrol the hallways with a platoon of armed mercenaries? I know that the weapons industry would love the extra income that comes with arming a squad for every school in America, but who’s going to pay for that? Probably those damn crackhead poor people on food stamps. All of this is irrelevant though. People who commit mass shootings do not pick places based on their vulnerability. They pick places because they have some sort of emotional vendetta that is specifically tied to that place.

Anti-gun law proponents decry gun free zones and claim this is the source of the mass shootings, despite the source literally being the person doing the shooting. In this most recent case, Umpqua Community College was not a gun free zone. There are many cases of shootings or robberies involving guns in places where guns are not only allowed, but in high abundance. Just google “robberies at gun stores” and you will be surprised at the number of articles that come up. A lot of these are successful – some even occurred during normal business hours where the owner was killed. Now when I hear that “criminals will always find a way to get a gun” perhaps this is why. Alternatively, there are many gun free zones that are never targeted – hospitals, public parks, bars and restaurants (and when it happens at bars, it’s usually in the parking lot involving a drunken, intimate dispute), libraries, and gyms.

“The solution is to add more guns” is common rhetoric. It’s interesting, that after a mass shooting, which is all too common these days, there’s almost as much support for guns than there is support for stricter gun control measure. I don’t know if it is genuine concern for those that are vulnerable to attack or genuine fear that gun owners will have less buying and owning power of firearms, but it’s unwarranted commentary. No actual legislation has been proposed, or if it has, had any luck passing congress for national gun control, so why are there preemptive opponent voices?

The US leads the world in gun ownership per capita – at nearly 89 guns per 100 residents. It also leads the industrialized world in gun related deaths per capita, and ranks 13^th worldwide. More people are killed by guns in this country than countries considered far more dangerous and impoverished than ours. Is more guns really the solution to lowering the amount of gun related deaths? Do we arm everybody or just some people and put them in charge of being the hero? I’ve heard we want to arm teachers – do they then earn a hero salary or do we expect them to teach the future of our country and then die for them when the time comes? People with concealed carry permits are more likely to shoot themselves or someone else accidentally than stop a mass attack. If everyone had a gun attached to their hip would it make us safer? Imagine a fight breaks out at a party, and instead of everybody punching each other, bullets are flying.

You can have your guns, but don’t pretend like you have them for protection – you love guns. You love firing them, hunting with them, collecting them. There is not a constant threat against you and your family unless you did something pretty awful to piss someone off that might not have all of their screws attached in their brain, because shooters don’t prey on the weak – they are fueled by vengeance.