Lessons from Research Exploring the Underrepresentation of Women in Physics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite decades of research into the gender disparity in physics education and physics practice, the underrepresentation of women in physics persists today. In physics education research, this gender disparity has been constructed as problematic, and numerous approaches from a variety of perspectives have been taken to both research and address it. In this paper, we explore the framings that have been used to motivate study of the underrepresentation of women in physics and the implications these framings have for introductory physics educators. We wish to acknowledge in the framing of this paper that the use of the term “underrepresentation” has prompted a specific characterization of the issues women face in physics (one of low numbers) and the responses (attempts to increase numbers). As its use is pervasive in the research into sex, gender, and physics, we continue here with the term underrepresentation, but suggest that “minoritization” might more appropriately signal the history of structural and institutional actions in physics cultures that have limited access for White and racialized women.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.078 | 0.123 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.025 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.021 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".