Images of Scientists Portrayed by Japanese Computer Science and Engineering College Students
EunJin Bahng, Takako Yasuta, Jungpil Shin & Sissy S. Wong
Abstract
This study explored the topic of gender inequity among Japanese college students majoring in computer science and engineering (CS&E) using a qualitative naturalistic inquiry approach. We conceptualized our study within Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory in order to represent the two-way process between a self and a set of contexts. Our field site, the university, was a Japanese-and-English bilingual university in a small conservative town in Japan. We adopted Chambers’s (1983) Draw-A-Scientist-Test (DAST) as an eliciting tool and Finson, Beaver, and Cramond’s (1995) DAST-Checklist as a guiding rubric. During three field site visits, the following data were collected from a total of 95 study participants: DAST drawings, audio-recordings of focus group interviews, field notes, documents, emails and photos. Findings indicated a central stereotypical image of scientists: a Japanese male scientist in a white lab coat holding a flask. Other alternative images were also discovered. Three themes emerged: (1) focused male vs. disoriented female through a self-lens, (2) heroic male vs. cute female through a Japanese anime-lens, and finally (3) Nobel prize Japanese male vs. Obokata female through a historical-lens. These three themes revealed past-products of the images of scientists where the male and female college students transformed in their perceptions over a long period of time under a unique set of contexts. We contribute to current efforts on gender equity in Japan, especially in relation to the advancement of women in science, to raise awareness of gender inequity in CS&E fields, and finally to acknowledge patterns of unequal ecological structures that encourage science elitism and gender divides. Finally, we proposed a model of advocacy with great hopefulness that through new sets of layers of influence, interactions, and people, sometimes, one can dramatically feel how the past sets of ecology has shaped his or her ways of being. Therefore, equity in CS&E can be seen, especially to policymakers, as a re-structuring issue not as a better-management issue or as a personal matter.