The “silent killers” of a STEM-professional woman’s career

• Published date: 18 September 2018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-08-2017-0168
• Pages: 728-748
• Date: 18 September 2018
• Author: Stefanie Ruel
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity, equality, inclusion

The “silent killers”of a

STEM-professional

woman’s career

Stefanie Ruel

Department of Business, Athabasca University, Edmonton, Canada

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper was to provide a plausible answer to how there are so few science,

technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-professional women managers in the Canadian space industry.

Design/methodology/approach –The author showcased one such individual and her experiences of the

exclusionary order in this industry, by focusing on her discourses and those of her former supervisor.

The author applied the critical sensemaking (CSM) framework to unstructured interview data and to various

collected written documentation. To guide the author’s application of this CSM framework, the author asked

and answered the following questions: what is the range of identity anchor points associated with, and

available to, a STEM-professional woman within the Canadian space industry? What is the relationship

between these anchor points and organizational rules and social values? And, how do these anchor points and

their relationship with rules and social values influence the exclusion of STEM-professional women from

management positions within this industry?

Findings –The author surfaced a STEM-professional woman’s range of ephemeral identities, captured

within her range of attributed anchor points. The author also revealed some of the rules and social values of

the organizational context she worked in. The author then analyzed the how of her exclusionary social order,

by studying the relationship between these anchor points and these rules and social values.

Social implications –In addition to addressing the lack of STEM-professional women in management and

to filling a gap in the literature, this study made a contribution to our understanding of social-identities,

represented by anchor points, and to their discursive reproduction within organizational contexts. The author

also suggested micro-political resistances to undo this social order for one particular individual.

Originality/value –This study’s value can be measured by its contribution to the postpositivist cisgender

and diversity literature focused on intersectionality scholarship, specifically in the area of identity anchor

points and their (re)creation within social interactions.

Keywords STEM, Intersectionality, Discourses, Anchor points, Critical sensemaking framework

Paper type Research paper

Humans have been fascinated with the idea of spaceanditsexplorationsincewefirst

looked up at the stars and wondered about them. The space industry, as we know it today,

grew from this curiosity to attempts to control the heavens via the Cold War between the

USA and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Hartt et al., 2009). During these

military attempts to control space, the Canadian space industry was brought to the

attention of the global space community with the USA-provided launch of the

Canadian-designed and built Alouette satellite in 1962 (CSA, 2012b), marking Canada as

the third spacefaring nation after the USA and the USSR. These global space military

efforts would eventually lead to global capitalist concerns with respect to space. To this

end, the contemporary Canadian space industry is now recognized for its strengths in

such areas as satellite-based communications, earth observation and space robotics

(AIAC, 2015). The Canadian arm of the global capitalist space industry generated, in 2012,

revenues totaling $3.32B (CSA, 2013). A diversity[1] of individuals work together to

achieve these capitalist goals, holding various professional[2] occupational positions

including scientific/technical/engineering and administrative/corporate roles. Specifically,

7,993 individuals worked in the Canadian space industry in 2012, where 2,932 were

engineers/scientists/technicians and 671 were managers (CSA, 2013).

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 37 No. 7, 2018

pp. 728-748

© Emerald PublishingLimited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-08-2017-0168

Received 17 August 2017

Revised 28 October 2017

10 March 2018

14 July 2018

Accepted 31 July 2018

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

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EDI

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The problem that I set out to study was hidden in these statistics, and was reflected in

my experiences in this industry, as the only Canadian woman in her late career to fulfill the

role of Life Sciences Mission Manager. As I was completing my graduate degree, while

working full time in this industry, I began to look around me to find that I was often the lone

woman at the table in technical/operational meetings. I was surrounded by White[3],

military-trained and/or engineering-trained men who predominantly occupied science,

technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-management positions. Delving into

these statistics, I found that STEM-professional women represented less than 20 percent of

managers in 2012 across this industry (CSA, 2012a; Catalyst, 2013). I also found that

Canadian STEM-professional women were, and continue to be, relegated into supporting

technical and/or administrative, corporate roles in spite of their ongoing efforts to try to

climb the corporate ladder into STEM-management/executive positions. This social order,

where White military-trained men were in senior management positions while women,

White or ethnic/raced, were excluded and marginalized into supporting roles was, simply

stated, unacceptable. Stating something as unacceptable does not address the problem,

however, nor does it reveal[4] the social order and its systemic exclusionary reproduction.

To surface what it means to work in such an exclusionary social order, I decided to look

into the day-to-day interactions among individuals in this industry. Specifically, I looked

at mundane discourses among cisgender men and women, who were STEM-professionals,

in such a way to undo these marginalizations. Discourses, in this study, encompassed

“everyday attitudes and behaviour, along with our perceptions of what we believe to be

reality”(Grant et al., 1998, p. 2). They can be constructed as sets of statements and

practices that bring an object/individual, or a set of objects/individuals, into being within a

larger context of meanings (Parker, 1992). This notion of larger meanings, represented via

stories and narratives, can play an important role in exposing limits and boundaries of

day-to-day social interactions (Saleebey, 1994). Space exploration stories are extensive and

reach back to the early Cold War efforts to conquer space, such as in Wolfe’s(1979)The

Right Stuff, or more recently in Shetterly’s(2016)Hidden Figures. These stories, and

others by industry insiders, endure within the global space industry; they are also

hallmarks of discriminatory practices that can be surfaced in order to address social

orders that limit and bind (Sage, 2009).

Capturing a space story or narrative, and then reproducing it, does not necessarily

convey the lived reality of an exclusionary order, however. There needs to be some object[5]

that captures the creation and recreation of that order. Stories and narratives that were

centered on an individual’s intersecting identities (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) can be

that object, showcasing the limits and boundaries that were (re)created in discourses. I

set out to capture these intersecting identities within a reconstructed Glenn (2004) anchor

point concept. I found that the binary relationality concept, which underpinned this anchor

point concept, had to be undone given our poststructural understandings of power and

meaning making. In other words, the reconstructed anchor points concept embraced flowing

power-relations (Foucault, 1980) and the making of sense processes that an individual

experiences (Helms Mills et al., 2010) in her social order. I then set out to surface one late

career STEM-professional woman’s, Vigrine[6], complexity and her lived exclusionary

social reality by considering her stories and narratives, and her former supervisor’s, Ormyr,

discourses. Applying Helms Mills et al.’s (2010) critical sensemaking (CSM) framework,

I was able to surface Vigrine’s attributed anchor points, their relationship with

organizational rules and social values as representative of her context, and the how of

her exclusion in my attempt to address the unacceptable social order.

Before I consider the anchor point theoretical framework and the findings of this

research study, I turn to the literature to present an overview on the engineering/science

professions and the space industry. In this way, I showcase the epistemological

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career