Stereotypes about Women in the Physical and Engineering Sciences in the 1970s–1990s

Abstract

This article analyzes the key stereotypes about women’s cognitive abilities that were prevalent in the world of physics and technical sciences from the 1970s through the early 1990s. The research aims to identify the reasons for the existence and persistence of these stereotypes within the scientific community. The study is based on the interviews conducted between 2022 and 2026 with the employees of the Troitsk FIAN (Lebedev Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences) and TRINITI (Troitsk Institute of Innovative and Thermonuclear Research). The analysis shows that respondents, when discussing women, demonstrate stereotypical representations. Consequently, it appears that they do not object to androcentrism in science. “Gender blindness” is characteristic of the informants, leading to the reinforcement of the myth of gender equality. Thus, often unintentionally, the respondents contribute to the preservation of the “glass ceiling”. Several factors may account for these processes and phenomena. These include the limited knowledge of gender issues, the condescending attitudes toward women expressed by some respondents, the generational characteristics of the studied group (most informants were born in the 1950s), and the fact that physics is a discipline “unfriendly” to women.