Being a physicist: Gendered identity negotiations on the pathways to becoming an elite female physicist in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Much research investigates why women do not participate in physics, or why female attrition in physics is high; this study focuses on elite female academic physicists and how they have persisted and succeeded in their fields. As opposed to researching reasons for attrition or not participating, this study focuses on six elite female academic physicists' strategies for flourishing in a male-dominated field. Through semi-structured life-history interviews, the participants' narratives revealed their gendered identities to be hybrid: they all identified as female, but performed a particular kind of masculinity by actively embodying four of the same characteristics that normally deter females from participating in physics. This perspective is used to discover how these women, pioneers in their subfields, actively negotiated hostile environments and became successful. These findings give insight into the identities female physicists construct so that they can follow their passion; understanding why they made these choices provides an opportunity to make change in physics departments as well as the messages the science education community sends to young physicists.