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In 1976, the challenges faced by women of color who pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields were first brought to national attention by Shirley M. Malcom, Paula Hall, and Janet Brown in a report tided The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science. In its foreword, Jewel Plummer Cobb, member of the National Science Board and adviser to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, wrote:
A small but significant meeting of thirty scientists took place in December 1975. The specialness of this meeting was that for the first time in America, minority women in science, engineering, medicine and dentistry met together to discuss their unique position as the most underrepresented and probably overselected group in the scientific disciplines. Although this group of women came from . . . a wide range of ages and experiences and diverse backgrounds and cultures, we shared a common bond; and a special and warm sense of sisterhood sprang from this. Generation gaps did not divide us, nor did our varied vocations, nor our cultural diversity. The common ties were those of the double oppression of sex and race or ethnicity plus the third oppression in the chosen career, science, (p. ix)
Thirty-five years later, in 201 1 , what is the status of women of color in STEM fields? What have we learned about the experiences of these women, and how have our institutions and policies responded to the social inequities that have produced differential participation in these fields? What consciousness, corrective measures, and change - as called for by the 1976 report - have we achieved?
At a recent symposium intended to once again gather women of color studying and working in STEM, organizer Maria Ong (2010) summarized the state of research on this population:
We found many, many dissertations. When I asked my researcher to find out how many had been published, what they had published, the answer came back as zero. I asked somebody else to do the same research; the answer came back as zero. There's not a knowledge gap. It's a serious gap in publishing, in being able to get the word out. (p. 13)
The pages of the Harvard Educational Review (HER) reflect...