Science and Mathematics Education Commons^™

"Ain't I A Woman?": Black Women Negotiate And Resist Systemic Oppression In Undergraduate Engineering And Mathematics Disciplines, Jessica Alyce Wilson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this inquiry I used Black Feminist Thought as the interpretive lens to investigate the characterizations and experiences of high achieving Black women undergraduate engineering and mathematics majors at a predominantly white institution. The qualitative inquiry considered intersecting oppressions to evaluate the experiences of this population. In particular, Black women operate in the intersection of race and gender, thus for a thorough analysis of their engineering and mathematics experiences to occur, the historical context of the United States and its oppressive structures must be considered. Stereotypes and systemic oppression follow this socially constructed identity as the participants enter the fields …