Student Understanding of the Contributions of Women in Physics

Despite their underrepresentation in the field, particularly in professional positions, women have made critical contributions to physics. Still, many physics students are unable to name a woman physicist other than Marie Curie and describe her work in any detail. This presents an equity issue, as access to role models has been shown to mediate access to careers. To remedy this, efforts are underway to create an article pack on women in physics from The Physics Teacher, the American Journal of Physics, and other sources, as a resource for physics teachers. To evaluate the need for such a resource, I administered an assessment of knowledge of the contributions of women in physics to pre-service secondary STEM education teachers, many of whom will ultimately teach physics. The results are compared with a prior survey of preservice elementary teachers and general education students.