Scholar of intersectionality across the sciences will share expertise in core feminist theory and developmental psychology.
Nicole Else-Quest has joined the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies as a professor of education, effective July 2024. A developmental psychologist, her interdisciplinary and collaborative research applies the core feminist theory of intersectionality across STEM contexts to understand gendered patterns of development among diverse groups.
Else-Quest’s work seeks to improve outcomes for students from diverse historically-excluded groups, including women, students of color, first-generation college students, and students with disabilities. Else-Quest is especially interested in developing the quantitative and qualitative methodological repertoire within feminist social sciences research. She is currently the principal investigator on two collaborative grants from the National Science Foundation that are focused on expanding participation in STEM, in partnership with educators from elementary mathematics classrooms through undergraduate chemistry and doctoral engineering programs.
One of these projects aims to develop a survey for the American Society for Engineering Education to administer annually to PhD students in engineering programs. Focusing on understanding students’ perceptions of organizational climate within engineering departments, the survey is a tool to examine departmental policies and practices and improve the success of diverse groups of students in engineering.
A first-generation college student, Professor Else-Quest earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining UCLA, Else-Quest was a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; an associate professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and an assistant professor of psychology at Villanova University.
Professor Else-Quest has written numerous papers and articles that have been published in a wide range of journals, including Psychology of Women Quarterly, Stigma and Health, Psychological Bulletin, and Social Science & Medicine. In addition, she has contributed book chapters for “The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science” and “The Routledge Book of Financial Literacy.”
Else-Quest is the author of the textbook, “The Psychology of Women and Gender: Half the Human Experience+,” to be released by Sage College Publishing in August of this year. Now in its 11th edition, the book features an authoritative analysis of classical and up-to-date research on sex, gender, and psychology across the lifespan.
What are some of the most pressing issues in the study of gender and its impact on education?
Nicole Else-Quest: There are still areas in education where we need to be more attentive to gender and how practices and policies might impact boys and girls differently, particularly children with disabilities, or who have different cultural backgrounds, or whose families don’t have a lot of resources. I think a more intersectional lens on gender is always valuable.
For several years, I’ve taught a course on women in science, which was taken mostly by STEM majors who happened to be women. One of the things that I learned in teaching this course – which was about the roles women have long played in science – was that students would tell me how they felt this mix of outrage and betrayal that they hadn’t heard these stories before. For example, they hadn’t heard about the active roles that enslaved women and immigrant women had played in the development of obstetrics and gynecology, and obstetric surgeries and oral contraceptives. They felt they had a right to hear these stories.
That’s not just a problem for us to address in higher education – that’s a problem we could be addressing in science education at every level. The contributions of women, of immigrants, of people of color, people with disabilities – these are groups of people who have always contributed to science, but we haven’t always taught about their contributions.
What are some challenges to the retention of diverse groups of students in doctoral engineering programs?
Else-Quest: One challenge is how standards for success are communicated to students, and how they are applied equitably for all students. Some of that has to do with competition within STEM and the need for clarity around benchmarks or milestones in the the process of getting one’s PhD.
As an example, some programs have student handbooks that clearly lay out which courses they need to take, when they need to pass certain exams, and how long it’ll take them to complete the degree – but others don’t. Inequity can develop if we don’t have clear and reasonable expectations that are applied across all groups of students. In addition, sometimes there are issues around harassment and bias, with students being unsure about what to do if they’ve experienced or witnessed those harms. Particularly given the diverse experiences and perspectives represented in labs and departments, things can get complicated and complex quickly if we don’t have fair and transparent policies. Student perspectives are essential to developing those policies.
We’re trying to make sure the tools we’re developing represent the experiences of students from diverse groups accurately and fairly, that everybody’s voice can be heard. So, when leaders take data from that survey each year, they can make changes that help all students, not just those from the largest or most vocal groups.
“The Psychology of Women and Gender: Half the Human Experience+” is a seminal work. As author of the 11th edition, what are some of the main changes or additions to the text?
Else-Quest: This is the first edition in which I am the sole author, but the 11th edition carries forward the same values and goals that have always guided the book. In previous editions, my co-author Janet Shibley Hyde and I had incorporated more intersectional approaches and more psychological research with trans and nonbinary people, and I have continued that in each chapter in this new edition. Those changes began amid a shift we saw within feminist research more broadly. Many women’s studies departments and programs were reflecting on their purpose and changing their names, course offerings, and so on, to be more faithful to their founding goals.
It was part of a broader effort not simply to be more inclusive of the diversity among women, but also to hold a focus on women as a marginalized and historically excluded group of people while recognizing trans and non-binary people as being marginalized and excluded for the same reasons that women had been. Our goal was, as high-quality research becomes available, to make those connections clear: that the exclusion and oppression of trans and non-binary people is linked to the exclusion and oppression of women and girls.
In the context of psychological science, that also means being attentive to things like mental health disparities not just between women and men, but also between cisgender, transgender, and non-binary people, and understanding how race and class shape access to care. It means examining more carefully how children think about gender, like reevaluating what we think we know about how preschoolers develop their understanding of gender as a stable or potentially fluid attribute of themselves … and during adolescence, better understanding how kids approach puberty, how their gender identity is developing, and how they experience things like gender bias and harassment. As we learn more about gender, we need to reconsider many of our assumptions in human development.
What are some of the biggest similarities you’ve found between the male and female sexes?
Else-Quest: When I first started doing this work in grad school, I was really curious about gender stereotypes and challenging them, digging deeper into whether those are real differences or just stereotypes. Many of the things folks casually say or assume about men and women ultimately dehumanize both groups of people and create conflict, whether it’s in how we parent our children, or how we interact with one another in the workplace, in our romantic relationships, in politics, and so on.
The research shows that, with very few exceptions, men and women are much more similar than they are different. As we have many decades of research consistently showing that, it challenges us to rethink not simply the stereotypes that we might buy into and then parrot, but also how we support every child’s development, wellbeing, and freedom. Certainly, in the context of current political movements, gender is a lightning rod. And that can make learning about gender feel risky or difficult.
I often tell my students, “Gender is both more and less important than you think it is.” As an example within my own research, the assumption that boys and girls have very different temperaments is something you often hear parents talk about. They’ll talk about how their son is “all boy.” They’ll say he’s really active, rough or even aggressive, or he can’t focus his attention, and he just needs to move his body all the time. It’s a sort of caricature of boys. And then they’ll talk about their daughter and it’s the polar opposite: she’s very fearful and sensitive, she’s empathetic and cares about people. She doesn’t like getting dirty, she is happy to play quietly. I tend to resist that kind of framing because children, just like adults, are more complex than that.
The research also shows that there are some differences in child temperament, and they have potentially important consequences. Boys and girls tend to differ on a cluster of traits that we think of as falling under this umbrella of effortful control. What that means is that, on average, boys have a harder time than girls at regulating their activity and focusing and shifting their attention when they need to. That’s an interesting kind of difference that can impact learning in the classroom.
What we do with this knowledge is an important ethical question. Does it mean we should educate boys and girls differently? Do we change how we manage a classroom so that we’re placing fewer or maybe different demands on the children? How do we set standards that are fair to all?
This knowledge also has implications for our ability to identify different kinds of developmental challenges or disorders that kids experience, like attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism, and developmental language disorder. Our gender stereotypes shape or color what we see. There’s a long history of diagnosing people for not fulfilling the expectations of their gender roles. But also, some problems can be masked or hidden when we perform those roles well. Like, if I notice that a boy isn’t talking a lot or seems shy, but I think boys should be loud and confident… then his behavior will capture my attention. By contrast, if I see that a girl is shy, I might think she’s just compliant and well-behaved because that’s what I expect of girls. In some cases, what looks like shyness may mask a difficulty communicating and interacting with others. We need to be able to identify those kinds of challenges in all children, regardless of their gender.