What question us guiding your research?
I personally have several questions that I hope can be answered at the end of my research. Firstly I want to gain even more knowledge on Diversity and Inclusion individually because in my experience one is never mentioned without the other, so I’d like to research each individually. Secondly, I want to determine whether it is best for diversity to come before inclusion, or if it is best for inclusion to come before diversity. As of now I think it is best if diversity comes after inclusion because this way there won’t need to be more trial and error and potentially making people feel excluded. Although I’ve been coming across articles which say otherwise.
Why this question?
Aside from the reasons I mentioned in the previous question, these questions are interesting to me because I am a woman in STEM which is a predominately male dominated field. I’ve heard a lot of stories about gender inequality in the workplace so I want to make sure I know as much as possible about the topic of diversity and inclusion and how it relates to this, as well as methods to rectify this issue.
How will your professional/internship/organizational/ course work inform your inquiry?
I think my own experience will inform my inquiry someway because although I’ve only completed two semesters so far, I am an engineering major and more often than not I have been one of a handful of women in my classes. I feel like the men in my classes have been a bit too comfortable with interrupting the women in these classes while we speak and oftentimes try and dismiss our ideas (at least from what I’ve observed). I think there should be more emphasis placed on inclusion in courses like these especially since the diversity is somewhat there already.
What fields matter most in your inquiry.
I don’t have any specific fields that I am going to be focusing on. I will be using both professional, and academic articles (whichever I find) and I will also be using Ted-Talks and journals since I think they give good first person accounts.
It might be helpful for you to consider the roots of these exclusionary professional spaces in the academic spaces where people train–that is, engineering students learn about what is expected of them as engineers while they are in college; folks will tend to bring along the habits/patterns that are tolerated of them while they’re students. Looking at those patterns would give you a way to make use of your observations and experiences as part of this analysis–something to consider.
It can be really valuable to have sources that are in tension with one another and/or with your own ideas on the matter–those tensions can be productive; there are lots of questions and ideas to be developed where people disagree.