THE PORTRAYAL OF GEOSCIENTISTS IN INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY TEXTBOOKS

The geoscience population is underrepresented in terms of diversity of gender and ethnicity compared to the general population. To learn how the diversity of the geoscience work force is presented to students in introductory geology courses, we analyzed how introductory geology textbooks depict the diversity of geoscientists. In the 8 textbooks analyzed, there were 469 total images with people. We tallied the gender and ethnicity, if they could be determined, as well as whether or not the people could be classified as geoscientists. Our classification of geoscientists was taken very broadly to include things like cartoons, people posing for scale, and hands holding minerals. People that were not considered geoscientists included disaster victims and people showing physics principles. We found that 68% of images with people included geoscientists, and three-quarters of the geoscientists shown were outside.

Out of all people identified as either male or female, 27% of images contain females. This is less than the general population where 51% of people are female. When looking as just the photos with geoscientists, 24% of the geoscientists are females (ranging from 14% to 45%). For comparison, 41% of bachelor geoscience degrees are awarded to females.

The representation of ethnicity varied more widely. Overall, 22% of images contained people who were minorities. When the images were divided into those that showed geoscientists or non-geoscientists, 16% of geoscientists were minority geoscientists (ranging from 0% to 31%), and 37% of the non-geoscientist were minorities. This larger number of minority non-geoscientists stems from the high number of minorities that are shown as victims of natural disasters. In comparison, the US population is 30% minorities, and 14% of geoscience bachelors degrees are awarded to minorities.

One textbook was fairly close in the representation of gender and ethnicity, both for geoscientists and the general population. However, we feel that the majority of textbooks could do a better job at showing a broader diversity of geoscientists. We recommend that more textbooks make an effort to represent not how geoscientists were in the past, but how the field would look if it reflected the current US population.