Female Studies

pandemic. In an empirical study, we focus on female top performing students in STEM and the humanities. Of particular interest was whether the measures associated with the pandemic constitute a risk-factor for a re-traditionalization of gender roles. Before lectures or courses began, students at a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. We investigated four research questions: 1) Are women underrepresented in our sample among the top performers in STEM and the humanities? Are there gender differences among top performers with regard to (2) digital readiness, (3) socio-emotional and (4) learning related variables? The sample of the study consisted of 2,849 higher education STEM and humanities students. The study took place as an online survey. In the week before the start of the official lecture period, all students enrolled at the university were invited to take part via an e-mail correspondence from the Vice President of Education (survey access link). Participation in the survey took place via the Questback platform and was activated for 10 days. The cutoff point for the ability level was set at the 95th percentile of previous university achievements. To test Q1, we performed a hierarchical loglinear analysis with posthoc Chi² tests. In research questions Q2-Q4 two-way ANOVAs were used to test the effects of gender and subject. Results indicate equal shares of female and male students among the top performers, with women overrepresented in the humanities and men overrepresented in STEM relative to their proportion of the student population. The analysis of socio-emotional and learning-related factors showed risk factors for high performing female students such as lower self-efficacy, but no major emotional vulnerability. Overall, the data suggest that at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, female top performers had still been able to compensate for the risk factors.

Resumen: Los grandes éxodos humanos que acaecieron entre las tres islas que conforman el Caribe hispano (Cuba, Puerto Rico y República Dominicana) y los Estados Unidos a lo largo del segundo decalustro del siglo XX originaron una territorialización caribeña de presencia significativa en este último. De esta forma, comenzaron a aparecer textos ocupados en testimoniar los procesos sociológicos propios de la reciente migración y, a su vez, una tipología literaria distintiva y centrada en describir con detalle las aristas del desplazamiento exclusivamente femenino. Así surge How the García Girls lost Their Accents (1991), de la autora domínico-americana Julia Álvarez, que se ha erigido con el paso del tiempo como obra canónica del destierro dominicano femenino en los Estado Unidos. No obstante, lejos de limitarse a ocupar un lugar dentro del corpus artístico de migración femenina, la obra bien puede ser considerada como un texto antropológico de conocimiento al centrarse con exclusividad en la recepción de la mujer dominicana que, además, actúa a dos niveles: la génesis testimonial y el interés comercial. El artículo se propone, pues, analizar la obra de Álvarez como texto de divulgación antropológica siguiendo las anotaciones del profesor australiano Joel S. Khan.