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Historically, the African American female population has been underrepresented within the STEM workforce, creating non-inclusive environments. The metaphor of getting a seat at the table reflects the idea of inclusivity where Black women’s opinions are valued, and they can make decisions and create change within the workplace. Intersectionality poses several unique challenges for Black women pursuing careers in the video games industry. We motivate further research on this group through existing literature and insights from running a research group on the group design of human-centered data science games in a collaborative university setting. We take an autoethnographic perspective on the topic, with the first and second authors grounding their findings in their own experiences as Black women in STEM and higher education and with video game development studios. We outline tangible actions toward the recruitment, development, and retention of Black women in the video games industry in the future.
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This content will become publicly available on March 1, 2026
Proving Our Worth: HBCUs, STEM Partnerships and the Marginalization of Black Women in Industry Settings
University-industry partnerships (UIPs) in STEM expand opportunities for students and incorporate industry experiences into the academic enterprise. While UIPs have increased, few studies explore marginalized students’ experiences within industry settings. Our study addresses this literature gap with an emphasis on Black women in computing from HBCUs. We utilized the Role Strain and Adaptation Model for Black Women’s STEM Success and phenomenological approaches to explore challenges that many Black women encounter in UIPs—specifically structural inequities at the intersection of race and gender; macroaggressions and imposter syndrome. Implications for practice, research, and policy are discussed while noting increasingly complicated climates for diversity efforts.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2239021
- PAR ID:
- 10626547
- Publisher / Repository:
- Project MUSE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Review of Higher Education
- ISSN:
- 1090-7009
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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