Women and discrimination in engineering: A study of the Hidden Figures movie

Juny Andry Sulistyo, Afina Murtiningrum, Nailil Muna, Idha Nurhamidah

Abstract


Inspirational stories often motivate individuals to navigate life’s challenges, and movies can powerfully shape how audiences understand social realities, including inequality and discrimination. Hidden Figures (2016) is one such movie that not only inspires but also reveals the systemic barriers faced by women of color working in scientific and engineering settings in the 1960s. This study examines how the movie portrays discrimination against three African American women such as Katherine Goble, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who contributed significantly to NASA during a period marked by racial segregation and gender bias. Using a descriptive qualitative approach, this research analyzes the script of the movie Hidden Figures to identify scenes, interactions, and narrative moments that illustrate racial, gender, and educational-based discrimination. The findings show that the three protagonists confront multiple layers of inequality: racial discrimination through public and workplace segregation, gender discrimination through assumptions of women’s intellectual inferiority, and education-based discrimination through institutional policies that restrict access to engineering advancement. Overall, the study highlights how Hidden Figures not only inspires through its narrative of resilience but also exposes the systemic inequalities embedded within professional STEM environments. This contributes to a broader understanding of how media representations shape public awareness of discrimination in engineering and other technical fields.

Keywords


racial discrimination; gender discrimination; engineering; movie analysis, Hidden Figures movie

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References


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