Women in the STEM Workforce

More and more women are graduating from college with their degrees, and the gender ratio between men and women in technical careers is slowly beginning to decrease, but there is still a lot of progress to be made. According to research and different studies, the workplace environment needs improvement and gender bias could use more discouragement. The obstacles faced by women in their chosen career fields should not prove harder to overcome simply because of their gender.

Women make up 47% of the United States workforce; however, only hold 24% of all STEM field related positions. In other words, a STEM worker is about half as likely to be a woman than a member of the general worker population. The distribution of jobs women hold in the workforce is heavily skewed, resulting in other, less realized, effects. Studies had shown that female PhD graduates make almost one third less than their male counterparts. This can be accounted for by the choice in field and career. More male graduates are earning degrees related to STEM while female graduates are earning degrees in non-STEM fields which offer a much lower potential salary, increasing the gender pay gap among college graduates and the overall workforce. Additionally, women who choose to pursue a career in STEM still only make, on average, 84 cents to every man’s dollar, and this gap is still much smaller than those in other career fields that are dominated by females. Equal pay and opportunity should be matters of simple fairness and are necessary in opening an equal number of doors for men and women.

Image result for earning in stem by gender

Image result for earning in stem by gender

In terms of holding high positions of power and responsibility, such as managerial positions, women are rare. Even in fields that are female dominated, the senior positions are most often held by men. Why is this? Women who are just as well qualified for promotions as their male equivalents are often passed up for the male option. It comes down to the gender bias people grow up with and hold onto into their careers. No one is at fault for the cultivation of this mindset except for our society which continues to let people get away with it. The problem is not that women are not given the proper training or do not have the competence for certain positions; the problem is that women are not being seen in the workplace. Visibility is a must. Women need to be viewed as equals to their male counterparts, not as second best. Additionally, women who are married and have children are even less likely to be given equal opportunities as men. The majority of women who have found their place at the top of a company are not married and do not have kids, in contrast to the many men holding top positions. A women’s life outside of the workplace environment should not hinder her success and potential inside the workplace. Although the gender pay gap is smaller among STEM fields when compared along position and job standing, it is much worse overall when considering the large percentage of men at the top of the field earning the largest salaries compared to the percentage of women in similar positions.

These problems have been a point of concern among many large corporations and companies. Many STEM based companies are beginning to announce gender quotas for their workforce to meet in hopes to give rise to more opportunities to underrepresented women. For example, just last year General Electric announced their goal to have women fill 20,000 STEM roles by 2020 and obtain 50:50 representation among all technical entry level programs. Although I believe this is definitely a mindset we all need to start having towards getting women involved in technical fields, I think rather than establishing quotas, the problem needs to be addressed much earlier in school education. It is fact that there are more males graduating college with STEM degrees than women, resulting in more men in that area of the workforce. I think if every company starts to follow in GE’s footsteps in trying to reach 50:50 representation, women will be given opportunities at the expense of qualified men. As of right now, there are more qualified men in the STEM workforce than women, which will be prevalent in the make up of these companies. In order for this to change, action needs to be taken at the early education level. Effective, long lasting change will not occur if companies simply start choosing to hire women over men to reach a goal.

https://www.ge.com/reports/engineering-future-ges-goal-bridge-stem-gender-gap-2020/

http://graphics.wsj.com/how-men-and-women-see-the-workplace-differently/

https://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/public-policy/aauw-issues/gender-pay-gap/

 

Students in STEM

More and more students are starting to take an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math degrees (STEM) when looking into higher education. This can be accounted for by the job promise most of these fields offer as well as the high financial opportunity. However, still nearly about 4 of every 5 computer science and engineering graduates are male, proving that the influx of interest is still subject to a noticeably wide gender gap. Ever since the 1980s, women have outnumbered men in the amount graduating from college, but when looking at these numbers specific to major, there is a clear area where women presence is missing and that is in the STEM fields. So, why is this? Why are so few women entering the STEM field and how can society help balance out these numbers?

Related image

The problem is not with the lack of interest from women, in fact, about 22% of women nationally entered college with the intent of majoring in a STEM related field, but only 9% graduated with a STEM degree. The problem starts with the disparities in opportunity awarded to female students while at college, competing and being compared to their male counterparts. Gender biases dictate education whether professors and employers intend for it to or not. A study at Yale University showed that when reviewing identical resumes, American science professors, both male and female, rated those with female names as less competent than those with male names. This could easily affect which students will get lab and mentor opportunities, experiences that could help lead to future success. As many college students realize, networking and experience is key to success in a major and post-college affairs. Often unconsciously, when women are compared to men, men are viewed as the more capable, intelligent candidate regardless of the qualifications presented. For women entering into such a heavily male dominated field, this fact could be daunting which is why there are so few women entering the field to begin with and even less succeeding.

Image result for female stem majors quotes

At Penn State University Park, only about 21.5% of engineering majors enrolled in 2016 were female. That number, despite being quite low, was higher than in the previous two years. In 2015, only 20.9% of engineering majors were female and only 18.9% in 2014. If female involvement in the engineering field in particular continues to climb at this rate, it will be decades before any noticeable change occurs.

Having first hand experience as a woman majoring in engineering at Penn State, I can confidently say that many of the technical classes I have taken have been predominantly male; however, I have not felt like my education has been affected by this fact. Penn State, among many other universities have developed programs and engagement opportunities specifically for women and minority engineers. I had the chance to take part in a Women in Engineering Program Orientation upon first arriving at Penn State that networked incoming engineering students with upper class women, offering a role model and supplementary guidance to new students. Studies have suggested that one of the main reasons so many women switch out of STEM majors while in college is due to a lack of belonging and having so few role models to look up to. This program eliminates that problem, connecting hundreds of women engineers together to establish a sense of society and togetherness. Additionally, there are women and minority career fairs specifically catered to those who are underrepresented in their field, providing extensive networking opportunities. This helps to cancel the influx of opportunities that are granted to men over women, attempting to end not only the gender bias but also the bias against race.

Speaking out of personal experience, I think the programs offered at Penn State make a great difference in the retention of women students in STEM and the overall attitude toward women engineers. Women have a long way to go to reach equal representation in science and math predominant majors; however, I think, as a society, we are headed in the right direction. More and more women are beginning to find themselves in jobs of higher power, defying the stereotypes that have been built up against them. Hopefully, in the coming years, women will see a change in numbers and in representation.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-09/womens-colleges-can-close-the-stem-gender-gap

https://www.asme.org/career-education/articles/undergraduate-students/engineering-still-needs-more-women

http://www.engr.psu.edu/facts/undergrad-enrollment.aspx

http://www.bestcolleges.com/resources/women-in-stem/

Girls in STEM

Women’s presence in the workforce has increased dramatically over  the past 50 years, yet there is still a wide gender gap in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. Upon high school graduation, about equal amounts of men and women graduate with the capability of pursuing a science or math based degree; however, fewer women than men choose this academic path and as a result many science and engineering disciplines remain overwhelmingly male dominated. Today, only about 20% of students earning STEM related bachelor degrees are women. As children, our time spent in school has a large impact on how we will choose to live out the entirety of our lives. Our education prior to college is where most of us discover our interests and what we are good at. If boys are approached with education differently from girls, its inevitable that they will develop different perspectives on different academic subjects. So, how does education as early as elementary school affect the number of girls entering into STEM fields post high school and what can we do to help minimize this gap?   Image result for girls in stem As a society, we have developed biases and stereotypes, although often unconsciously, regarding men and women in different career fields. This largely shapes young girls’ interests and level of involvement in technical subjects. We often assume the best mathematicians and scientists to be men, and although these are just innocent assumptions, these predispositions do in fact change the way girls are approached and perform in school. The widely spread stereotypes about men being better at math and science then women result in a gap in confidence. Research has shown that more male students in high school enrolled in higher level math and science classes, not necessarily because they would perform better but rather because they believed they would perform better. Whenever there is a stereotype present, even if it is a fictitious one, most people tend to believe it and allow it to affect their actions and decisions. Girls, although it is not always true, tend to believe that they will be outperformed by their male counterparts in math and science subjects and end up expressing less of an interest to enroll in a career field where they believe their ability to be lacking.Image result for girls in stem statistics

Additionally, girls can develop a fear of validating the stereotype held against them. Rather than risk proving that men are indeed better suited for technical careers, it is much easier to simply deny any interest in those science and math fields. By not engaging in technical courses, girls limit themselves to their career choices for the future by not allowing themselves to experience all of their options. Without experience in quantitative classes, how are girls supposed to know that that is what they want to do with their lives? It’s impossible for someone to choose a field to study in, in which they themselves don’t believe they can succeed or ever be capable of succeeding.

Today, more and more measures are being taken to make young girls feel more comfortable entering into STEM related fields and get them more involved in science and math based activities early on in their academic journeys. For example, Girls Scouts of the USA have been taking more efforts to introduce girls to STEM, creating a new STEM curriculum and set of badges. At Penn State, I am involved with WEP (Women Engineering Program) where once every couple weeks we partner with local Girl Scout troops to do activities involving science and math. This allows young girls to have women they can look up to and see pursuing careers in male dominated fields, proving that it can be a valid option for their future and falsifying the widely held bias about women in STEM. There has also been an increasing amount of after school programs being established that give youngThe past has no power over the present (1) girls the opportunity to engage with mentors and expand their knowledge on STEM systems. These programs give girls the confidence that they can do anything they set their mind to, cultivating this attitude at an early age. By targeting the problem in early education, STEM fields may start to see a more equal gender distribution throughout majors and careers, and young girls may start to feel more comfortable entering into what has been a largely male dominated discipline.

https://www.aauw.org/aauw_check/pdf_download/show_pdf.php?file=why-so-few-research

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-girls-leave-stem-and-what-you-can-do-about-it_us_59ff876ee4b076eaaae270c2