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.
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/